The digital health space refers to the integration of technology and health care services to improve the overall quality of health care delivery. It encompasses a wide range of innovative and emerging technologies such as wearables, telehealth, artificial intelligence, mobile health, and electronic health records (EHRs). The digital health space offers numerous benefits such as improved patient outcomes, increased access to health care, reduced costs, and improved communication and collaboration between patients and health care providers. For example, patients can now monitor their vital signs such as blood pressure and glucose levels from home using wearable devices and share the data with their doctors in real-time. Telehealth technology allows patients to consult with their health care providers remotely without having to travel to the hospital, making health care more accessible, particularly in remote or rural areas. Artificial intelligence can be used to analyze vast amounts of patient data to identify patterns, predict outcomes, and provide personalized treatment recommendations. Overall, the digital health space is rapidly evolving, and the integration of technology in health
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Negative Practice Reviews on the Internet

Formerly physicians would receive negative reviews or 'bad press' in a local newspaper as a result of a malpractice case, deserved or not. The negative information is difficult to counter even if disputed. False reports were subject to libel complaints.  Individual bad feelings or complaints about a physician would be disregarded in the noise of other news.

However today a poor review or even less than a ***** (five star) rating on websites such as Health Grades, Vitals,  Rate MDs,  ZocDoc, and can be devastating to a practice.  WebMD offers an analysis of Doctor Rating Sites.

About 40 to 50 online sites -- such as Healthgrades, RateMDs.com and Vitals -- allow patients to rate or write reviews of their physicians.

The visual appearance of a web page often has more authority than the printed content, when a user is searching for physicians and their ratings:   For Example:

Physician                      Satisfaction Score

Dr Good                          ******
Dr Soso                            ***
Dr. Who                          -------
Dr. Uhoh                          *
Dr. Missing
Dr. Maybe                       **

Let's hope it is not something like this:



Early on these services were very questionable, but some have improved.   Some are even 'respectable' and now have a mechanism for building their ratings, and sources.  An algorithm for **** power appears to have developed.

iHealthbeat offers how physicians can take a proactive approach to online rating websites. However, the devil is in the details and can take a considerable investment of time and alteration of practice routines.

Once upon a time physicians were unaware of these 'consumer oriented websites". Some did not even know they existed, however they are now or should be uppermost in any practice administrator or physicians mind set.  Even one negative review, or the absence of any reviews or a missing listing on a search engine such as Google,  Yahoo or  Yelp can be disastrous and result in a patient's bypassing your services. It is mandatory that administrators and/or physicians routinely monitor these websites, and have a consistent proactive approach to building reputation.  It is not expensive but does require a professional plan. It can be done internally, however there are marketing services that can incorporate into your overall marketing plans.

Any administrator can easily search any of those search engines to find ratings, or where your practice shows up on Google....page 1 or page 1000.  Few patient and consumer searches go beyond page 2, and page 1 is best.

Unfortunately the internet and social media are growing and changing on an almost daily basis. New social media sites appear, and grow rapidly, even in their content. What at one moment appears to be a simple social media site morphs into Google pages, Google local, Facebook pages and rating capabilities.  The source of virtually all of the ratings is from users and not accredited or credible.

Patients and/or consumers go first to Google when looking for services, even if it is a friend referral, and yes even if it is your 'plan provider book', online or printed.  No longer do patients call the medical society, which is usually way behind on information about their physician membership.

The opposite is also true. Physicians look up medical information as well as information about their patients on Google.

Find out more specifics and dowloand:

White papers:  pdf file  if you cannot open the pdf file download word file

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Google Glass is now available in the U.K.


United States physicians have had the advantages of Google Glass for the past year.  Glass just recently was released for use in the U.K.

Kathi Browne of BrowneKnows, a well known social media moderator on Health Care Talk had the opportunity to discuss the promise of Google Glass for users and developers in the U.K.  In this Google Hangout several medical developers discuss their use and plans for Google Glass.


Now that Google Glass has been made available to the UK, we are seeing many new Glass explorers stepping forward in  +Giannis Anastasiadis  is interested in developing healthcare Glassware. If you have an idea you wish someone would develop for Glass, share it. For those of you who wish to become Glass Explorers,

While Google Glass is not yet  HIPAA compliant there are  developer plans to make it so. Currently Glass users must receive permission from patients if it is used for them. The potential for use of Glass in Healthcare is enormous, more than I want to cover in this post, and will be listed elsewhere (as of September 30, 2014. 



The current iteration of  google glass has some limitations for medical use. It currently has not been cleared as a 'biomedical device', requiring specific adminstrative consent for use in a health facility, for reasons of legal liability. It is a small and powerful computer, generating much heat and was designed for very short bursts of information rather that a continuous use video recorder.

If you are a physician,  surgeon or a google glass developer, we would like to hear from you, for either a post or a Google Hangout Conference.