BY Kate Rockwood -  Web de www.fastcompany.com

1. Melinda Gates, cochair and trustee, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Nimbly throwing the foundation’s bucks behind both big-picture, tech-oriented, long-term solutions and modest, immediate action plans, Melinda Gates is a formidable force in the fight for health care in developing nations.

2. Anthony Atala, director, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
The first doctor to bioengineer a human bladder and successfully implant it in a human, Anthony Atala and his staff are now busy growing 22 different tissues–from heart valves to fingers–planting them at the forefront of this (ahem) growing field.

3. Jay Parkinson, founder, Hello Health
Mixing non-conventional payment structure (monthly subscription fee, PayPal but no insurance) and eyebrow-raising communications (e-mail, instant messaging, even house visits), Jay Parkinson’s Hello Health offers a wildly popular alternative to the current model of high insurance costs and eight-minute office visits.

4. James Heywood, cofounder and chairman, PatientsLikeMe
Following his brother’s diagnosis with ALS, Heywood launched PatientsLikeMe–think of it as a social-networking health site on massive steroids. People with like diseases input clinically validated data, helping them empathize and learn from others’ experiences, while physicians and researchers can tap into the rich info to further treatments.

5. Thomas Frieden, director, Center for Disease Control & Prevention
Picked by Obama to head the Center for Disease Control & Prevention, Frieden earned his stripes first by fighting tuberculosis in India and then as the vocal force behind many of NYC’s most aggressive public health initiatives in recent years–from posting calories on menus and banning trans fat, to reducing public smoking–proving that sometimes the most creative way to tackle a problem is head on.

6. Peter Neupert, vice president of Health Solutions Group, Microsoft
A multi-trillion-dollar industry still limping along on handwritten notes? Not for much longer, if Neupert and his HealthVault team, part of Microsoft’s electronic health record initiative, have anything to say about it.

7. Steve Case, founder and CEO, Revolution Health Group
First he cofounded AOL, then Steve Case turned his attention to health care. Now everyday users of the extensive online portal can create profiles, answer each other’s queries, rate their doctors, and deploy an army of widgets–all aimed at democratizing health information.

8. Hans Rosling, professor of global health, Karolinska Institute in Sweden
We’ll admit it: Rarely do we think of statistics as a particularly creative field. But Hans Rosling’s trend-revealing software–which first garnered major attention when it helped identify a new paralytic disease in Africa–is dramatically reshaping views of global health and poverty trends.

9. Douglas Melton, codirector, Harvard Stem Cell Institute
Douglas Melton’s pioneering work to create new stem-cell lines that could replace malfunctioning cells in the pancreas that are linked to diabetes would earn him praise enough. But it’s his creative solution to use adult skin cells–thereby sidestepping the embryonic stem cell debate entirely–that will smartly keep Melton and his work clipping along, sans controversy.

10. Anne Wojcicki, cofounder, 23andMe
Others may have figured out how to crack the DNA code, but it’s Anne Wojcicki who’s lured the masses (and Silicon Valley celebs) to offer up their saliva for private genetic testing during swank “spit parties.” She and her partner, Linda Avey, are now compiling customers’ privacy-protected data into a research-ready database.

In this interview from the Academy of Achievement, Steve Case discusses how a liberal arts education prepared him for running a company in a rapidly changing world.

Interview link

This week let’s look at a web site that allows the user to act like Google:  Botspot.com.  Google, and other search engines, use bots that scour the 5 billion web sites that make up the World Wide Web (that’s different from the internet).  Those bots read various websites and categorize them according to various algorithms.  While botspot.com doesn’t let individual users search and rank all 5 billion web sites for the world to see, it does allow users to search through various web site and their computer in much the same way that search engines’ bots do.

Botspot.com features various bots for Macs and PCs, of which some are freeware and some are not.  Personally, right now, I am a Mac man; though, I switch back and forth, depending on my current needs and whoever has the cooler commericals.  For Mac, there are bots in eight categories: Artificial Life bots, Download bots, Search bots, surf bots, Web development bots, File Sharing bots, shopping bots, tracking bots, and there is even a category for users to design their own bots.  There are 27 bots in those eight categories, and three design a bots.

Among my favorites are Htmlsearch Lite 3.1, which allows users to search the internet, an intranet, their computer, or a CD ROM.  There is also Glooton, which allows users to query several search engines at once.  Since Firefox has an app that can do that, I don’t think it’s worth it.  For those of us who are aware of the filesharing program LimeWire that is featured under File Sharing Bots.  LimeWire allows users to interface and share files with anyone else using a Gnutella file-sharing program.  Though, as a social marketer, I am going to have to give my kudos to Hotline Connet 1.9.1, which allows users to enjoy a more interactive way of sharing files through social media.  There are several other bots for Mac users; though, those are a few that stood out to me.

For those who work on PCs, or run windows on their Macs, there are more bots than I have time to count.  Those bots can be found in eight categories subcategorized into 35 sucategories.  Among a few I randomly picked, Genealogy Detective helps users search their family history, as well as it allows users to create a family website and host it for free.  Visual Web Task allows the user to search through websites by parsing HTML tags and searching the most relevant data and files.  Offline-Commander searches in a similar way, but it consists of a few more features that also help users protect their computers.

Since I had to undergo several months of therapy (not really) due to that infamous purple ape BonziBuddy (Whoever came up with him will probably revolutionize social networking 20 years from now), I am not going to suggest a virtual assistant who helps you keep your schedule or strips for you because she’s bored.  I am going to suggest Talking Translator Pro , which translates content and finds definitions of words.  While there are several more bots available for PC than Mac, the reality is Macs come equipped with many of those bots on their iMacs, so all of those extra-apps (That’s really all the bots are) are not necessary (Steve, can I get a free MacBook Air since I gave you some free advertising).

Among other features on Botspot.com, there are some books you can buy.  Honestly, they’re just links to Amazon, so nothing to get excited about.  For those who want to keep an eye on what Botspot.com’s up to, they do have a newsletter, and many of their editions are archived.

Botspot.com is a great site that allows computer users and internet surfers to take back control of their computers, thus making it more user friendly.  So whether you’re a slightly jean wearing, geeky guy who once appeared on a show about a small town lawyer who owned a bowling alley or you’re a nerdy business man who still thinks sweater vests will make a come back, Botspot.com has a bot for you.

Botspot.com is one of the many websites featured on my custom made search engine, along with various other sites I’ll tell you more about in the following weeks.  So, come back and learn about some other great websites in the weeks and months to come.  And be sure to connect with my on Facebook and Twitter.

This interesting investigative piece is from a left of center portal called Alternet. However, if what it is saying is true, Larry Summers has a massive conflict of interest and should resign.

Is Larry Summers taking kickbacks from the banks he’s bailing out? TechCrunch points out that this company has zero traction in the marketplace- so why are banks throwing money at it?

Revolution Money Raises Another $42 Million For Alternative Payment Service Nobody Is Using

Last month, a little-known company where Summers served on the board of directors received a $42 million investment from a group of investors, including three banks that Summers, Obama’s effective “economy czar,” has been doling out billions in bailout money to: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. The banks invested into the small startup company, Revolution Money, right at the time when Summers was administering the “stress test” to these same banks. A month after they invested in Summers’ former company, all three banks came out of the stress test much better than anyone expected — thanks to the fact that the banks themselves were allowed to help decide how bad their problems were (Citigroup “negotiated” down its financial hole from $35 billion to $5.5 billion.)

The fact that the banks invested in the company just a few months after Summers resigned suggests the appearance of corruption, because it suggests to other firms that if you hire Larry Summers onto your board, large banks will want to invest as a favor to a politically-connected director. Last month, it was revealed that Summers, whom President Obama appointed to essentially run the economy from his perch in the National Economic Council, earned nearly $8 million in 2008 from Wall Street banks, some of which, like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, were now receiving tens of billions of taxpayer funds from the same Larry Summers. It turns out now that those two banks have continued paying into Summers-related businesses. According to filings obtained for this story, Summers first joined the board of directors of Revolution Money back in 2006 (when it was called “GratisCard”), the same year that Summers was forced to resign as president of Harvard after his disastrous tenure. Revolution Money/GratisCard was a startup headed by former AOL chief Steve Case. Revolution Money billed itself as the Next Big Thing in online payment, “PayPal meets Mastercard,” according to their own pitch.

In September 2007, Revolution Money announced that it had raised $50 million from a group of investors including Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank. Some found the investment strange even then, because normally big banks don’t get involved in seeding small startups — that’s the domain of venture capitalists, not mega-banks. Especially not in September, 2007, when these same megabanks were Chernobyling their way into full-fledged balance-sheet meltdown. What seems clear is that at least part of Revolution Money’s success in raising funds is due to their star-studded board of directors — which included not only Larry Summers, but also the notorious Frank Raines, the former Fannie Mae chief whom Time Magazine named to its “25 People To Blame For The Financial Crisis” list. Raines is still a board member.

Revolution Money, the new payment and credit card service backed by Steve Case and others, recently received a $42 million C round (reported in WSJ).  One of their offierings is called “MoneyExchange.”  It’s a PayPal-like service where members can send and receive money between each other through their MoneyExchange accounts.

Their credit card service, the RevolutionCard, seems pretty compelling (much lower processing fees than Visa/MC, etc.  MoneyExchange seems to me like a pretty weak competitor to PayPal. 

On the marketing front, I looked for and could not find a doc to compare MoneyExhange to PayPal.  This is Marketing 101 – if you enter a market with a 100 billion-pound gorilla like PayPal, you better put right on your home page why you’re better than them.  Or at least put a link to that on your home page.

I sent a Twitter reply to Steve Case asking for more info on why MoneyExhange is better than PayPal,  and got the following reply.  The link goes just to the MoneyExchange home page, not to a comparison or “why we’re better” page.

Okay – so according to Steve Case, the main reason is “It’s free.”  Here is their fee schedule.  But wait, isn’t PayPal free too?  I looked it up.  For personal use, PayPal is free – send, receive, deposit, withdrawal — all free.  For business accounts they charge processing fees to receive money ($0.30 plus 1.9-2.9%), even from other PayPal accounts (not just from credit cards).  It seems that MoneyExchange business users get payments from other MoneyExchange members for no charge.  

So, it would appear that the primary difference between MoneyExchange and PayPal is that businesses can take in-network payments from other MoneyExhange accountholders without charges.  Is that compelling?

The point of merchants/businesses taking PayPal payments is that there are so many PayPal users.  There are so many PayPal users because it’s free for personal use.  Unless MoneyExchange starts paying consumers to join, there’s not a great reason to believe the adoption will be there.  Revolution thinks that merchants will pass on the savings.  Maybe so – if I could get 2% off a purchase by using MoneyExchange, perhaps I would enroll.  Or perhaps not.

Why not?  I’d have to wait 3-4 days to make my first purchase (funding takes that long) so the merchant would lose the shopper in the cart and hope that they return.  Sorry – NFW.  I would never tell customers that they could save money by taking 10 steps through someone else’s site and come back later.  Cart abandonment would be horrendous!

My vertict?  MoneyExchange is DOA unless they go out and pre-enroll a HUGE user base and get members to request a discount from their merchants with an “I want my MTV” type of campaign.  Perhaps that’s where the $42 million can be used, but I doubt the return would be worth it.

O co-fundador da AOL voltou à empresa para levantar o moral da tropa... mas só como visitante

O homem que transformou a AOL no primeiro grande gigante online, Steve Case, voltou, depois de anos, à companhia que ajudou a fundar. Mas apenas como visitante. O objetivo era incentivar os atuais funcionários a manter a confiança em um mercado que a empresa já liderou com enorme folga, mas onde agora vem sangrando por anos a fio, ultrapassada principalmente pelo Google.

O evento também marcou a primeira aparição de Tim Armstrong como novo CEO da AOL, função que ele oficialmente assume no próximo dia 7. Ted Leonsis, vice-presidente emérito da AOL e outra estrela dos tempos de glória da companhia, também estava lá.

Armstrong deixou a posição de vice-presidente justamente no Google (onde também era presidente do Google Americas) para assumir a cadeira que pertencia a Randy Falco, que deixa a companhia. Jeff Bewkes, CEO da Time Warner (que controla a AOL), anunciou a mudança com um discurso otimista, sugerindo que Armstrong é a pessoa certa para resgatar os bons tempos do braço online do grupo.

O mercado, entretanto, acredita cada vez mais em indícios de que a Time Warner deve se livrar logo de toda a AOL ou pelo menos de parte dela. O próprio Google já ventilou que pensa em vender a sua participação de 5% na empresa sediada em Dulles, na Virginia (EUA). Por outro lado, boatos como esses existem há anos, e, até agora, a AOL continua lá, “cambaleante, mas firme”. Há alguns anos, mudou o seu modelo de negócios radicalmente, com resultados positivos (mas insuficientes para lhe devolver seu brilhantismo do passado).

Fica a pergunta, por que Armstrong trocaria a sua posição no Google por essa na AOL?

Quanto a Case, ele sempre foi visto como um ídolo interno na AOL, uma espécie de “irmão mais velho” dos funcionários. Com a fusão de US$ 164 bilhões da AOL e da Time Warner em 2001, ele se transformou em CEO da operação resultante, mas não conseguiu resistir no cargo, diante da turbulência causada pelo estouro da bolha ponto-com e de escândalos financeiros. Deixou o cargo dois anos depois, permanecendo ainda no conselho do grupo por outros três. Após isso, sua participação tanto na AOL quanto na Time Warner terminou.

Even the most venerable entities are not immune from today’s challenging economy. From American Express to Wynn Resorts, drastic action is being taken to ensure survival. So it should come as no surprise that this financial firestorm has scorched America’s oldest institution of higher learning: Harvard University.

According to insider information I received from colleagues in the academic community, in a bold move to ensure its fiscal survival, Harvard University will today announce that it is going entirely online as of April 1, 2010. 

The 308 acre campus has been sold for an undisclosed sum to billionaire businessman and 1965 Harvard Business School alumnus Robert K. Kraft. Kraft will develop the land into a massive commercial and residential complex in the heart of Cambridge, MA named “Harvard’s 100 Yard.”

“Given the unusual nature of our time and the unforeseen financial predicament in which we have found ourselves, this was the most economically viable option available.” Harvard President Dr. Drew G. Faust is quoted as saying in an embargoed press release. “We will save millions of dollars in toilet paper alone!”

The school has some experience with online learning through its Extension School, but will develop a proprietary instructional platform for this new venture: Fully Online Optimized Learning System (FOOLS). In addition to robust learning tools, FOOLS will integrate several interactive features, including a virtual classroom environment similar to Second Life.

“Certainly we will miss our beautiful campus, but I am sure it will be equally as enlightening sending instant messages to each other,” Faust added. “L-O-L, as they say!”

The change comes at a time of unusual fiscal concern at the historic campus. The university’s $36.9 billion endowment suffered losses of at least 22% in the first four months of the school’s fiscal year (estimated at $8 billion) and projections anticipate a decline of 30% for the fiscal year ending in June 2009. Insiders fear the loss could be even higher once real estate and private equity declines are considered.

AOL founder Steve Case has been hired to oversee production of thousands of CD-ROMs containing key pieces of code necessary for students to use the system. Internet raconteur Philip J. “Pud” Kaplan will ease the transition by creating a “deadpool” game in which students can bet which classmate will fail next.  Facebook founder and former Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg will personally design an application to virtually recreate the social scene at the university.

Social media expert Chris Brogan has also been hired to provide strategic vision while Loren Feldman will produce daily video updates of the technical development using puppets. Shel Israel and Robert Scoble will document the historic transition on Twitter.

“These people are all dopes,” Feldman groaned in the release.

Loic Le Meur and Gary Vaynerchuk will provide a continuous supply of French wine and cheese to the developers, faculty, staff and students during the transition. To address any potential psychological concerns Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura will be on call to  offer counseling services to those in need.

“The school is getting real,” said Dr. Phil. “Far too often people wait until it is too late to do what’s right.”

Not to be outdone, Dr. Laura is quoted as saying “without dormitories those stupid co-eds won’t be shacking up like unpaid whores!”

With regard to the development of the campus, Robert Kraft — who recently launched Patriot Place adjacent to Gillette Stadium where his NFL Franchise New England Patriots play –  is no stranger to tackling big tasks and succeeding.  The 67 year-old Kraft, with an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion, was named the 321st richest American by Forbes magazine in its September 2008 issue.

“As an alumnus I am proud to be a part of this project. Today, we are all Crimsons!” Kraft is quoted in the press release.

Preliminary plans call for a residential area divided into four football-themed sections: First Down, Second Down, Third Down, Fourth Down, with an exclusive area for custom homes named Brady Moss Estates. Also included will be a robust retail area with an array of retail stores. 

The initial list of tenants includes Hooters, Victoria’s Secret, TGI Fridays, Subway, Jiffy Lube, LaDanian Tomlinson’s Classy Ladies Burlesque Review and the Tony Dungy Center for Sanctimonious Sainthood –  a 100,000 square foot house of worship made entirely of glass.

In recognition of the land’s educational roots, a Dootson School of Trucking campus, a Ted Kennedy School for Underwater Driving facility and the first-ever Video Professor Academy will open on the former site of the ivy league school.

With a nod to sustainability the entire development will recycle and reuse its waste at  the Eric Mangini Waste Processing Center. The facility will be heated by the excess hot air from the ESPN headquarters in Bristol, CT (delivered directly via an underground pipeline).  Every building will be protected from the elements with organic insulation manufactured by the John Tomase Company. Finally, with safety as a top concern all 308 acres will be secured by a state of the art security and video monitoring system — including full body scans.

“It’s beyond anything I could have imagined,” commented Patriots head coach Bill Belichick. “The video system alone is worth the investment!”

Look for the first phase of ”Harvard’s 100 Yard” to open in July 2010.

PS: April Fools!

| | | | | | | | | |

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Once upon a time, everyone was on AOL. It was the people friendly, mainstream internet. Even Steve Case’s mother loves it. But we’re not sure it will ever be a mass medium like television. 

A great possibility of this new medium is that we could create content that will reach specific interest groups. Whereas TV can only run one program at a time, in the interactive world the decision of what to air or watch is up to the consumer. 

This new medium will not replace television, newspapers or magazines.

Steve Case was going to change healthcare forever. “Our mission is to revolutionize the health-care system,” he said in an interview upon Revolution Health’s debut in 2007. For those of us who have been around the healthcare block a few times, we usually roll our eyes when someone with no background jumps into the fray promising to “fix” everything that ails healthcare. Well it’s over for Steve and he didn’t quite overhaul the system.

Late last week, Revolution Health announced its intention to merge with NY-based Waterfront Media, home to Everyday Health and multiple diet-related sites like the South Beach Diet and My Calorie Counter. The combined company will host 24 health and wellness sites and operate under the Waterfront umbrella with Benjamin Wolin, current Waterfront CEO, at the helm. Case will join the board.

The deal puts Waterfront in a solid position to compete with WebMD. According to comScore Media Metrix, Everyday Health was the second most popular health site in July 2008, with 14.7 million unique visitors and the Revolution Health sites came in third, with 11.3 million visitors. The NY Times valued the deal at $300 million.

Medical/health information web sites drew 69 million unique visitors in July, up 21% from a year ago. The biggest gainer? Steve Case’s Revolution Health Networks, up 182% to 11.3 million unique visitors . . . and quickly catching up with WebMD’s 17 million unique visitors. You think that Boomers/Seniors/the Mature Market had something to do with this? To see more interesting stats (particularly on online health care website ad display rates and click-through rates that can help your marketing to the mature market) click here.

Source: comScore

                                      LIVE   STRONG   DAY   !

The Who and The Why:  U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Elizabeth Edwards, Lance Armstrong, Edward J. Benz, Hala Moddelmog, Steve Case and Greg Simon all went to Washington DC last week to help push through U.S. Senator Edward M Kennedy’s congressional bill to “beat the war against cancer” by making it a “national priority”….

The When and The Where:  On May 8, 2008, in 216 Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, the above prominent cancer survivors testified before the Senate Health Education Labor Pensions (HELP)  Committee at a Congressional sponsored event called, “Cancer Challenges and Opportunities in the 21st Century”.

The What:  “Live Strong Day” (International).  To further this cause athlete cyclist Lance Armstrong will be out and about on Tuesday promoting his “Live Strong Day Foundation”.  Says Lance, “The foundation is international so as to help us better understand how cancer is viewed in other countries”.

To learn more about it visit Lance’s website at:  www livestrongblog.org

P.S.  Is there a movie “in the works” about the life of cyclist champion Lance Armstrong?  Well, we’re waiting…

Disney will distribute Renee Baker Studios’ first motion picture, in movie theatres worldwide, under an “output deal” valued at $73.5 million dollars….

Before I share the main course for today, let me first touch base with the chosen labels for our endless babble involving technology’s role in potentially enhancing or carrying medicine and health care to the next better level—Media, Medicine 2.0 and Health 2.0. I initially have veered away from the latter term in my previous posts as I would like to apply my time more on Media (being mostly new media) and Medicine 2.0. These are more tangible to my focus at this point. I wanted to alleviate the great confusion these digital surnames bring us all. Though further on, I also realized that I too have to be educated on what these terms entail. The differences in detail between the two are also important. We could all learn something new everyday. That said, what is Medicine 2.0 and Health 2.0? Ms. Frankie Dolan, creator of MedWorm shares her understanding with us in her blog, Frankie Speaking Frankly.

…Health 2.0 is the application of Web 2.0 technologies in the area of health, whilst Medicine 2.0 is the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the area of medicine. Some examples can be seen in the Medical 2.0 Directory. I have come to think of Health 2.0 websites as being those that provide services geared towards the consumer, and Medicine 2.0 those geared towards services for the medical professional…

Now that that is in place, on to our dish.

It seems like big web corporations such as Google, Microsoft and AOL are all on board the Health 2.0 caravan in pitching in their share of the possible solutions (or possible market share) in the seeming broad revamp, evolution, and even revolution of health care. This could begin an effective model in technologically advanced societies that have an electronic medical system of some sort in place or that are actively transitioning (or have transitioned) their medical records to e— such as the U.S. This could eventually spread across the globe.

Let us begin with Google. According to CNN,

Google Inc. will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that’s likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader.

The pilot project to be announced Thursday will involve 1,500 to 10,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who volunteered to an electronic transfer of their personal health records so they can be retrieved through Google’s new service, which won’t be open to the general public.

Each health profile, including information about prescriptions, allergies and medical histories, will be protected by a password that’s also required to use other Google services such as e-mail and personalized search tools.

Here is a screen shot cropped from the Liquidmatrix Security Digest.

The original beta page itself has apparently been taken down. Google has not officially announced this new venture. This project, code named “Weaver” according to Mashable, is evidently made possible with the participation of the non-profit hospital, Cleveland Clinic, which by the way publishes medical e-books that are available free to download in some e-book sites such as Wowio. From the same article in CNN.com,

Contacted Wednesday, a Google spokesman declined to elaborate on its plans. The Associated Press learned about the pilot project from the Cleveland Clinic, a not-for-profit medical center founded 87 years ago.

But the health venture also will provide more fodder for privacy watchdogs who believe Google already knows too much about the interests and habits of its users as its computers log their search requests and store their e-mail discussions.

Prodded by the criticism, Google last year introduced a new system that purges people’s search records after 18 months. In a show of its privacy commitment, Google also successfully rebuffed the U.S. Justice Department’s demand to examine millions of its users’ search requests in a court battle two years ago.

The Mountain View, California-based company hasn’t specified a timetable for unveiling the health service, which has been the source of much speculation for the past two years. Marissa Mayer, the Google executive overseeing the health project, has previously said the service would debut in 2008.

Either way, this is something to look forward to. Hopefully the security bases are, in fact, securely covered.

The other 2 big leaguers who are having their own new hits are Microsoft and AOL.

Here is Microsoft’s Health Vault.

According to Mashable,

HealthVault is a web-based personal health record tracking data such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, surgical procedures, etc. Centralizing medical data for physician access alleviates problems in both personalized care and also insurance.

Microsoft does not expect a flood of users to immediately populate the site and is instead looking to existing healthcare institutions for help. Ideally patients will permit hospitals, doctors, and clinics to insert information into their HealthVault records. Early partners of HealthVault include the American Heart Association, Johnson & Johnson, the Mayo Clinic, and seven hospitals throughout the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area.

Last but not the least for today is AOL’s Revolution Health and Health Talk.

Here is a report from CNet News.

AOL co-founder Steve Case announced Wednesday his online health and wellness company, Revolution Health Group, has acquired HealthTalk, pushing his company into the ranks of the second-largest health information site on the Net.

HealthTalk will operate as a site within the Revolution Health Network, which includes CarePages.com and RevolutionHealth.com. The Revolution Network is also affiliated with drugstore.com and SparkPeople.com.

More and more examples add to our pages as we continue to explore the important role of media in medicine. The more we know about what is out there and which way we are heading, the more we empower ourselves to participate in our very own process and quality of health care as patients. Thus, we might improve our choices and strengthen our voices about what really matters to us in maintaining our health. As doctors, including other medical professionals, who are abreast with technology can also broaden our reach in terms of understanding, communicating, and ensuring the quality of care we are giving. The important bottom line, as we have emphasized again and again, is the need for effective communication among us all.

Googlen hanke aloitti tänään Cleveland Clinic -sairaalassa Ohiossa, jossa muutama tuhat vapaaehtoista potilasta on antanut luvan kokeilla potilastietojen lähettämistä ja tallennusta internetissä, uutisoidaan tänään. Hanke on herättänyt monenlaisia kysymyksiä ennenkaikkea tietoturvan osalta.

Google ei kuitenkaan ole ollenkaan ainoa vastaavan palvelun tarjoaja maailmalla, sillä esim. Microsoftilla on oma HealthVault-palvelunsa ja toisella AOL:.n perustajista ( Steve Case) on Revolution Heath -potilastietopalvelu.
Uutisissa tarkemmin.

Here are 2 vintage video interviews I found on youtube of Steve Case.

1. This is from 1987! Steve Case is interviewed and showcases the very first version of AOL. He is a pioneer. Look at the host, he has the worst comb over!

2. This one is from 1995 and is very good.

Steve Case is an internet legend and is working on some major projects. One is called Revolution Money with Ted Leonsis. www.revolution.com (great web-estate)

Much props goes to Steve Case!

Steve Case, co-founder and former CEO of America Online, has exited AOL and made his new passion consumer-directed health care.  Steve started a company called Revolution Health, and blogs regularly on the company’s site.

In a recent post entitled “Sicko,” referring to the Michael Moore documentary film, Steve outlines why consumer driven health care can help us as a country.  I recommending reading the post, which is pithy and short, but here’s a summary of his points:

(1) most (70-80%) of the multi-trillion dollar health care budget goes towards treating and managing chronic diseases brought on or exacerbated by lifestyle choices.

(2) telling people they should change their lifestyle choices (e.g. lose weight, stop smoking, etc.) doesn’t work.

(3) people must have the right incentives to change their behaviors.

(4) by encouraging people to get involved in their own health care, they will make more informed choices and put less financial burden on the government, their families, and themselves.

Steve sees a light-handed government and de-regulated health care administration industry as a way to spark innovation.  He cites the telephone industry as an example.  Back when the government controlled telecommunications, Bell System was pretty much the only phone company.  Phones were expensive and ugly…  When the system broke up in 1984 after de-regulation, there was a torrent of innovation that hasn’t slowed down in 23 years.  Today we have cheap, functional cell phones and PDAs.  If the government had done to telecommunications what it is doing to health care, we certainly wouldn’t have cell phones.  We’d probably be communicating fairly similarly to the way we did in 1984.

Now think about what could be done with medicine with a little more healthy competition…

“Confession is good for the soul. God will look at the pile of baggage that you put before Him, and He will sweep it away. Dump it. Run it through a garbage disposal. Then God will look at the empty parts of your soul. Those spaces that have been taken up too long by guilt and fear and pain, and He will fill them with His love and peace and joy. But until you are ready to empty those spots, you can’t have the good stuff.”

By Steve Case in God Is Here

Perseverance is no guarantee you’ll succeed. But without it it’s almost guaranteed you won’t. – Steve Case (Founder of AOL)