Archive for category medtech
HealthCamp Brings Important Players to the Conversation
“Our mission is to assist the President in harnessing the power and potential of technology, data and innovation to transform the nation’s economy and improve the lives of everyday Americans.” – Aneesh Chopra, U.S. CTO
As one of the organizers for HealthCamp SFBay I’m pretty proud to say that this year is going to be even better than last year’s event! Not only have we secured Sprint as a major sponsor, finessed the scheduling and will provide more robust reporting, but we have also had both Annesh Chopra, US CTO, and Todd Park, HHS CTO commit to coming and speaking at the event!
Their involvement stems from our partnership with the Health 2.0 organization and agreement to co-host the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge (strongly supported by both Aneesh and Todd). What HealthCamp hopes to provide the DevChallenge is a collaborative venue for people to come up with new ideas for challenges (see current challenges), to form teams to take on existing challenges, and to share ideas on how best to tackle some of the issues involved with solving complex health related problems that involve private health data.
Both Aneesh and Todd are currently dealing with many similar challenges as they strive to come up with technology and policy recommendations that will meet strict requirements on many fronts from personal privacy to political agendas. It will be interesting to see what they have to say, come join us on October 6 at the Kaiser Permanente Garfield Innovation Center! Register here
Design In/Is Business
Leveraging design and design teams to increase competitive advantage is getting more notice in large organizations thanks in part to events like the Design Management Institute’s (DMI) “Re-Thinking…The Future of Design” conference in San Francisco this past June. Key design leaders across a broad spectrum of industries shared conversations on stage about how they used design thinking tools to create value for, and facilitate change in, their organization.
What struck me most is that design teams increasingly seem to also serve as innovation teams for the business. John Fly, the VP of Strategic Planning at Miliken & Company talked about successful designers being able to toggle between solving both business problems and design problems and often solving business problems with design solutions. The biggest hurdle in this process usually comes from finding a common business/design language. However, understanding the business inside and out increases credibility and leads to better decisions for the business.
I was most focused on what Bob Schwartz, GM of Global Design for GE Healthcare had to say because of my personal interest in improving healthcare through design thinking. His decades in design management had obviously honed his business navigation skills and it was through a combination of analogies, storytelling techniques, and an empathy workshop that he was able to build consensus and unify his design team of 46, spread over 5 countries.
Pushing empathy as a key driver for design and business decisions led to the redesign of several GE products – particularly in the pediatric space where the design team created a MRI scanner and scanning process from the perspective of a child. A story was developed for the children to engage in before they came for the office visit and the scanner room maintained the story’s imagery throughout. This environment reduced anxiety during the procedure and ultimately improved test results. The success from this storytelling approach filtered to the sales force and acted as a powerful motivator to increase sales.
My hope is that more examples like this will bubble to the surface and motivate investment in design teams and the value of design thinking processes across the entire organization. Giving every business team the license to think creatively and more empathetically will foster solutions to support humanity and not just the bottom line.
HealthCamp SFBay 2010 is a go!
The dedicated HealthCamp team that organized last year’s amazing one day unconference on healthcare innovation is back to do it again this year! We sold out last year and so it didn’t take much convincing to get Kaiser to agree to let us host the event again at their Garfield Innovation Center in San Leandro on October 6, one day before the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
We are currently working on the logistics and seeking key sponsors such as Intel and Cisco who were gold sponsors last year. We will again be focusing on the conversations and idea sharing but plan to integrate a more sophisticated way to capture and report back the learning to the community. Providing flip cameras to participants was floated as an idea along with live streaming of the the Twitter feed (#HCSFbay) like last year, but we are exploring other methods as well. It’s going to be another great event so please visit the HealthCamp website to register!
“Quantified Self” Gets Bigger/Hotter
Last night I helped out with the 13th Quantified Self Meetup at Langton Labs. I love this event! About 100 nerds gather and show off their latest self-tracking projects. I’ve presented the Archive twice now, however, most of the presentations are on quantitative data tracking rather than my qualitative stuff. Projects are all quite different yet they highlight that you don’t need to be in a lab to assess what is going on with your body.
Tracking physiological metrics over time produces visible trends that can illuminate poor health choices, facilitate better decision-making and can eventually reduce or eliminate costs associated with managing conditions that have become chronic. For example, last night my friend Matt Bell did his second talk on sleep tracking. The first talk discussed his observations after filming himself over the course of a year using infrared video, this time he hooked himself up to an EEG and tracked his levels of sleep through brain wave activity. Through this process he discovered he was a physically active sleeper, that sleeping with someone did not produce the most restful sleep BUT it did reduce sleep latency which is the time it takes to fall asleep.
Many of the behavioral tracking projects seem to have an almost quantum effect on the tracker in that by merely observing the behavior it can often change the behavior itself. For example, very few of us really know how much we eat until we track calories in. Observing the sheer numbers is often enough to influence how and what the tracker then consumes.
Self tracking has been around for quite some time in one form or another but the Quantified Self movement seems to be gaining momentum, especially as people start taking more control of their health choices. One of the founders, Gary Wolf, just penned an article in the NY Times last month describing the movement which now has a growing following in New York as well. It will be interesting to see how these personal projects creep into the mainstream over time as they inspire others to start recording behaviors.
Pharma Tries on Social Media
Despite the lack of any formal guidance from the FDA on how drugs and devices can be discussed and/or promoted through social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and the like, dozens of firms are exploring what fits them best. There are plenty of examples out there but I took a look at three approaches:
- Johnson & Johnson – It’s no secret that being social takes a good deal of time, effort and investment to do well and J&J is one of the best examples of how to fully embrace the social fabric. They have a YouTube channel clocking over 1.5M upload views, a Twitter account with over 3,300 followers, and a dedicated blog dating back to June 2007.
When you take a closer look at how they manage their content you’ll find a few key topics/issues/stories that are packaged appropriately for the channel and then cross-linked. For example, a tweet will link to a blog post that may in turn refer to a video on their YouTube channel or a product description on the corporate website.
They do a particularly good job of weaving their products and services into the commentary about conditions, causes and projects. The corporate site is well positioned to receive these visits from social channels because they leverage so many personal stories and testimonials within the content. - Bayer Diabetes on Facebook takes a different route as they try to capture interest and support of the young Type 1 diabetes population (mostly girls) through popular teen singer Nick Jonas. The page, with over 12,000 fans, links to another Bayer site promoting Nick, the Bayer blood glucose meters he uses, and information about managing diabetes (emphasizing testing with Bayer diabetes care products).
- GSK went in an almost unbranded direction by creating a series of impactful ads promoting cervical cancer awareness then posted them to a YouTube channel, which has pulled in almost 30,000 upload views since February. The channel is entirely cause-oriented and only lightly branded. However, each one of the ads provides a link to a branded microsite with a strong call to action for testing and vaccination, even though Gardasil is never specifically mentioned.
Keep in mind that success can really only be measured against goals – and all social media campaigns should have specific goals whether the orientation is corporate, product, or cause awareness.
Even though it can be difficult to gauge who has the most impactful social media presence, our friends at Dose of Digital just announced an opportunity for you to cast your vote for the best social media sites through their first annual Dosie Awards.
A Maker’s Approach to Health
Posted by Maren in design, maren stuff, medtech on March 16th, 2010
I’m noticing a bit more of a shift toward self-reliance in what is known as the “maker movement” and highlighted by events like the Maker Faire in San Mateo each year. This observation might be more of a symptom of living in the Bay Area, but I’d like to think that the increasing popularity of steampunk is also fueling the fire of a do-it-yourself culture.
I’ve always had a propensity to want to make things, partly because of my creative background and inclination but also because the process and tangible end product are so much more rewarding than just throwing down a couple bucks. I have mountains of crafts projects stashed away but an equal number in everyday use or pulled out for special occasions like this past weekend’s Steampunk Exhibition in Emeryville where I decked out in regalia that I had partially made, modded and refurbed myself.
So, why couldn’t we take a similar approach to our own health? Where we spend time carefully crafting the food we eat, or the containers we carry our lunches in (steampunk lunchbox anyone?) In our increasingly virtual world, creating tangible things is hugely gratifying, and making things that make you happy AND healthy are the most valuable way to spend your most precious commodity – time.
Healthcare’s Excellent Adventure
This past weekend saw the inaugural launch of BIL:PIL in San Diego, a two day healthcare innovation conference following TEDMED. The first question people tend to ask is actually not about healthcare at all, but rather, who’s Bil? Those of us who were around in the late 80s usually get the tongue-in-cheek reference to “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” and, not surprisingly, it is that same spirit of wacky innovation that you find at the BIL gatherings.
Midnight chalking the sidewalk.
Like many social media phenomena, BIL:PIL is entirely “user-generated.” All the organizers, like myself, freely volunteer their time to envision, coordinate, and manage the event and the talks are presented by unpaid and unsponsored speakers from across the healthcare industry and country. We leveraged several internet technologies to spread the word using our Facebook page with almost 400 fans, an editable schedule with a mobile interface (moBIL) to register the talks in real time, and live streaming of the event on the BIL:PIL site to bring in over 700 unique visits.
Rampant twittering on the hashtag #bilpil further spread content to the entire following of each tweeter – some with over 3,000 names on their list! However, it wasn’t just the technology that made the event a success, it was the content and, moreover, the mission that engaged people.
BIL:PIL is about progress, sharing ideas in healthcare through technology, and the shifting paradigm of health ownership to the consumer. For example, Scott Johnson of the Myelin Repair Foundation talked about how his frustration with the industry’s lack of planning and progress to develop a cure for MS led him to create his own research foundation. In 5 years, and with only $20M investment, his team has been able to develop more targets than some of the largest and best staffed organizations in the world.
Me and Todd Huffman, one of the founders of BIL.
Even huge industry organizations like BIO came to support the event and spread their message. One of their new programs called “I Am Biotech” aims to garner public support for the biotechnology industry despite a constantly changing political landscape, the struggling economy, and misconceptions about the science of biotech. BIL:PIL provided a forum to spread the word across a network of active individuals already engaged in the healthcare discussion.
This was just the first of what will be an ongoing series of events. In fact, for next year there is already talk of hosting BIL:PIL on both sides of the country on the same dates with live casting and video walls set up at each venue. Without a doubt, healthcare is on on the path to become way more EXCELLENT!
Plenty of Food for Thought at HealthCamp
I have to say that I’m pretty proud of how well HealthCamp SFBay turned out! After months of planning, the volunteer team kept the 200+ attendees on schedule while the many industry thought leaders contributed their insights to an open and vibrant discussion.
Kaiser Permanente donated their Garfield Innovation Center while both Cisco and Intel were the key sponsors of the event. Opening remarks were made by their key healthcare leads including Dr. Robert Pearl, Executive Director and CEO of The Permanente Medical Group. Dr. Kaveh Safavi, VP of the Global Healthcare Practice at Cisco, and Patricia Perry, VP of the Digital Health Group at Intel.
Not surprisingly, their focus was on leveraging technology for better health outcomes. Specifically, online video communication is where the system will move toward as the population ages and mobility declines. For example, Cisco has their TelePresence technology which allows real time remote doctor visits (if you can afford the set up fees).
But what really interests me is how to motivate behavior change. A product research finding discussed by Tom Keegan from Smart Design was “compliance is a lifestyle”…shouldn’t it be “engagement is a lifestyle”?
The HealthCamp unconference format really helped instigate conversations and I felt that attendees came away with a renewed energy for facilitating change in the system – and a big smile from all the wine and cheese we served during the closing remarks and recap!
Designing a Healthcare Unconference
As social media approaches adolescence its hallmark of “spontaneous user generated content” has also spread into all kinds of seemingly unconventional places like the world of conferences…that have been morphed into UNconferences. I’m always a bit surprised at how few people have actually heard of an unconference since the concept has been around for a few years now, I’m guessing it will become more mainstream in years to come.
Our friends at Wikipedia describe it as a “facilitated, participant-driven conference” which basically means and bunch of people show up at a designated place for a specific topic and spontaneously decide what the presentation topics are going to be. And yes, most of the time this results in pandemonium as participants jockey to get their talks in the larger, better-equipped rooms. But the net of an unconference can be far more productive as almost all participants are actively engaged in the content and structure of the event.
So, I’m working on one of these things. For those familiar with the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences with their highly polished presentations, invitation-only guest list and $5,000+ participant fees; the free unconference analog is called BIL (as in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure notoriety). And for the medical fanatics out there, a special TED was formed called TEDMED with pretty much all the same parameters as TED. It only makes sense to provide an all access and free BIL:PIL unconference as a community-driven forum for current and aspiring healthcare thinkers to share and collaborate. This October (30 and 31st) will be the first BILPIL to be held right after TEDMED in San Diego.
The BIL:PILLers are a bunch of scrappy healthcare renegades with a surprising amount of clout. We secured the San Diego State University BioScience Center and already have an impressive list of speakers willing to come and talk about whatever healthcare related topic they feel is relevant at that moment. This healthcare innovation unconference will bring together over 200 entrepreneurs, health professionals, technologists, and laypeople to describe the future of healthcare.
I’ve been working on the cat-herding part of the project but also managed to design the identity for the conference (within the brand parameters established by the original BIL franchise). I also created a visualization of the key content areas we hope to attract people to speak about :
Check out the site at bilpil.com, register and help “set healthcare free” with us this October!
Health eGame Night – Success!
Last night I moderated a panel of game developers who have produced games that fall in the $7B Health eGame category. Sponsored by HealthCampSFBay and hosted at Tech Liminal, we had speakers representing Kaiser’s Amazing Food Detective, CryptoZoo and Happy Year of the Ox.
What struck me was the diversity of games out there that actually do provide health benefits – which is why I asked each of the panelists to first define what they felt healthcare and wellness was and how their game applied. CryptoZoo’s Kiyash Monsef (a Cryptodocumentarian) explained how the parkour-inspired game fell squarely under “exergaming” definition but also heightened mental acuity through problem solving.
The goal of Kaiser’s game, as explained by Danielle Cass (PR) was to help kids make better nutrition decisions and get physical ; the game shuts down after 20 min and tells you to do 100 push-ups! When I asked if the game had met its goals, Danielle said they stopped counting downloads after 250,000 but had a hard time gauging follow-up.
The panelists were enthusiastic that Health eGaming is a growing category with many more sophisticated games in the works from large firms like EA and Nintendo but also from grassroots teams and individual developers. Gaming offers the hope that play will once again get you off the couch and elevate your heart rate without making you feel like you are actually doing work.