Consumerism and HealthCare IT Innovations

It is snowing in Columbus, Ohio, and I am here at the Consumerism and HealthCare IT Innovations summit.

The Keynote speech is being given by Bill Crounse, MD and Sr Director Worldwide Health at Microsoft.

The context of US HealthCare:

• Labor Shortage - we can't continue to import trained professionals
• Reduced reimbursements - Less incentive
• An Aging Population - increasing demand for services
• Increased regulation
• More use of technology

What do Healthcare workers need:

• Best Information worker tools
• More intuitive user interface
• Better data input options
• Mobile solutions
• Interconnected and interoperability
• Lower total cost of ownership

Health Trends:

• Increasing personal responsibility
• "Retailization"
• Commoditization
• Information everywhere
• Globalization of HealthCare

By 2015 15% of Americans will use medical tourism.

HealthCare is becoming Consumer Centric.

Some of the examples of change:

• Myca.com
• HelloHealth.com which grew out of JayParkinson's work
• MediKiosk
• Telemedicine and Robotics
• The telephone is becoming the telemedicine device

The growing capability of the basic desktop with unified communications integrated video and voice services allows commodity services to be used everywhere. This fits with the Health 2.0 mantra - "Use Simple Tools To Do Great Things"

Microsoft HealthVault

• Providing customized Health related search tools
• Online electronic health record

The game changer in all this is putting the consumer at the center. This is the whole point of the HealthCamp initiative. Empower the patient. With the patient at the center they become the glue for the Health Care system.

HealthVault is not a PHR. It is a platform to enable multiple applications to leverage a consumers health data. We are already seeing a growing ecosystem of health monitoring devices that will publish to HealthVault.

Microsoft are tackling the Enterprise HealthCare space with their Amalga platform.It is an integrated clinical information system.

Microsoft has a Health Common User interface.