I have finished to check the proof of my article entitled Opportunities and challenges of Web 2.0 within the health care systems: an empirical exploration for Informatics for Health and Social Care (An International Journal of Informatics in Health Care).

Here goes the abstract:

The Internet has become one of the main drivers of e-health. Whilst its impact and potential is being analysed, the Web 2.0 phenomenon has reached the health field and has emerged as a buzzword that people use to describe a wide range of online activities and applications. The aims of this article are: to explore the opportunities and challenges of the Web 2.0 within the health care system and to identify the gap between the potential of these online activities and applications and the empirical data. The analysis is based on: online surveys to physicians, nurses, pharmacist and patient support groups; static web shot analysis of 1240 web pages and exploration of the most popular Web 2.0 initiatives. The empirical results contrast with the Web 2.0 trends identified. Whereas the main characteristic of the Web 2.0 is the opportunity for social interaction, the health care system at large could currently be characterised by: a lack of interactive communication technologies available on the Internet; a lack of professional production of health care information on the Internet, and a lack of interaction between these professionals and patients on the Internet. These results reveal a scenario away from 2.0 trends.

The article has been done with Miquel Angel Mayer and Joan Torrent, colleagues from Interdisciplinary Research Group on ICTs (i2TIC), and will be published on September 2009.

On 23rd June I had the pleasure to present some of the results of our research in the Brown Bag Seminar Series at Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) in the Department of Sociology at University of York where I’m as a visiting researcher.

I have to thanks all the people who were there for their questions and comments. Special thanks to Michael Hardey who helps me to improve the statistics labels. Now we have to keep working on some papers using these analysis.

From “Disconnected Citizen to “Networked Citizen”

From “Utilized ICT physicians” to “Integrated ICT Physicians”

Of course, any comment or suggestion will be very welcomed indeed

I just want to share my presentation “Healthcare system 2.0: from industrial healthcare to network healthcare”. It could be also entitled “From information to interaction, from citizen to networked citizen, from physicians to networked physicianas… Healthcare in transition to Network Society”. I have to congratulate  Kroniker, Sanidad 2.0 and Healthcare Department of Euskadi, specially Dr. Rafael Bengoa, for their wonderful job as organizers and support of the conference.

My presentation was based on a research carried out in Catalonia. Our analysis suggests a transition from industrial healthcare system to network healthcare systems with clear gaps and divides:

• From plane and low quality health web pages (more than 50% of the 1240 web pages analysed) to interactive health websites (just 5% of them)
• From excluded citizens who do not have access to ICT, do not use the Internet and do not care about them, to network citizens, who have access to many ICT devices and use the Internet to read/write, share ideas and socialize.
• From traditional physicians (70%) to network physicians (30%), who use Hospital Information System intensively, who use the Internet to spread information, to search national and international research information, to communicate with patients and healthcare professionals to sum up the Internet is embedded on their work routines as interactive space.

As you have already noticed the presentation is in Spanish. I have translated the last two slides. The first one summarizes the drivers of this transition from citizens and healthcare professionals point of view:

The second one is  a framework for policy-makers to manage this change developed by Ismal Peña, another member of Interdisciplinary Research Group on ICTs (i2TIC), based on Measuring digital development for policy-making: Models, stages, characteristics and causes. The role of the government

We have to keep working into this framework to adapt it better to healthcare system. Although I think It perfectly fixes within the healthcare system.

Thanks to Cesar and Ismael I have watched Swine flu alert! News/Death ratio: 8176 done by Hans Rosling which I really like to share because I consider it a must to understand what is going on with “flu 2.0″ and with to 2.0 scene!

Just an open question DOES 2.0 MATTER? and a fact RESEARCH MATTERS

Most of the times when I read my RSS feeds I’m susprised by the amounts of post that are based on slogans, beliefs, wishes… but sometimes I’m surprised by the quality of some reflection. I would like to share Vince Kuraitis post entitled EHR 2.0: Thinking Outside the Cat Box. This post presents a number of innovative ways to conceptualize EHR 2.0:

* EHR as Platform + Applications
* EHR as Clinical Groupware
* EHR Integrated with PHR
* EHR as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
* EHR as a “Publish-Discover” Search Engine
* EHR + Disease Management Services = Care Coordination
* DRT-Enabled EHR

These innovative ways to conceptualize EHR 2.0 and Vince Kuraitis description perfectly fix with “A decade of ICT development in health care”. We may not forget that innovation is based on research not just in slogans, beliefs or wishes.

Yesterday I had my first experience in an interview done by Diario Médico, the leading healthcare online/print medium for healthcare professionals in Spanish, using Twitter. It was a nice experience of mediated conversation, with many questions from other twitter colleagues.

Here goes the list of the other people who have been Twitterwiev:

• Jennifer McCabe Gorman: “Prescribir no es suficiente para resolver nuestros problemas sanitarios”
• Anita Samarth: “Los médicos quieren colaborar con sus pares”
• Val Jones: “Los blogs son la forma de que los profesionales sanitarios hagan oír su voz”
• Enda Madden: “Los mejores médicos son también grandes comunicadores”
• Ted Eytan: “Hay que dejar participar a los pacientes y hacer que el sistema escuche sus preguntas”
• Jane Sarasohn-Kahn: “El sector sanitario ya entiende las nuevas tecnologías como una inversión estratégica”
• Alex Savic: “Los blogs médicos son una importante herramienta de educación del paciente”
• Bertalan Meskó: “El web 2.0 está lleno de peligros, pero hay formas de combatirlos”

Thank you very much to Diario Médico for give me the opportunity to join this great list of colleagues and cogratulations for using the new media.

Today, I have been invited by StopSida to participate in a workshop about “Internet, Sex and Men who have sex with men“. Here goes my presentation (in Spanish) which tries to show an overview about the Internet, Citizens and Health: challenges and opportunities.

Finally, I would like to share my presentation and also to thank Katy and Percy for the wonderful organization of the event that allows us to think and learn about prevention and public health and the roles of NGO, Government and Private sector (as Bakala.org) on these issues. Due to the dynamic of the workshop the debate was very interestig, I wil try to translate to English some of my notes and also some of the participants’ interventions.

First of all, I would like to thank Max Senges and Josep M. Duart as organizators of the roundtable with Howard Rheingold at Open University of Catalonia. Ismael Peña has alredy posted about Rheingold wonderfull talk, but here comes my notes and my reflection.

Online Social Networks

• enable people to co-operate;
• have always existed, but ICT empower and transform them;
• are places where communities can growth.

Cultivating Online Communities

• promote social capital;
• support Life Long Learning and teaching
• connect people and build relationship
• develop a community memory and knowledge sharing

Participatory Media

• From text based only community to participatory media;
• Transforms social structures, culture, community, power, wealth ans is characterized by: many to many, consumers/producers, active participation and amplification of network capabilities;
• Changes literacy.

Online Social Community requires

• Marketing is the foundation of online community planning.
• Design Social Architecture.
• Technological planning.

Watch an eight minute intro screencast of the SMC, created by Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold talk was wonderful, his discourse could be applied to any virtual community. But, in this case, the debate was focused on education and how can we develop online social networks in this field at Open University of Catalonia (UOC), a virtual university with 40,000 students.

On one hand, I think online social networks as a “formal” learning/teaching environment challenge educational, organizational and technological model of my university because it causes a tremendous tension between the need of flexibility   to develop those kind of initiatives and the need of bureaucracy to maintain 40,000 online students within the virtual campus. It just strains all the actors who are involved in the teaching and learning process: teachers, students, managers…

On the other hand, a digital identity is needed to generate online social networks, but how many students or faculty members have develop this digital identity? how many students or faculty members have participatory media literacy?.

Finally, the interaction between this new media landscape based on ICT and the social structure could generate smart mobs, are we ready to take this kind of risk?. I’m ready as well as my institution -I guess- and I’m trying to open the virtual classroom to this new media landscape, it’s fun and most of my students enjoy it too. But as an experiment it has to be evaluated and assessed so… further research is needed each semester. I will present the results here to discuss.

Today I have received an email telling me “natldialogue (natldialogue) is now following your updates on Twitter”. Obviously, I check the link http://twitter.com/natldialogue; its bio description states “How should we protect personal privacy and expand the use of information technology to improve health care?” and its link that points me to A National Dialogue On HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND PRIVACY.

The dialogue is launched by this question “How should we expand the use of information technology and protect personal privacy to improve health care?” and encourage people to submit ideas or concerns, write questions or comments, share stories or vote ideas from other people. Furthermore, the website provides expert information about the issue

Twitter is just used to follow conversation, but this web also provides a opinion tracker to show what people are thinking and saying about how information technology can be used to improve healthcare while safeguarding privacy.

I must keep an eye on this initiative as a clear and intereting case study to be analysed.

I strongly recommend reading John Grohol’s post from e-patient blog entitled For Sale: Revolution Health. In short health is more than a bussines even in the network society era.

Why is Steve Case’s online health venture already looking to sell itself, just a year and a half after it launched? Yet another tale of hubris in the e-health sector.

Back in 1999, I left the mental health site I founded — the largest site of its kind at the time — to join drkoop.com to help them build a mental health center. Within 6 months I left, frustrated by the lack of interest in actually publishing independent, world-class health information and the focus on pushing as many ads as possible in front of visitors.

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