Written by By Robert Groth
Oct 18, 2009 at 02:40 PM

Jane Sarasohn Kahn from THINK-Health moderated a session at Health 2.0 2009 in San Francisco on Wednesday 7, 2009 entitled “The Consumer Aggregators.” Wayne Gattinella, CEO of WebMD, Dr. Roni Zeiger, Director of Product Management for Google Health, and David Cerino, GM Consumer Health Solutions at Microsoft all weighed in on what their prospective companies have been up to in healthcare.

Jane started the session by commenting that this year 35% of Americans are using social networks online for health-related issues. That number is up sharply from just one year ago. She added that 1 in 5 Americans are going on line to look for financial tools for health care. She then turned to the vendors and asked for an update on what Google, Microsoft, and WebMD are doing with their technology for the healthcare market.

Panelists (left to right) David Cerino, Wayne Gattinella, and Dr. Roni Zeiger with host Jane Sarasohn Kahn

Microsoft Consumer Health Solutions

David Cerino, from Microsoft was the first to talk. His main area of focus was the forging of new relationships in 2009, particularly Microsoft’s partnership with the Mayo Clinic Health Manager which debuted in April. He also discussed the partnerships with New York Presbyterian Hospital and Telus. As he emphasized, “the ecosystem of partners continues to grow.”

Cerino also remarked that engagement with online healthcare solutions has been slower because “we are asking people to join higher in the curve”, meaning that consumer health solutions are asking very personal information. For instance, managing a disease online requires a consumer to provide far more personal information than would an interaction with an ATM machine. He continued, “It’s when they feel they can get the value back out is when people will engage.”

Microsoft demonstrated their MSN My Heath Info Beta which has a customizable dashboard for people to monitor their health information in they way they want. He showed features like a drag-and-drop interface for configuration, integrated lab results page, customization of screens on a per-family-member basis, and the ability to create theme pages, like a diabetes page for a consumer. They are also releasing an updated software distribution kit so partners can develop new widgets that interface with their platform.
WebMD

Wayne Gattinella indicated that WebMD’s focus was very different from either Google or Microsoft. He said, “We are seeing the market going more mobile, global, and personal.” In the areal of mobility, Dr. Phil Marshal demonstrated WebMD’s soon-to-be-launched WebMD Mobile Health Record. He touted that the launch of their Symptom’s Checker on iPhone has resulted in over 1 million downloads so far. Wayne also discussed the global focus of WebMD with the creation of “in country” sites to target medical information to have more country-centric health information.

Photo: Wayne Gatinella at Health 2.0 2009 in San Francisco

In regards to personalization, Mr. Gatinella indicated that people are more willing to “engage at the personal level”, citing that adoption of their online health assessment has gone from 4% to 15%. WebMD stores roughly 30 to 50 data points for every assessment to offer a much more personal experience to the consumer using their portal.

Google Health

Dr. Zeiger spoke about how Google has been actively partnering as well and pointed to their adding two new health insurers to their platform, including Harvard Pilgrim and American Postal Workers Union Health Plan. Google has already announced integration with Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA. He also discussed a relationship with Zeas, a new online healthcare solution.

Google Health is actively exploring ways to enhance the customer experience of their health tools. Dr. Zeiger pointed to an initiative around using Google’s browser to spot flu trends. Google has been able to much more quickly match the CDC’s flu outbreak curve by using information gathered by web searches. Per their own site “We’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity.” Information like this gathered more quickly can help manage flu outbreaks in the future.

Photo: Dr. Zeiger at Health 2.0 2009 in San Francisco

Google also introduce their partner MDLiveCare. CEO of MDLiveCare demonstrated his patient-physician online communication solution integrated with Google Health. With the two-way video and their documented patient iVisit capability, this solution looked like a strong competitor to other clinical groupware tools demonstrated the day before at Health 2.0, like American Well, Relay Health, Vision Tree Software, and Hello Health. MDLiveCare advertises the company’s ability to allow you to “See a doctor or therapist right now from the comfort of your home or office.”

Last Updated ( Jan 18, 2010 at 05:20 PM )