Following The Health 2.0 Conference

Unfortunately am not able to attend this year’s Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, but I am monitoring it off and on via live blogs and Twitter for the following two days.

The official Health 2.0 Conference blog is a little slow to update as all the contributors are currently making the event run smoothly, however I believe they will update it throughout the conference.

Craig Stoltz is posting on his Web 2. Oh…Really?blog as well as cross posting on The HealthCare Blog.

I was told the Ozmosis Community blog is also updating throughout the conference.

On Twitter, some people are using the "Health 2.0” tag others are using the "#health20con” tag. Either tag shows up in a Twitter Search for either term. You can even search for a product that is demoing or person who is speaking at the conference to see who is tweeting about them.

NOTE: You do not have to have a Twitter account to see these feeds or to search.

Others are not using tags, but providing great coverage:

Scott Shreeve from Crossover Healthcare, Mark Schrimshire, Unity Stoakes from OrganizedWisdom, Dr. Greene, Robert Hendrick from change:healthcare, and Carlos Rizo.

I apologize if you are also blogging or twittering and I do not mention you. Please comment if you want to be included and I will update at the end of the day to add your feed.

Thank you and enjoy the conference!

UPDATE: Bob Coffield compiled a RSS Feed and a Search Feed for all of the Twitter tags. Much easier to follow. Thanks Bob!

New Medication Adherence Blog

I discovered a new Medication Adherence blog called Medication Adherence Group 7. Almost as catchy as the title of my blog ;). It appears to be run by "Group 7, University of Texas at Arlington". UT of A also has a two other groups on Blogger: Group 12 and Calvino Saputra which also write blogs.

So far Group 7 have only posted a few posts which mention the causes of non-adherence and what you can do to help stay adherent.

I look forward to seeing how their blog develops.

AllTop Aggregator

This has little to do with Medication Adherence, but everything to do with information on the web. If you are reading this, you probably read blogs and find health information online. Wouldn't it be great if a website captured all of these sites for you in one place, instead of searching different search engines? Now there is. It is called AllTop.

Here is their "purpose" taken from their About page:

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections — “aggregations” — into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, Muslim, celebrity gossip, military, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the headlines of the latest stories from dozens of sites and blogs.

You can think of an Alltop site as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points—they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In other words, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation” by providing “aggregation without aggravation.”

I have linked AllTop Health in my BlogRoll to the right if you are interested in going straight to the source. As you can tell, it not only is great for health blogs, but for almost everything else you can think of! I like the analogy to a "digital magazine rack", and have found some interesting blogs I did not know were out there.

Great job AllTop Team!

Here is my email to them to ask for inclusion on their site:

Dear AllTop Team:

I have been following Guy's tweets for the last few weeks about AllTop and am constantly amazed at how quickly you are adding topics and feeds. My own blog is about Medication Non-adherence, a pandemic that effects everyone involved in healthcare. 1 in 2 patients do not take medication as prescribed, costing the US over $300 Billion annually in unnecessary healthcare costs and lost revenue.

I discuss this issue, what is being done to address it, Health 2.0, pharma, and the healthcare industry in general. I do not think there is another blog quite like mine, save my inspiration, AllignMap, although I often pull information from different sources. With full disclosure, my company, Intelecare Compliance Solutions, is a healthcare technology company focused on increasing medication adherence, which I state front and center.

Today has been about following advice for me. I read @chrisbrogan's Mashable post about online branding, and followed some of his tips. I also read AllTop's About section and am now following your hints as to how to get on AllTop. I wrote a post about AllTop and have linked AllTop Health in my blogroll (which I would have done anyway since I use it).

Thus, I am submitting my blog for consideration to be added to AllTop Health. If accepted, I will add a badge, most likely "Kick Ass" although I do like "Bribes Work". I thought it inappropriate to add one without actually being accepted.

Thank you for consideration and I look forward to be listed on your site.

Best,
Alex Sicre

Pfizer Follow-up /Other Blogs

I am so behind on reading other blogs and postings that I failed to see others have written more in-depth and critical blogs about the Pfizer study I wrote about in my last post.

It has been pointed out to me that Dr. Showalter at AlignMap felt my post was "lacking in the kind of embittered cynicism characteristic of the AlignMap perspective." And by pointed out, I mean I read it on his blog.

He offers a much deeper analysis of this "study" as well as better comments on his blog dated 09.08.07: http://alignmap.com/category/blog. (I promise one day I will learn how create the best links and pictures and all of that).

I appreciate his experienced take on the Pfizer press release and his embittered criticism of the pharma industry spinning this study. I am slowly getting a handle on how to properly interpret the different "findings" and "studies" funded by pharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Rost also rips pharma reporters and Pfizer on his Question Authority site. This is not new for him considering he is a former Pfizer VP and whistleblower. I think he is somewhat full of himself but I will not go into right now.

There is a funny blog that started a few days ago that just rips into Rost and his QA blog, as well as his new gig as writer for BrandweekNRX - plus the blatant self-promotion of himself, the ranking of his blogs and his novels: http://pharmayobbosphere.blogspot.com. I don't know if it is serious or not since the tone is quite funny, and the blogger himself is quite full of himself.

Self promotion is important, but to a point. When that promotion gets in the way of what you are supposedly presenting/representing in your blog/space/whatever. i.e. Question Authority, I assume, wants to question the authority of the pharma industry. There is a blurb from Fortune that says Rost is the "drug industry's most annoying - and effective - online scourge."

There is a sidebar where you can buy his novel - everyone has to make money.

His post from 9/11 is a Daily Show Clip parody. Very Funny. Then a listing of top medblogs, then a piece about a woman banned from smoking in her garden, followed by a promotion about Rost being involved in a Senate investigation regarding taxing big pharma.

9/10: Mentions he is getting suggestions to do pharma related postings on NRX and post things on his own blog for "regular readers". Followed by a map showing how America is #1 in our minds, a clip about a beer scooter, and two pieces about the best blogs.

9/8: States that is time for a change and that he is tired of pharma blogging - but has to do if for work on brandweekNRX. Then cites Pharmalot as doing a better job (which it is) of reporting real news.

9/7: A posting of a hand shadow show from YouTube.

9/6: A posting about the best pharma sites.

Doesn't this signal that it is time for Dr. Rost to put Question Authority to pasture? He could keep the url: perterrost.blogspot.com - and just have it to promote himself.

That is my recomendation - but I have only had 450 or so visitors in 3 months - not the thousands Rost gets daily, so who really cares what I think?

To keep inline with what I present/represent: stay adherent to your medication regime - drugs don't work unless you take them.