Guest post by Tony Via, Senior Product Manager Over the past few years, we have worked hard to establish a safe and trusted environment for you to find health information easily and connect with each other as you navigate through your individual patient journey. And we know that no journey is the same… With that, [...]

Earlier this year, researchers crunched a lot of numbers to prove that chronic pain is a big problem in America. People often can’t work because of it and they spend lots of healthcare dollars trying to feel better. The report did say that doctors need to do a better job understanding and treating chronic pain, [...]

Guest post by Jeff Kennedy, Community Manager, HealthCentral & Wellsphere Hearts. We all have one, but now it’s time to give one. And unlike organ donating (which is awesome, I guess not for the giver, but I digress…) HealthCentral makes giving a heart as simple as point and click. Have you seen those commercials where [...]

Exploring Twitter as much as I have, you begin to see certain patterns emerge in certain groups. Tech people love their conference hash tags, social media “ninjas” relish in their Klout score, and the beautiful women who direct message me are always spam (found that out the hard way). But one trend I was unaware [...]

By Jessica H. Simon and Mark Silverberg Like many websites, Q&A content is the fastest growing content type at HealthCentral, and has been for years. We get a few hundred questions a week and nearly everyone is answered by our Experts or community members in a timely fashion. While we have articles that cover each [...]

Guest post by Allison Tsai. The month of October marks Domestic Violence Awareness month, a sensitive topic that is too often hushed or silenced on both an individual basis and in the larger social conversation.  The reach of domestic violence is far, and the people affected by it are diverse. This diversity brings a variety [...]

By: Sara Suchy Let no American think for a moment that we are the only nation with a weight problem.  While the U.S. continues to grapple with a staggering and seemingly constant rise in obesity among adults and children over the last 30 or so years, Europe faces similar problems keeping their collective weight down, [...]

Last week I attended my first work conference, the e-Patient Connections, in Philadelphia. HealthCentral was out in full force, both in numbers and sponsorship! To say I was a bit out of my element would be an understatement, I had no idea what to expect at this thing. I assumed the conference was going to [...]

A new study from a video monetization firm further supports my assertion about the short-term superiority of online to television advertising.  After analyzing 11.3 billion online video views and 6 billion ad views,  FreeWheel concluded, among other things, that: Consumers appear willing to sit through more commercials when those sponsor messages are surrounded by long-form [...]

Guest Post by Anne O’Brien, HealthCentral Vice President, Strategic Solutions In the world of pharmaceutical social media, regulatory is gray…but not completely gray. All the laws governing DTC apply to social media. But an interesting take-away at CBI’s Social Media Regulations and Compliance conference; intent matters. A morning of thought provoking speakers stirred conversation at [...]

“We’re not on or offline–we just ARE.”

Guest Post by Mark Silverberg Since recovering from the whirlwind of excitement of last November’s HealthCamp DC, I’ve been looking forward to the next big gathering of health innovators, developers, policy makers, patients, doctors, and advocates here in DC. Finally, this morning, the time had come, and Jessica Simon and I had the honor to [...]

Guest Post by Sara Suchy What’s that phrase? You sound like a broken record? That’s probably because the wisdom at hand is both true and unheeded. For example: “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”…heard it? Yeah, I thought so. Dr. Keith Ayoob, as Assistant Clinical Professor in Pediatric Medicine at the Albert [...]

A hospital’s full-page ad in a monthly women’s magazine in Louisville, KY, caught my eye. A local health care group is using both a QR code and text messaging to promote its emergency care services. You can scan the QR code in the ad and you get a link to the Emergency Care home page [...]

Last week I had the privilege of speaking at the Annual Native Aspirations Community Meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. I was there to talk about Mood 24/7, as well as relay the success story that is unfolding with our very simple service, in rural Kansas. The pitch was well received by more than a few communities, [...]

…a future where coupon downloads are tied to every pharamaceutical ad…and your physician is able to track your compliance not by what you enter into a record, but what your phone records you hearing/doing (or NOT hearing/doing)…!

Ironically, the industry may be returning to the doctor’s office, only this time, to request his files rather than his effort.

After a week of reflecting upon the Health 2.0 Spring Fling event I attended last weekend in San Diego a couple of things about the state of health in the Web 2.0 world have started to resolve themselves. Own your own health I was impressed by the array of companies and individuals in attendance who [...]

When we were speculating about “the next big thing” that might launch at SXSW, Chris Hall mentioned Beluga. This group messaging company was recently acquired by Facebook. That caught my interest, but not enough to download the app. The next day, I read Steve Cheney’s blog post about joining GroupMe. I arrived at his blog [...]

Guest Post by Beryl Lee and Tina Robles Tina steers video planning and production undertakings at HealthCentral where she puts her Video Production and Psychology underpinnings into full practice. Beryl adds her voice to social media, communications, and outreach at HealthCentral where she applies her former studies in Sociology, Humanities and Bioengineering. With a reality [...]

Saturday marked the first Health 2.0 Developer Challenge (or hackathon, if you will) in Washington, D.C.  While a few of these challenges have happened before (in such far-away places as San Francisco), this was the first to be centered in our nation’s capital, the heart of health public policy, and only a stone’s throw from [...]

Guest Post by Anne O’Brien If it is true that no publicity is bad publicity, then Facebook was the big winner at this week’s ePharma conference.  While the comments began as reprimand on the misuse and over-reliance on Facebook by the category as a whole, there were was the acknowledgement that Facebook can extend reach [...]

Patients can find or request the care they need at a price that is fair… Doctors and medical facilities list their services, select from the requests that are made, and acquire new patients willing to pay a fair price for their services.

I’m very excited to announce that we’ve redesigned the look and feel of Mood 24/7. If you haven’t been on the site for a while, you will definitely notice changes the next time you visit. The goal is to make getting to know yourself as easy as possible, and we’ve started by eliminating the need [...]

I found this Wall Street Journal post called: Worried About Cholesterol? Order Your Own Tests, from a Gary Wolf Quantified Self blog post and think that it is a very interesting idea for people suffering from chronic conditions who need frequent lab tests. The ultimate question is, do you really need a doctor to tell [...]

…it is feasible that such complementary technologies could house FDA-required Important Safety Information on pharma ads someday, allowing video advertising of the future to be far less cluttered due to ISI being “just a click away”.

That’s what I thought when three friends of mine in the Louisville start-up scene approached me about posting pictures of the food we eat on a Group Posterous they set up, as a direct result of Tim Ferriss’ new book: The Four Hour Body. It’s also what I thought when I read this article about [...]

HealthCampDC was a different kind of experience for me. First off, everybody was really excited to be there… but more importantly, I think, everybody was really excited to meet and have actual conversations with everyone else there. It was very different from the “let’s put the blinders on and ignore the person next to me [...]

Guest Post by Ann Bartlett This week I traveled to Cleveland Clinic to hear industry leaders and medical professionals talk about diabetes, obesity and innovation.  Speakers were CEOs of pharmaceutical companies, biomedical firms and doctors.  Most of the focus at the summit was geared for industry people dealing with new device development and regulatory and [...]

Could a future where a branded pill bottle might be “inserted” into a “Two & A Half Men” medicine chest whenever Charlie Harper runs to the bathroom following a bender, or a certain artificial knee company’s logo can be seen on boxes in the supply closet behind doctors kissing on “Grey’s Anatomy” be on the horizon? As far-fetched as it seems, inserting brands AFTER the fact might actually be more palatable to regulatory bodies more concerned with biased content being inserted in sinister fashion DURING the production process.

Guest Post by Sara Suchy For two and a half days, I was lucky enough to be in a room with some of the best and brightest minds in research, public health, education, marketing, the food and beverage industry, and web technology all talking (very candidly) about the problem of obesity in America during DTC [...]

Yesterday was the official kick-off for the 2010 Collaborative Family Healthcare Association’s 12th Annual Conference, in beautiful downtown Louisville, Kentucky. I was fortunate enough to attend an afternoon Preconference Workshop today led by, Alexander Blount, EdD and Ronald Adler, MD, FAAFP, called “Orientation to Collaborative Care for Mental Health Specialists,” and am really glad that [...]

Here on the product team at HealthCentral, we’re in continuous deep discussions about the growth and value of mobile health apps.  Last year, we launched Mood 24/7,  creating a new platform for patients to track their well-being in close communication with their physicians — and with data and technology guru Chris Hall now steering the [...]

A technology that limits online viewing of network programming to local affiliates may be just the shot in the arm that local broadcasters need, or it may be applying 1960’s thinking to 2010 technology. Internet users want choice and control, and it could be argued this technology takes both out of the hands of the user.

Guest Post by Tony Via I had been excited for months leading up to An Event Apart, “the design conference for people who make websites” as it’s described by organizer and author Jeffrey Zeldman. Even before it was announced, the themes discussed over the course of two days were ones that stay top of mind [...]

Digital marketers and fans of convergence media should be paying more attention to the item in Wired about the new app that lets the iPad serve up companion content to television programming.

In the absence of online ad skipping technology, marketers not exploiting the captive online video audience are missing a great opportunity, especially given the targeting, measurement, and other advantages inherent in the Web.

Google Instant is a wonderful development for people who can’t spell, particularly if you’re searching for a drug with a long or strange name, according to HealthCentral and Wellsphere bloggers. Other than that, our expert patients didn’t see much difference in health search results. We contacted our bloggers and expert patients recently to get their [...]

24 hours after Google’s new Instant search has gone live, Internet gurus have established that Instant will have an effect on search that falls somewhere between apocalyptic and negligible.  Some initial findings include the fact that: SEO is dead SEO is not dead Instant will kill the longtail of search Instant will lengthen the longtail [...]

In an article just published on Nextgov, there is a good overview of the shifting sands in the Open Government agenda of the federal government. I’m quoted in the story because I have served as a volunteer auditor of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Open Government Plan and also am co-leading [...]

Guest Blog by Alli Bush, HealthCentral Site Product Manager Yesterday was a satisfying day on two levels: the first was that for the first time ever, I was greeted by a driver at Newark airport that was holding a sign that read, “A. Bush.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten off a [...]

Last Thursday night, our New York team got together with J3’s agency folks as well as some of Johnson and Johnson’s Beauty division. J3 opened their offices to us so we catered some Italian-inspired sushi and of course, drinks! When meetings let out around 5pm, we had a swarm of people ready to kick back [...]

Health care reform reached a visible and helpful milestone this week with the launch of  healthcare.gov. The site was built in 90 days for $3.5 million. It collects information on health insurance and lets you search for options that fit your particular situation. Most early reviews are positive; the biggest complaint is that there is [...]

Three events in early June spotlighted the pace of change in how new treatments are being created.  The biggest winners from new approaches to drug development will be patients, who hold all the keys to how new treatments are found and tested.  The clearest losers will be policymakers, who will face more worries about meeting [...]

I have a lot of respect for entrepreneurs – it’s not easy to get up on stage and sell your baby (figuratively speaking). At DCWeek, the start-up showcase involved three seasoned entrepreneurs asking tough questions of five startup leaders – what’s your business model? Great, but how are you going to SELL this thing? With [...]

Yesterday, we put a great DCWeek session together entitled “The Data We’ve All Left Behind: Uncovering The Social Media Data Trail”. Nevermind the genius of holding the session at James Hobans authentic Irish Pub during the exciting World Cup. The session was designed to present a very broad canvass of all the many types of [...]

He’s been making the media rounds, so I’m guessing that by now you’ve heard of Nicholas Carr and his new book, “The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” Carr says that the nature of the Internet – hyperlinks, pages of search results, constant updates – is making it harder to pay attention [...]

In Part 1 of my retrospective on TechCrunch Disrupt, we talked about some of the breakout startups and why they might be poised to disrupt their sector.  But now I’d like to take a step back and look at what this crop of startups says about where online business is heading in the coming years. [...]

At all (good) conferences, there are moments that stick out in our minds as anecdotes of why conferences like these matter, and why our work in health care matters, and why we are still far from our goals of reform. On the surface, yesterday’s Health 2.0 brought together the 2.0 crowd and the government to [...]

Mopping the floors and scrubbing the tub is no fun for anyone, but most of us have the energy — if not the will — to clean the house when it just can’t be put off any longer. For cancer patients, this task is more than just a chore, it can be almost physically impossible. [...]