On the 5-6 June I presented and led a workshop at Doctors 2.0 & You in Paris thanks to an invitation from superstar event organiser Denise Silber. The event has continued on the success of the original Health 2.0 Europe (that I also presented at back in 2010 – read my review of that meeting here).

Billed as “The international event in Healthcare Social Media, Mobile Apps, & Web 2.0” it proved to be a fascinating 2 days in Paris learning from Patients, Healthcare Professionals, Healthcare Insurance/Provider execs, and Research and Marketing Professionals from practically all of the big pharma giants in a healthy mixture of keynote talks, panel discussions, workshops broken up by plenty of delegate networking sessions in the salubrious environment of Paris’ Citie Universitie.

The twitter coverage of the event exceeded any Healthcare meeting I’ve ever attended (check it out via the #Doctors20 hashtag) and the talks were all video recorded (you’ll be able to view these at this link) and the event is produced by a very passionate team so I’m confident the discussions will continue on long after the meeting.

Speaker list

I found it very impressive that nearly every speaker had an active presence on social media – as well as a great research resource that will give you plenty of ideas there’s also a diverse range of new people for you to follow on twitter in the following links:

Beate Bartes, founder, Vivre Sans Thyroide, Nathalie Beslay, Lawyer, Christine Bienvenu, ePatient and Founder, Seinplement Romand(e)s, Catherine Cerisey, coFounder, PATIENTS & WEB, Dr Larry Chu, Exec Director, Stanford Medicine X, Dr Luc Colemont, Gastroenterologist and Founder of STOP DARMKANKER, Bertrand Damien, Account Manager, LexisNexis BIS, Dr Mark Davies, GP & Director, Health & Social Care Info Centre, Uwe Diegel, President, iHealthLabs Europe, David Doherty, co-founder, 3G Doctor, Dr Jacques Durand, Founder, blabladoctor.com, Dr Loic Etienne, Doctor and Blogger, ZeBlogSante, Francesca Fedeli/Roberto D’Angelo, Familydan.org & FightTheStroke.org, Jorge Juan Fernández, Blogger and eHealth & Health 2.0, Hospital San Juan de Dios of Barcelona
Emmanuel Fort, Biomedical Imaging, AXA Research, Christian Funk, VitaDock by Medisana, Dr Philipp Goos, CEO, jameda.de, Kamalesh Goswami, Digital Strategy, E-Healthspace, Henri Gracies, Ophthalmologist and blogger, Mediamed, Dr Rafael Grossmann, General and Trauma Surgeon, EMMC, Thibaud Guymard, MSD (Univadis), Erard de Hemricourt, Writer, Esperity, Dr John Hixson, Clinical Director, VA Medical Center and UCSF, Evert Hoogendoorn, Designer, IJsfontein Interactive Media, Thomas Lee, Co-founder, Symplur LLC, Tiantian (Stanley) Li, founder, DXY.com, Aad Lievaart, Trainer and Coach, Muriel Londres, Living Without Thyroid Association, Dr Jacques Lucas, Cardiologist & VP of the French National Order of Physicians, Giovanna Marsico, CoFounder, Patients & Web, Greg Matthews, Managing Director, W20 Group, Dr Hubert Méchin, Founder, Drugee, Olivier Meignen, Haute Autorite De Sante, Didier Mennecier, Consultant, French Army hospital of Saint-Mandé, Dr Bertalan Meskó, founder, Webicina.com, Panos Papakonstantinou, Digital Marketing & Sales, Novartis Pharma, Maarten Ponssen, Consultant, Medix Publishers, Kathleen Poulos, co-founder, InCrowdNow, John Pugh, Digital Innovation, Boehringer Ingelheim, Dr Tessa Richards, Patient Partnership initiative, BMJ, Jurriaan van Rijswijk, founder, Games for Health Europe Foundation, Dr Homero Rivas, Surgery, Stanford & coFounder, Apps4Patients, Sylvie Royant-Parola, Respir@dom, Eugenio Santoro, Medical Informatics,
Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research,
Franck Schneider, MultiMedia & AV expert, University Hospitals of Geneva, Michael Seres, ePatient, Denise Silber, President, Basil Strategies, Mitchell Silva, Founder, Esperity, John Stamler, Partner, Ben’s Friends, Patrice Thiriez, General Manager, e-Santé.fr, Paul Tunnah, CEO and Founder, Pharmaphorum Media, Audun Utengen, coFounder, Symplur, Jamie Tripp Utitus, ePatient and Blogger, Dr Vincent Varlet, Marketing & Communication, Novartis, Thierry Weber, Partner, Vivacity Group.

Lessons from Superstar Patients

The Doctors 2.0 & You meeting is a “Patients Included” conference and I found this odd. At one point the “Patient’s in the audience” were asked to stand up and about a dozen delegates (me included) stood up and were invited onto the stage. I then realised that these were the ‘Patients Included’ Patients (if that makes sense?) and I wasn’t considered one of those.

I think this is a backward direction we’re taking by reinforcing an arbitrary line that we try and paint between Patients and Healthcare Professionals. I think it’s much more productive if we recognise that we’ve all been Patients and we will be once again.

I think before a commercial event organiser talks about including Patients they really should try and be clearer in terms of how they reward Patients for the work they put into making their events a success. There is an important need to set everyone straight on much more basic things like who’s paying for this conference? and why aren’t we sharing all the slide decks and talks openly to Patients who can’t make it?

All the same I have no doubt that the presence of Patients who are active on social media kept the pharma marketing people on their toes and that was good to see (I found the lack of self promoting, back-slapping Big Pharma marketing guru’s who know and have done it all was very welcome!).

Michael A Weiss (@HospitalPatient) had such passion and was so hardworking that I was left completely humbled. A complete gentleman, Michael is very aware of the challenges facing Patients and Payers and I saw him producing some incredibly powerful interviews in which he got great answers to key questions. I have no idea how he’ll find the time to edit all the videos he made (if you’re interested in helping Patients make a difference get in touch with Michael and see if you can help him with his work?) but what a compliment to an event. I’m trying to think of ways I can get him involved in the mHealth Summit that we’ll be exhibiting at in December (it’s in Washington DC so a bit closer to home for him).

Follow him on Twitter to see the videos when they’re ready in the meantime check out

> Dr Larry Chu discussing “digital health and Stanford Medicine X” the Doctors 2.0 partner event that takes place in California 5-7 September.

> Uwe Diegel, President of Health Labs EU, discussing the work of iHealth Labs and the variation in adoption rates across the world

> Dr Rafael Grossmann discussing the use of Google Glass in Surgery & Medicine

> Thomas Lee, co-Founder of Symplur, discussing Healthcare Social Media Analytics

> Seth Ginsberg, President of the Global Healthy Living Foundation (GHLF.org), discussing how they share best practices amongst Online Patient Communities and Patient Advocacy groups and explaining the work of ‘Seth’s 50 State Network’ to help train Patient Advocates.

> Evert Hoogendoorn, Technology Strategist at IJsfontein, discussing the approach they’re taking to develop Serious Healthcare Gaming and simulated experiences they are providing to carers to help them better appreciate disease states.

> Tal Givoly, founder of Medivizor, discussing what it took to take first prize in the Doctors 2.0 Start-up Contest.

> Marlies P. Schijven, Google Glass Surgeon at the University of Amsterdam, discussing her research into developing serious gaming to teach Surgeons.

> Tiantian (Stanley) Lee, founder of DXY.com, discussing the background to China’s largest Physician Only Social Network and Medical Content provider (employing 200 staff and serving more than 50% of – about 1.5 million – Physicians in China) and the universality of mHealth amongst hard working Chinese Doctors.

There was a lot of interesting discussions but stand out for me were the discussions Michael Seres led in his workshop.

I encourage all clinicians to watch this video of Michael explaining the opportunity to engage with social media but he’s an even more effective communicator in a workshop setting and I enjoyed some fascinating debate about some of the very sensitive issues that exist when Healthcare Professionals and Patients are active on Social Media.

If you are trying to develop a social media strategy in healthcare it would be a very smart move to try and get your team working with Michael Seres Consulting.

Andrea Borondy Kitts (@findlungcancer) is a Lung Cancer Advocate, Retired Aerospace Engineer and MPH Student who lost her husband to lung cancer on the 12th April 2013 and is doing incredibly important work advocating for Patients with Lung Cancer.

Prejudices abound about Lung Cancer because people have prejudices that its the result of lifestyle choices and is avoidable. As a result there’s a bullying culture that exists which blames Patients for lifestyle choices they may or may not have taken and discourages Patients (and the media) from sharing their important experiences. To varying degrees other diseases face this type of challenge so I think the frontline experiences from a Lung Cancer advocate who is very active on social media will be an critically important bellwether for the challenges Patients will face.

Andrea also wore a beautiful piece of jewellery featuring her twitter handle (@FindLungCancer). The story of it being a gift from her 13 year old niece was incredibly moving. How do we ensure children as thoughtful as this get an opportunity to study Medicine?

Every Healthcare conference should have a walking challenge

I thought the FitBit challenge at Mobile World Congress was interesting but iHealth Labs took this to a whole new level by providing every delegate with their cool new activity and sleep tracker device. Even though there was one for every delegate it was interesting to see the rush of delegates keen to ensure that they didn’t miss out. I sent this picture to a friend who works for a mobile phone retailer and it’s convinced them that there’s a business case bundling trackers together with new phone sales offers. It amazes me that this isn’t yet being done in the high street mobile phone stores (so far I’ve only seen iHealth devices getting shelf space in electronic retailers like Maplins).

It’s a great strategy to have some of the most connected healthcare industry professionals in Europe using your devices but iHealth took this a step further with their leader board that enabled delegates to compete with one another to win prizes (and a little fame!).

I don’t think there was a delegate who didn’t appreciate the competitiveness that this community game triggered. For me it really highlighted how the addition of seamless connectivity can create powerful motivational forces within individuals and across communities.

If the game had been measuring the zygomaticus muscles the outright winner would’ve been iHealth Labs Europe President Uwe Diegel. He bills himself as an ‘official manufacturer of happiness’ but I imagine this was topped up by the high profile iHealth’s latest range of mHealth devices were given by Craig Fereighi, Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering, during the HealthKit announcement at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference that was being held at the same time over in San Francisco.

Big Pharma struggling to understand the innovation process

Sanofi had a big booth demoing their iPad apps and a Microsoft Kinect game designed to teach the basics of surgery with a work out.

In their presentation they also talked more about the pan european train trip they organised for developers. Apparently the trip enabled the participants to meet with different people in a variety of major cities (Paris, London, Barcelona) and makes for the perfect environment to get loads of collaborative work and coding done in-between the stops. This contrasts starkly with my experiences and I wonder how anyone thinks trains are productive developing environments (if I’m wrong how come the developers at Facebook, Google and Apple aren’t being shunted about on railways during their working days):

Disappointingly the names of the apps that have launched startups as a result of the program aren’t being made public as Sanofi have lawyers working with them to ensure they have watertight IP and can’t be copied. It’s remarkable that they are going with such an outdated approach. Perhaps they think there are blockbuster apps that they will be able to develop and no one will be able to copy?

I wonder how long before they realise that they need to not only think beyond the pill but that the pill business model isn’t going to work in this new environment?

Exhibitor: Activ8rLives.com

Activ8rLives is a Cambridge UK based startup that is developing ‘self monitoring solutions for health and wellness’. The company was demonstrating the ability of it’s platform to support diverse groups who are interested in tracking their health/wellness using a wide range of different pieces of mobile connected hardware:

I found the rapid test strip reader smartphone casing particularly interesting as it highlights the potential of ever lower priced smartphones eg. it’s becoming easier/cheaper to put an Android Smartphone inside a custom plastic casing for a Rapid Diagnostic Test than to make a mobile embedded device (as per the Deki Reader from Fio):

Doctors 2.0 & You Start-Up Contest

This was an interesting addition to the event. Taking the top prize was Medivisor (a website that provides ‘personalised information updates that are relevant, understandable, and actionable’ to Patients and Carers) but my personal favourite was I-Nside who have designed a device similar to Cellscope’s proposed Oto product (that despite spinning out of the lab a few years ago and gaining the support of Billionaire backed Khosla Ventures has yet to make their low cost device commercially available).

I can think a lot of Doctors who would find a disposable attachment accessory like this to be a useful additional feature of their Alivecor ECG equipped smartphone case and perhaps it will take the arrival of some competition to get the Cellscope to launch something for medics to start trialling.

A little concerning was the presence of a startup by the name of Kosmo (LINK INTENTIONALLY NOT INSERTED):

I can’t imagine how they convinced the Doctors 2.0 & You organisers to lend them credibility by permitting them to exhibit and present. I’ve shared my views on these apps in this Linkedin mHealth group discussion and I find it astounding that in an age of social media anyone is thinking that making e-ciggerettes more appealing to young smartphone users by connecting them with fun interactive apps is going to do anything but make them even more addictive. This really should not in any way be associated with health promotion as until there’s evidence it’s merely exchanging one type of addictive unhealthy behaviour with another that’s in all likelihood going to be even more addictive because bureaucratic regulator organisations still need 20 years to respond to any change.

With no legalisation in place to regulate the electronic cigarette products it should be clear that it’s now being pushed by money making opportunists who will see impressionable youngsters as an easy target for sales eg. even in regions like Ireland where there have been decade long drawn out battles fought to tighten controls on tobacco product sales and marketing there are traffic cones outside independent stores that have sprung up around the country trying to suck kids in by referring to the eCigs as “E Juices”, offering ‘starter kits” that neatly fit with pocket money spend of youngsters, offers of “free samplings”, etc.

EyeForPharma Beyond the Pill Interviews

There was such a great mix of delegates from around the world that we decided to record some interviews as part of the preparation for the EyeForPharma Value Added Service Conference that I’ll be again chairing in London in September.

The full series of interviews will help take the pulse of Patients, Payers, Healthcare professionals, Pharma, mHealth app developers, etc on ‘Beyond the Pill’ strategies and we think it will be interesting to present different perspectives on a set series of questions.

The first one to be shared is the following short interview with Dr Gerard Crotty, Consultant Haemotologist and President of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association:

There will be a series of these videos being launched over the next few weeks within the EyeforPharma community so download the brochure for the Value-Added Services event here if you’d like to be first to these videos.

Google Glass Doctors

The Google Glass Doctor session was interesting but left me even more convinced that Google should focus first on the type of Veterinary Surgical applications that we’ve been experimenting with for sometime now. Here are a couple of the more obvious reasons for this:

> The role of a Veterinary Surgeon is typically much more varied than a Surgeon working in a modern Hospital OR. Veterinary Surgeons often manage their own Anaesthesia, change their surgical plans at the last minute (they can’t as easily take a history from the Patient and will typically undertake multiple procedures when they have the animal anaesthetised), need to work with fewer staff and much smaller budgets, etc. In my experience this tends to make Google Glass videos of human surgery rather boring training tools because the staff all have their own limited focal areas and this can more often than not be better recorded with HD Go Pro’s mounted on the lighting etc. The Veterinary Surgical training videos that we’ve produced are strikingly different as they show how surgeons are expected to be able to manage many roles while operating and the areas surgeons might operate also vary considerably and opportunities to share lessons with others arise spontaneously eg. in large animal practices one minute they might be delivering a cow in a farmers remote field the next they could be administering a horse in a well equipped stable neither of which would feature any video recording equipment or the time to set it up etc.

> Veterinary Surgery is very similar to frontline Battlefield Medicine an area where the ability to summon real time assistance from a remote expert would be invaluable but where the risks to life are often so considerable that you would not want to experiment with unproven tech. With a few modifications Google Glass will obviously transform the work of first responder/paramedics but there should be more research conducted to ensure this is safe.

> It’s extremely rare for Patients to be interested in watching videos of themselves under anaesthesia being operated on. In contrast the owner of a valuable animal is very likely to have an interest in watching a video recording of some surgery conducted by their Veterinary Surgeon.

> This cool Google Glass Checklist demo video that Dr Homero Rivas (@mHealthSurgeon) played to the audience appears to me to be exactly the type of tool that would be useful in low resource Veterinary settings but I can’t imagine being very helpful in large operating rooms where you typically have entire teams that need to be involved in checklists (eg. it’s useful to have the team communicating, everyone should be able to see the confirmatory text, etc).

Here’s are a few articles on the use of Google Glass that I think you may find helpful as further reading material:

> mHealth Insights into Wearables
> Google Glass has a long way to go in the OR
> Did Google Glass really save the life of Patient in Hospital or was it just the EHR?
> Has the experience with Google Glass opened Google’s ears to the Augmented Audio Opportunity?
> The biggest impact Google Glass will have on Healthcare: It will enable Patients to Document care (and that will then force Healthcare Providers to follow)

Disrupting the Practice of Medicine through Digital

I recorded the session I moderated featuring Liana Lianov, Jacques Durand and Dr Tessa Richards so click back here as I’ll post the link to the podcast when I get the chance.

Dr Tessa Richards (a Patient, Carer, experienced Doctor and senior editor for the BMJ) talk was brilliant, calling for us to let the Patient Revolution begin:

The Q&A at the end is particularly interesting as it has me challenging Liana’s confidence that a focus on ‘Lifestyle Medicine’ can flip the pyramid and shrink government healthcare budgets (I think all the evidence shows that unless we move to self care models it’ll just make a much bigger pyramid) and challenging her views that the growth of Chronic Disease is due to a failure of healthcare providers:

I also challenge Jacque on his strongly held belief that it’s not right for Doctors to charge Patients for their time and the BMJ’s lack of any formal plan to pay Patients for their contributions to their Patients Included initiatives.

My presentation:

My key take away was that when healthcare is designed to meet the needs of Patients much of it will look just like a mobile experience (see ‘Why we’re more likely to drop the “Health” than the “m” in mHealth). The talk and discussions afterwards were recorded so I’ll update this post with that content when it’s available.

We’re sorry but this post is incomplete. Check back again soon for more mHealth Insights from Doctors 2.0 and You Paris.