Managed Care - March 2008 - (Page 49) Will Its Promise Be Realized? Advocates say it will transform health care; detractors warn against overestimating its potential By Neil Versel oogle is getting into health care with a personal health record being introduced in cooperation with the Cleveland Clinic, and may have other products in mind. Microsoft, already a strong player in the sector, got a jump on Google a year ago by purchasing an obscure health-specific search engine called Medstory (www.medstory.com). Other organizations have Web sites that they fancy as health care’s answer to YouTube, Trip Advisor, and Shopping.com — or beyond. After all, there is one called Revolution Health, the company started by AOL cofounder Steve Case. “In some ways, it’s 1999 all over again,” says Ted Smith, PhD, who is president of MedTrackAlert (www.medtrackalert.com), a Louisville, Ky., company that offers a Web-based news aggregator and health care management tool for consumers. Those were the days of the dot-com bubble, when anyone with an idea for a Web site and some venture capital could be a millionaire, at least on paper. Or at least aspire to be one. To wit: A social network called MyOpenCare (www.myopencare.com) is offering 0.5 percent of company shares in a contest for the best electronic health care “book” posted on the site. Five runnersup each will receive 0.1 percent of the company. Space, and the countless blogs on every conceivable topic. A subset of this that is related to health care has been dubbed health 2.0, and it is attracting considerable attention, albeit with a healthy dose of skepticism that might have been absent 10 years ago. “There’s no shortage of widgets and gimmicks out there,” says Smith. “At the end of the day, kick them and they fall over.” Dmitriy Kruglyak, who runs a health care blog- Health 2.0 G What’s your suggestion? Health 2.0 Web sites invite discussion Gold rush If it sounds like the heady days of the late 1990s, when companies with little or no actual income threw around piles of stock options to starry-eyed young techies, that is because it might just be a repeat of a gold rush that produced mostly fool’s gold. Many, though, think it’s the real deal. This time around, the phenomenon is known as Web 2.0, a catch-all term for interactive and social media. The obvious examples are YouTube, My- MARCH 2008 / MANAGED CARE 49 http://www.medstory.com http://Shopping.com http://www.medtrackalert.com http://www.myopencare.com
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