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June 29th, 2010
 By Stephen Murphy, Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy and Innovation
The cause celebre today is the emergence of the electronic health record (EHR), an online site where doctors can place everything they know about a patient’s medical history, and patients can log on to check their health records. The leading edge of this innovation is the personal health record (PHR), a health-management tool that people are using to access (and control) their own health information. Good-bye, paper records-eventually.
Not many people have PHRs yet, but the rate of adoption is accelerating through services like Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault. A recent report from the California HealthCare Foundation shows that 1 in 14 Americans has used a personal health record, twice the number of users from the previous year. The new research reveals that people with PHRs “know more about their health, ask more questions, and take better care of themselves.” One-third of respondents say they use their PHRs as a vehicle for taking specific action to improve their health.
Health data can drive positive change when people who are engaged with their PHRs start taking better care of themselves. Plenty of health mobile apps are emerging that support personal interaction with one’s health data, and that’s a great step forward for the individual. But as a society, and within Government, we could be doing a much better job of sharing our health data resources. We need to fully integrate our data in a social sense to realize its full value.
Today’s Government websites contain massive amounts of information about grants, publications, and research resources. They’re built on an underlying infrastructure of data and information technology (IT). But the purpose of creating these systems is not to inform audiences about data and IT. The goal is to connect, tell a story, educate, and effect change-not easy tasks when the data are floating on disconnected islands. If I put up a website about nutrition, I want people to read my material and look for ways that they can adapt it to their lifestyle and needs. I want to pursue new opportunities to create positive behavioral change for a healthier America.
Six Ideas To Make Data Social
1. What if you could coordinate a communications plan, an outreach plan, a mobile plan, and an evaluation plan at the same time that you design your EHR system or website?
2. What if, at the outset, you built a solution that could feed a mobile application, an EHR record, a grantee website, and your Facebook and Twitter feeds so others could create their own mashups from your data?
3. What if you consider how the data you house could inform the EHR record of a health provider and build a data link to make it happen? Wouldn’t links to research data or evidence-based best practices provide a richer data set than just a blood test?
4. What if you could harness the data warehouse, the taxonomy that classifies your publications, and product description data to fuel a story bank of short-form messages for social media?
5. What if you could build in extensible data architecture that provides output information that can be meshed with Google maps to show publication shipments by mapped ZIP codes? What if you could overlay that information with data on disease prevalence, drug use, and homelessness?
6. What if your data architecture was designed to support a mashup of data to grantees that could help them write their next grant application or allow them to embed a shopping cart for your agency products on their site?
A Killer App
John Donne is famous for saying, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.” He also said, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Donne was referring to the custom of ringing a bell to inform the community when someone in the village died.
So imagine if John Donne, Steve Jobs, and Kathleen Sebelius, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, met to update Donne’s communications approach for our data-driven time. My guess is that they would come up with a mobile app that would inform you every time a useful piece of health information is produced that affects you. This message may be worth remembering the next time we’re tempted to invest more health dollars in another data island.
Tags: California HealthCare Foundation, data, data architecture, data warehouse, EHR, electronic health record, Google Health, Health Data, health records, information technology, John Donne, Kathleen Sebelius, Microsoft Health Vault, Mobile, personal health record, PHR, social data, Steve Jobs
Posted in Health IT | No Comments »
January 22nd, 2010
By Kim Callinan, Senior Vice President, Communications and Social Marketing
The Kaiser Family Foundation released a study this week, “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds,” showing that the average child aged 8 to 18 spends more than 7.5 hours a day on screens (smart phone, computer, television, handheld game system, or other electronic device.) I was delighted to be interviewed for a New York Times article on the report because this is a topic that I feel very passionately about.
I have two children–a 9-year old boy and a 7-year old girl. I have always had a screen time rule, but when they were younger I was more relaxed about it. I aimed for no more than 2 hours a day, although there were certainly days when we exceeded that. When my son was first born, I would put in a Baby Einstein video in the morning to take my shower and one in the evening as I got dinner prepared. As soon as the video started, his eyes would lock on the screen and I had a guaranteed 30 minutes of sanity. We graduated from those to educational computer games and other PBS television shows. I thought that as long as the quality of the programming they watched was good, that a few hours of screen time a day would be fine.
The older he got, the more concerned I became about “screens” and how they were impacting his health and development. By the time he was 8, it seemed like the only way that my son could engage in life was with a screen in front of him. If a play date came over, they were not able to “play” without a video game in their hands. When I tried to get him to go outside and play, he would moan and complain and it was a fight each and every time. And getting him to do his homework was a constant battle “because homework interfered with the fun stuff.” You know what the “fun” stuff was!
Now keep in mind that I had a screen time rule of two hours a day. Granted it wasn’t always enforced, but he certainly wasn’t spending seven hours a day watching television and playing video games! Despite this, he was headed down a path that did not look promising.
The wake-up call came when he announced that he didn’t want to sign up for any after school activities. Why? “Because by the time I get home from school, do my homework, and eat dinner, I have about two hours before bed time. That’s how much screen time you let me have during the week. If I sign up for an activity I will miss out on video games.” Since when was tae kwon do, swimming, chess club, or any other activity of his choice missing out!
I’m not sure what the formal definition of addiction is, but I was pretty certain he was heading in a very dangerous direction. Thus our revised screen time rule was born–No screen time during the week and an hour and a half on weekends.
I’ve seen many very positive changes in my son since implementing the new rule. When his friends come over, they are now playing Legos, running around outside, or even playing imagination games. He has joined fencing and tae kwon do and he is excited to go. And I rarely now hear him say, “I’m bored.” He somehow has learned how to entertain himself without a hand-held device! He also complains much less about homework than he used to and on most nights he independently completes his homework. The positive changes help give me the motivation and strength to continue enforcing the rules despite vehement protests from my children.
In looking back, I wish that I had followed the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendation of no television time until kids were at least 2 years old (or that I had waited even longer). However, I can’t rewind the clock. So hopefully the changes that I have made happened soon enough to ensure that my son grows up to be well rounded, happy, and without a video game addiction.
For more on the impacts of media on young people, see the Shaping Youth Blog. In the meantime, if you have any tips for protecting your children from the media, please share them with me. I’d love to learn from your experiences.
Tags: american academy of pediatrics, children, computers, kaiser family foundation, media, Mobile, phones, video games
Posted in Health News & Issues | 19 Comments »
November 4th, 2009
By Dan Johnson, Technical Assistant to the CEO
The last time I checked, the traditional American family dinner was competing (unsuccessfully) with a batch of formidable distractions. Both parents were working. Teenagers were juggling homework assignments, sports and other extracurricular commitments, and increasingly busy social lives. Now, with the rise in social media and texting, and the expanded availability of music, games, and video on the Web, it’s no wonder that so many families find it challenging to sit down together for dinner.
Researchers at Columbia University are convinced that reviving the family dinner should be a high priority, because it tends to reduce substance abuse among teenagers. According to a new report from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA)–The Importance of Family Dinners V–teenagers who have family dinners fewer than three times per week (when compared to peers who average five per week) are:
- Twice as likely to use tobacco or marijuana
- More than one and a half times likelier to use alcohol
- Twice as likely to try drugs in the future
The researchers also reported that teenagers who have infrequent family dinners are more than twice as likely to be able to score marijuana within an hour and one and a half times likelier to acquire prescription drugs within an hour. They are also more inclined to get grades of C or lower and to have friends who drink or use drugs, including heroin and cocaine.
What is it about eating together that makes such a difference for families?
“The magic of the family dinner comes not from the food on the plate but from who’s at the table and what’s happening there. The emotional and social benefits that come from family dinners are priceless,” says Elizabeth Planet, vice president and director of special projects at CASA. Planet and her colleagues suggest that having regular family dinners is an effective way to foster communication and parental engagement, two of the key factors in raising drug-free children.
Part of the magic depends on family members agreeing to turn off cell phones, Game Boys, BlackBerries, television, and other technological distractions. When that happens, the considerable benefits of family-focused conversation can become part of the dinner routine. Parents and children can focus on the opportunity to exchange thoughts and opinions. Teenagers can count on being heard when they share what’s happening at school and what’s on their minds. Parents can stay informed about the pressures their teens feel, including peer pressure to use alcohol and drugs. At the same time, Mom and Dad can relate their own experiences, including how they deal with problems and frustrations at work, which can help their kids develop better coping skills.
In 2001, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse launched Family Day, a national movement to remind parents of the importance of regular family dinners. The initiative has had considerable support from governors, mayors, and corporate sponsors. In 2005, a study by CASA found that the number of teenagers who eat regularly with their families was up by 23 percent since 1998.
What dinner time will look like in the next 25 years could depend on how family traditions passed down from Generations Y (mid-1970s to early 1990s) and Z (late 1990s to late 2000s) are influenced by evolving technologies and the pace of life in the 21st century. Are we approaching a point where busier schedules, the easy social connections available in cyberspace, and innovations to come will make regular, unplugged family dinners impossible or merely ceremonial? Are we already there? Or will young, connected “digital natives” use next-generation information technology to live and work more efficiently, save time, and re-create the dinner hour their parents were missing?
Tags: alcohol, dinner, drugs, family, grades, marijuana, Mobile, school, tobacco, video games
Posted in Health News & Issues | 2 Comments »
June 25th, 2009
A few years ago there was a lot of talk about the digital divide—how would the lower rungs of society fare in a world where the best and most recent information was found mainly on the Internet? Access to broadband (and even the Internet) is still far from universal, meanwhile a new digital divide is emerging. The mobile divide.
Here at IQ Solutions, we specialize in delivering health facts and tips on behalf of our clients. We’re impassioned about getting actionable health info to the people who need it, regardless of socioeconomic status. So we’re very interested in mobile technology and its ability to extend a health information relationship into a supermarket or onto a mountaintop.
Some of the most exciting developments have been spawned by the iPhone. Since Apple allows 3rd party developers to create and distribute apps, the possibilities seem endless. There are already many health related apps with great potential to make a real difference in disease control and prevention; Glucose Buddy for diabetes, Blood Pressure Buddy, and Calorie Tracker to name a few. I imagine it can’t be too far off when you could use an iPhone to scan a frozen dinner and get an instant analysis of its impact on your cholesterol level.
The problem is, currently about 21 million people have iPhones worldwide. Which sounds like a lot until you remember there are over 300 million people in the US alone. And people who pay monthly access fees for the wireless web are likely to have good health insurance and good access to health info. On the other side of the divide are people left behind by 3G networks, mobile apps, and broadband-in-your-pocket. This is today’s mobile divide.
On the bright side, the reach of mobile platforms is unprecedented. More people than ever have cell phones with SMS—good old text messaging. People from a wide array of household incomes can have access to a wealth of info on-demand, IF that info is packaged for SMS and designed for easy access. The San Francisco Dept. of Public Health funds such an SMS service designed to give teens info about sexually transmitted diseases.
The promise of mobile apps for devices like the iPhone is truly amazing, and I look forward to exploring the possibilities. At the same time, I think we need to be careful not to put all our apples in one basket (so to speak). Mobile initiatives can both widen and narrow the digital divide. If we use our knowledge and insights about the people who need health info, and the ways they like to get their information, we can harness the promise of mobile platforms without increasing digital disparities.
Ody Leonard, Associate Creative Director
Tags: apps, broadband, health information, internet, iphone, Mobile, sms
Posted in Web & Interactive | 2 Comments »
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