HealthCa.mp/Boston

Erica Hersh (twitter) writes:

I’m currently in my first year of an MS in health communication program at Tufts University. I’m most passionate about health literacy, and educating the public so that they can take charge of their health care. My hope is that this will ultimately make the healthcare system more efficient by focusing on preventive care and reducing costs.

I’m attending HealthCamp Boston because I’m new in town and want to meet people who are passionate about and involved in not just discussing our healthcare system (although I want to do that too!), but actively changing it for the better. These are the type of people I want to meet at HealthCamp.

If I were to lead a session, it would most likely be about how to get young people involved in their own health care.

Dave Foster (web, twitter) is coming to HealthCamp Boston.

Please tell us a little about your day job.

I am Senior Director of Solution Innovation of Healthwise. Healthwise has a not-for-profit mission to help people make better health decisions. People have turned to Healthwise decision support information and tools over a billion times during its 37 year history.

What are you passionate about?

My life’s focus is to give people the power to improve the world around them through new media. I’ve founded two disruptive startups with media creation products.

What are you doing to “hack” health care?

I have applied my entrepreneurial background to help health organizations break through traditional health education approaches through the use of new media, shared decision making and integrating patient generated health information into clinical records. My work in implementing “information therapy” solutions has provided a template for many of the patient-facing requirements built into the Meaningful Use rules.

I am currently facilitating the Patient Engagement Collaborative, a group founded to promote pre-visit experiences and other uses of patient response into the clinical workflow.

Why are you attending HealthCamp Boston?

I’m researching the use of social media in health organizations. I’m looking for partners to collaborate with to figure out what patients, families and clinicians need to communicate, share, and rate their healthcare experiences and information.

If you were to lead a session, what would it be about?

Patient Generated Health Data – how do we get it, what do we do with it, and how can this help?

What kinds of people do you want to meet at HealthCamp?

Social media health experts.

Don Fluckinger (twitter, web), please tell us a little about your day job.

I am a reporter for SearchHealthIT.com, covering the wide world of health IT technology and — seems to be growing increasingly important by the minute — effective implementation thereof.
What are you passionate about?

In writing about health IT, it’s clear that technology can only get an organization so far. Enabling better workflows and benefitting patients should be the endgame of all this investment and sweat equity. I’m asking sources to show me how those two objectives will be met, no matter how early in the development cycle a given piece of health IT software or hardware is.

What are you doing to “hack” health care?

Asking contrarian questions of vendors and government thought leaders without regard to whether or not they want to speak with me again for future articles. The health care system has been gutted, economically; there’s no time for tiptoeing through the tulips. We need answers.

Why are you attending HealthCamp Boston?

Because it seems the opposite of the typical vendorfests to which I am ordinarily subjected.

If you were to lead a session, what would it be about?

Collecting a list of patient and provider grievances about how they’ve personally witnessed health IT (hardware, software) interfere in episodes of care, and how they’d like to see it fixed. Then I’d take it, unvarnished, to the vendors by posting it on our site and Tweeting the tar out of it. Maybe it wouldn’t be successful as Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, but it would be a start.

What kinds of people do you want to meet at HealthCamp?

Super-consumers of health IT who are impatient as I am to see progress.

See you at HealthCamp Boston!

Lester Hartman MD took to heart my request to answer a few questions briefly. Catch him at HealthCamp Boston and he’ll wax eloquent about his interest in improving the health care delivery system.

Please tell us a little about your day job. Pediatrician.

What are you passionate about? Family Empowerment.

What are you doing to “hack” health care? Home rapid strep test study.

Why are you attending HealthCamp Boston? To meet like minded people.

If you were to lead a session, what would it be about? Systems of developing family empowerment.

What kinds of people do you want to meet at HealthCamp? Innovators.

See you at HealthCamp Boston!

We’re Ryan Klepps and Scott Hebert, and we’re founders of TheraVid LLC (twitter, blog).

What is your day Job?:  By day, we’re broke 24 year olds trying to finish up our doctorate degree in physical therapy.  But by night we’re working tirelessly to find solutions that help patients become more engaged with their course of care.   Our product, TheraVid (www.theravid.com) is a web based home exercise prescription tool for rehabilitation professionals and their patients that incorporates the key concepts of video based exercise instruction and an interactive patient portal.

What are you passionate about?:  We love the web, and we love healthcare.  But we especially love combining the two.  We’ve got a strong belief that in the coming years it is going to become crucial for healthcare providers to connect with their patients in new and meaningful ways.  That’s why we’re working tirelessly to bring this type of engaging environment to life.

How are you going to hack healthcare?:  As therapists, we play a major role as patient motivators.  Still, studies consistently show that patient compliance with prescribed home exercise programs continues to be low (often less than 35%).  Through evidence based studies, we’ve determined the key components to improve a patient’s engagement and ultimately their therapeutic outcome.  The end result of this process is that a patient gets healthier, faster.  Our ultimate hope is by improving patient outcomes in a timely and efficient manner, we can work to reduce healthcare costs while simultaneously improving the quality of care.

Why are you attending HealthCamp Boston?:  We’re excited to take an active role in building the future of healthcare and are eager to work with others who are finding solutions to complex problems.

If you were to lead a session, what would you want it to be about?:  In building our startup, we’ve become fascinated with the role digital media can play in optimizing patient engagement.   We have focused our efforts thus far to the fields of physical and occupational therapy, but we are eager to look at the impact it can have on other areas of the healthcare system.

What kind of people do you want to meet at HealthCamp?: We’re hoping to meet with other individuals with radical ideas for how to improve our healthcare system and enhance patient care.  We are especially interested in talking with those working to build patient portals.  We feel this is a critical piece in the future of healthcare and would like to see how others are working to incorporate this component into other health systems.

We’d love to hear from you!  Connect with us any way you’d like.

See you at HealthCamp Boston!

Ben Kruskal MD is coming to HealthCamp Boston.

Please tell us a little about your day job.

I’m Chief of Infectious Diseases at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, a 500 physician, 400,000 patient multispecialty group practice in the greater Boston area.  I supervise clinicians seeing patients for infectious disease consultations, long-term HIV care, and pre-travel consultations.  I see patients myself for both pediatric infectious disease consultations and pediatric primary care.

What are you passionate about?

Improving how we deliver care: making it safer, better, more comforting and comfortable, and less expensive for society and for the patient; trying to transform health care into a partnership with patients to prevent problems when we can, and treat the problems only if we can’t prevent them.

What are you doing to “hack” health care?

I see the value of a systems approach; I am trying to help systematize care where it makes sense, as it generally reduces mistakes, waiting times and costs.  This may seem the opposite of hacking, but there are so many ways that care is currently NOT delivered in a systematic way, that trying to provide some useful structure often feels like a hack.

Why are you attending HealthCamp Boston?

I am interested in learning about innovative ideas; in particular, in disruptive innovation and how to utilize it within a health care system.

If you were to lead a session, what would it be about?

I’d love to understand why the Boston area doesn’t have a fully integrated health care system (something like Kaiser Permanente in California, with inpatient and outpatient care and the insurance/payment functionality fully integrated into one entity).

What kinds of people do you want to meet at HealthCamp?

Smart people doing innovative things in health care I can’t even imagine yet.

See you at HealthCamp Boston!

Gonzalo Bacigalupe (web, twitter) is coming to HealthCamp Boston.

Tell us a little about your day job.

I am a professor and Director of the Family Therapy Program at UMASS Boston, work with doctoral students. I also have a research professor position in the Basque Country with the Ikerbasque Foundation for Science and there I am developing research in the area of e-health, virtual communities, health disparities, and chronic illness. I am planning a health disparities course for undergraduates and a health psychology course for PhD students. Hope to learn new ideas and about resources I could use in class and research projects as well as meet mentors that students could draw from.

What are you passionate about?

What difference does health technology make in the life of the 99% or
in other words, should we have an e-health occupy movement? I am
concerned about the lack of movement towards reducing health
disparities and how stuck we are in the petty conservative ideology
that prevents us from moving towards a more just health system. One of my focus is systems, I am always interested in how context shapes behavior, ideas, etc. therefore, how to change the defaults is more intriguing than how to change health behaviors. Easier to sell reduced portions than ask people to eat reduced portions.

What are you doing to “hack” health care?

Always bringing up the uncomfortable, remind professionals and
researchers that this is about the patients and the families and not
those who are support to aid them. We are all patients and all
deserving a just healthcare.

Why are you attending HealthCamp Boston?

Interested in learning about the notion of HealthCamp and an
unconference, networking and connecting with many virtual friends. I will be presenting at Medicine 2.0.

If you were to lead a session, what would it be about?

Is Health 2.0 Inequality 2.0? What are we doing to prevent from
disparities to increase or stay the same with the introduction of HIT?

What kinds of people do you want to meet at HealthCamp?

Everyone! But not interested in trying to convince as much as listen to those who have been able to address some of the questions I have.

See you soon!

Chuck Freedman (blog, twitter) is coming to HealthCamp Boston.

Please tell us a little about your day job.

I’m Director of Platform (API) Strategy at Mashery. We are working with several major health/medical/activity companies offering APIs to developers.

What are you passionate about?

This is an industry that NEEDS to be and will be transformed by innovation in the application space. The more data and services companies make available to developers and partners, the more improvement we will see.

What are you doing to “hack” health care?

Working with our platform customers, we’re conceptualizing industry-changing applications and services. We help them architect and offer their platforms to enable development of such apps and services.

Why are you attending HealthCamp Boston?

1. See what other people are doing in the space.
2. Report on activity to our platform customers.

If you were to lead a session, what would it be about?

“Health Platforms that are driving innovation and change in the industry.”

What kinds of people do you want to meet at HealthCamp?

Developers, entrepreneurs, other companies with APIs

See you at HealthCamp Boston!

Alice Rathjen (blog, twitter) is coming to Health Camp Boston.

Please tell us a little about your day job.

Currently Founder and SeeUhOh of DNA Guide. We’re barely funded, so basically I’m a starving artist – but it’s a fun gig and I love it. DNA Guide is a google earth for the cell – delivering a search engine for personal genetic data.

What are you passionate about?

Collaboratively creating the future.

What are you doing to “hack” health care? 

We’re just trying to let the web take its course. I think the web is rapidly going to evolve into a biological network – with genomes and other biometrics used to convert people into a node on the network. The web has a life of its own and as much as health policy experts try to keep health information off the network … sooner or later they’re going to loose control.

Why are you attending HealthCamp Boston?

The unconferences are AWESOME. It’s where everyone gets to bounce crazy ideas around… and no telling what might happen.

If you were to lead a session, what would it be about?

Big Data + Health Data = ?

I think this would be a good cat and mouse session of how entities (the cat) are trying to aggregate all this information and yet most patients (the mouse) are resisting having their health information commercialized behind their back. Once genomes enter the picture… the stakes in terms of liability for data aggregators escalate.

My own opinion is that our health records will have our genetic data in it soon …. so we might has well leverage the power of that data set to create a patient centered universal health record based on real time consent. Concerns over patient safety can easily be mitigated through proper use of technology. Historically… once people are put the position of being able to control who they share their information with — the rate of information exchange explodes.

If you really want big health data…. let people use their genomes to convert themselves into a biological domain and have them pick a trusted registrar for hosting their genome and whatever other part of their EHR is portable. Imagine what’s possible with a .BIO network.

Anyway… I’m a little bored with my own idea. Looking forward to hearing others.

What kinds of people do you want to meet at HealthCamp?

Long term global visionaries that believe rapid and radical change for the US health care system is both possible and desirable. I’m also looking for visionaries wanting to deploy a patient centered universal health record outside of the US.

In terms of my personal focus, DNA Guide is looking for pilot projects with entities wanting a tool for physician/patient engagement with genetic data.

See you at HealthCamp Boston.