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Healthcare Privacy: Good or Bad? Discuss.

If you happened to be on the Internet, particularly Twitter, a couple weeks ago, you likely noticed the deluge of tweets about SXSW and requests from people to get you to vote for their session. Today, I wanted to share my session and spark a little debate. My session is all about why healthcare privacy will soon disappear and why we’ll all be healthier for it. More on that in a minute.

But first, in case you aren’t aware, SXSW is (now) a huge conference held each year in Austin that features interactive, music, and film portions. The sessions for this conference are in part selected by the votes and comments that the public leaves about them (they count for 30% of the selection criteria). So, you have a chance to dictate what goes on at this conference. Why should you care? Regardless of what industry you are in, I’d strongly recommend considering this conference next year. Last year was the first year that there was a strong contingent of healthcare related sessions and this year there will likely be even more. So, you can go and hear some great healthcare related talks. However, I’d recommend that you go to listen to everything else (assuming you work in healthcare everyday). Why? Well our healthcare industry could use a little outside influence from time to time just to see what’s possible and where we might be headed. If you only look at healthcare all day, you’ll never see “what’s next” until it’s too late.
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New Facebook Features for Pharma

Recent changes made by Facebook eliminated a special exemption given to pharma and healthcare pages, which allowed them to block all commenting on their Wall posts. That changed a week ago. Some companies responded to the change by eliminating their pages, while others have embraced the change (if reluctantly) and have begun to engage with people on Facebook (see which pages did what here). While Facebook is notorious for making changes to their platform without much notice, this change was announced well in advance. However, Facebook did roll out one additional change at the same time that pharma and healthcare companies can leverage to help them comply with government regulations. This feature isn’t well known from what I’ve heard in discussions with many people working in the industry, so I thought I’d show you what it is.
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Pharma Facebook Commenting Is Open: Remain Calm

Whether anyone is listening to me or not, I’m not sure. For the most part, I feel like Kevin Bacon in this classic clip from Animal House.

Today is the day that many pharma and healthcare companies that like their Facebook Pages hoped would never come. Remain calm.

Today is the day that they no longer can prevent people from commenting on their Wall posts thanks to some changes implemented by Facebook. You can read all about the issue in this post.

The short story is this. In the past, pharma and healthcare companies were able to ask Facebook for a special exception that allowed them to prevent people from being able to Like or comment on their Wall posts. This was a convenient way to avoid having to answer the question about how to deal with user comments about products that might be off-label or contain an adverse event. Today, they need to answer that question. Each company with a Facebook Page needs to decide how to handle this. Some will simply allow the change to happen and let people start to comment. Others will take their Pages down rather than allow commenting.
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What is the Future of Healthcare? [Video Presentation]

For those who follow this blog, you probably know that I’ve talked about where I see healthcare headed in the future. In particular, I’ve talked a lot about how digital technology will change the way healthcare is delivered in the future and will ultimately be what makes us more successful at preventing, treating, and curing diseases. It’s a little counter to the way the current system is set up, which primarily relies on big, new drug discoveries to deliver the biggest advances. I believe in something a bit different. We’ll get more value out of investments in using existing and creating new digital technologies for healthcare than we’ll get from new drug breakthroughs.

Sure, I could get thrown out of the industry for that, but it’s what I believe.

For those who don’t believe me, I invite you to check out the presentation I gave last week at ePharma West. I talked about why the current system isn’t working, what might work, and what we’ll have to do differently to make our healthcare system more effective. You can watch and listen to my presentation below. Try it in HD and full screen to see the details (also try turning scaling off…there’s button you can click in the player after going full screen). If you want a copy of my slides, you can get them here:  What is the Future of Healthcare (716 downloads).

After watching the video, I invite you to leave your comments and let me know your opinion. Am I right on or completely off?