I’ve been an avid Google fan for quite some time. I pretty much love almost everything they do. I would pay a pretty penny every year just to use gmail, reader, calendar, and docs.
And over the years, it’s been fascinating to watch them try to become social. Google’s greatest hits (search, gmail, and maps) were made for me in my own personal silo. I used them one on one and loved it. Then Reader came along and I love it. I use it one on one and it feeds me with 95% of what I need to know throughout the day. Docs came along and, from the beginning, offered me a social, shareable document that made working with others easier. And that, to me, is its best feature.
Then Google started to try to tack on the social web to almost everything— Google profiles, maps, I now have followers and viewers in Reader, I can subscribe to other’s calendars (although not so intuitively), etc.. But all of these experiences aren’t very intuitive and sort of suck. Why? Because they were tacked on after people started using them as one on one silos.
On the other hand, I love tumblr. It has become my source of information, replacing my obsession with Google reader. I feel like I personally know the people I follow and who follow me. It has become my innernet friend that augments the in-person relationships between meetups over a beer. From the very beginning, it was designed from the ground up to be social. Social wasn’t tacked on to tumblr. It was its’ heart and soul.
I had this in mind from the get go when I designed the Hello Health platform with Ghava. I read the super helpful book, Designing for the Social Web, by Joshua Porter, which got me thinking about what health professionals would need and/or like to “share” when communicating, documenting, and going through their daily routines. What are Hello Health’s social objects and what can users do with those objects? From there, we designed Hello Health from the ground up to be a secure, social platform for health professionals, patients, and medical information. I know that doctors and patients in a new healthcare network/system born in 2009 will benefit from being securely social. Value will be added for patients if they see a doctor in LA who has access to the last visit that patient had last week who visited a doctor using Hello Health in NYC. This will prevent unnecessary repeat tests and ultimately save that patient money from their health savings account. Value will be added for doctors who have access to as much information as possible about the patient they are currently seeing. They can practice higher quality medicine when presented with all the information needed to make good decisions.
What does this mean to the Health IT world? Obama appropriated $20B to trying to get more doctors to use electronic medical records (EMRs). The feds will pay doctors to “meaningfully use” EMRs. And now one of the main stipulations of “meaningful use” is that the EMRs the feds will pay for must be able to “share information.” Essentially, the feds are asking EMRs to be social. And this is what the best one looks like:
Ha. Good luck. If Google can’t do it in a meaningful way, I guarantee the Health IT world won’t come close. Regulating from the top down that EMRs become “social” is absurd. EMRs were born over 20 years ago, and they still look and function like 20 years ago. That’s why the government is regulating goddamn software. Patients’ lives are at stake and doctors are using this unusable crap. Regulations won’t come close to solving practical usability. There’s a loophole in every regulation. EMRs will “support” shareability, but it’ll be done so poorly “shareability” will be rendered almost useless. And taxpayers will be out $20B, a pathetic healthcare IT industry will be up $20B, and doctors will be stuck with a social network tacked on to 1985.
Do the Feds have to regulate Facebook? Flickr? Tumblr? Of course not. They are social because there is value in being social. The present sickness industry values secrecy, not openness. Secrecy means more profits. Secrecy means owning valuable, profitable data. Secrecy means locking users in to one proprietary piece of crap software. Secrecy means not being responsible for poor quality.
Very little, if any, of healthcare will change unless consumers stop supporting the current business model of the US Healthcare Industry and unless the Feds stop mandating that consumers support this business model. That’s fine though. In just a few years, nobody will be able to afford healthcare and they’ll surely be looking for affordable, alternative ways to feel better.
politics
17
Oct 09
When it starts in silos, it will never “go social.”
24
Sep 09
Crack kills. Smoking kills. Obesity kills.
If obesity is linked so closely to so many of the top 10 diseases that kill Americans, why don’t we have PSAs saying:
Obesity Kills.
Why aren’t we, as a culture, condemning obesity just as we condemn crack and smoking?
I know what the critics will say…you are a skinny, healthy dude…you have no idea what it’s like to be obese. You have no idea what it’s like to be called “fat.”
True. I’ve never been obese nor have I ever been called fat. I have been insulted in many other ways. Definitely. I know what it feels like to be insulted about things I can and cannot do something about.
But obesity, 95% of the time, is due to food addiction. The bliss we get from eating ourselves full every night is a similar high we get from nicotine when we smoke.
And we all have our addictions. We all have our vices. To say that I don’t know what it’s like to be addicted to something is to say that I don’t know what it’s like to be human.
I think we need to turn the corner on this and stop pussyfooting around the issue. Are we that obsessed with our image and that terrified to be caught calling someone fat that we just ignore the issue? Is our image and our political correctedness more important than a pathetically unhealthy society that leads to early death? Should we allow a tax on high fructose corn syrup drinks to be called a “Fat Tax?”
Food kills more people than smoking and alcohol.
Or should we just call it like it is…1 out of 3 ‘Murcans are not obese, they’re fat. Using a different word isn’t going to change the fact that you’re going to die from too much food.
11
Jul 09
The Slow, Painful, Unionized Death of GM
Quoting this in full, because it’s absolutely excellent:
GM is apparently emerging from bankruptcy. It will have the same (though fewer) managers, employees, and assembly plants. It will have the same product designers, marketers, strategists, and planners. It will have roughly the same organization systems, the same culture, and the same history. Though it was able to shed some plants and employees, it will have most of the same stifling work rules on the shop floor. It did, however, manage to shed a lot of interest payments to creditors who entrusted their money to GM in return for claims on GM assets, only to be given the shaft by the Obama administration.
The main difference in the new GM is that it will have an ownership group whose primary concerns are NOT the financial success of the company. The UAW will be primarily concerned with keeping union members employed and happy and not shifting any manufacturing to lower-cost venues. The US Government will be primarily concerned with making sure the UAW is happy and promoting a number of its own goals, like “sustainable” plants and smaller cars, irrespective of whether these goals make business sense. It will be a company more concerned with whether plants have recycling programs and workers with American passports rather than cost or quality. Both the UAW and the US government can pursue such non-business goals secure in the knowledge that financial success is virtually irrelevant, as the US taxpayer can be counted on to make up any shortfalls.
(via tjic)
19
Oct 08
The Conservatives and the Canadian DMCA
I seem to post more on slashdot than here, so I thought I’d copy over some of my comments.
On the article: Canada Election Result Bad News For DMCA Opponents.
First post was:
Very few outside of geeks care about the DMCA.
My response:
Understanding or caring isn’t the issue – most of the people I’ve discussed this with do care. What *is* the issue is that this, in the big scheme of things, is not enough to sway the vote. Not even for a techie like myself.
The economy, healthcare, free trade… etc. etc. – all of these are more important, and that’s why I voted Conservative, as well as most of the people I know.
IMO, their stance on the DMCA is just plain wrong. But I agree with most of the rest of their platform, and for now at least none of the other parties are anywhere close to where the majority of Canadians stand on the major issues – as evidenced by the election results.
I just hope Jim Prentice will see the light.
