Medical Social Media Factoids….Breaking News

Is Facebook Poised to Revolutionize Health Care?

Is Facebook Poised to Revolutionize Health Care?

Zuckerberg will appear on Good Morning America, and later on Tuesday, Sandberg will appear on World News With Diane Sawyer. Facebook is declining comment, but almost all observers are expecting them to introduce a tool that will “save lives.” That could be an expanded version of its Lifeline program, which allows people to alert the company when they think a friend is expressing suicidal intentions, a broader rollout of anti-cyberbullying initiatives or perhaps something altogether different.

Facebook announced this week that it plans to include in user profiles their intent to donate  organs after death. I am not quite sure why they would include this as a choice in a profile when it could easily be included electively in anyone’s profile. Perhaps this unique ‘field’ allows them to search for specific health issues.  It will be interesting to see if they include or add other items such as allergies, and other previously confidential issues. It’s one thing having it on your driver’s license or identification card and another to put it on a billboard.  It may also serve to increase donors which at times are relatively scarce.  If users give implicit permisson by posting this information it may become common occurrence.  A precautionary note that some may abuse this and use it as a means to sell body parts.

1-in-20 U.S. Physicians Now On Doctors-Only Social Network

They’re not Facebook-like numbers just yet, but after just seven months Doximityhas signed up about one out of every 20 U.S. physicians for its LinkedIn-like networking service.

That amounts to more than 30,000 doctors, or twice as  many on LinkedIn. The reason doctors shy away from LinkedIn and other mainstream social networks is, unlike Doximity, there are no privacy protections in place that will keep physicians on the right side of patient privacy laws. Previous attempts at a doctor-only social network required physician anonymity, which made it all but useless when it came to make referrals or conferring on a diagnosis.

“For a lot of these guys, Facebook is the F-Word.”

Doximity, the largest professional network for physicians, announced today it has partnered with several expert network firms to power their medical expert searches.

Physician network signs major partners guaranteeing minimum honoraria for members who opt-in to research interviews .

Doximity launched ExpertFinder, a new service the company says will make it easier for doctors to find experts and opt-in to research interviews. The announcement seems to position Doximity as an early leader in the mobile health care device market, which could quadruple to $400 million in annual revenues by 2016.

Now here is the ‘Kicker”

ExpertFinder automatically integrates data from PubMed, Clinicaltrials.gov and other public databases into physicians’ profiles. Doximity members can then fine-tune their profiles to reflect past and current academic positions, publications, lectures, awards, and clinical interests.  All done seamlessly, and transparently.

For a brief video demo of Doximity ExpertFinder

iOS Health & Fitness Apps Will Grow to 13K by 2012

The average cost of a health app has risen from $2.77 this February to $3.21 in June, about the same price as a gallon of gasoline in some places. There are also significantly fewer health apps than are listed as such in Apple’s Health and Fitness category. Of the 9,000 apps available now, say analysts, many are novelties.

These are items that are billed as being for the health and wellbeing of the sick and suffering but are really no more than gimmicks that play into fears about our health and our bodies.

We reported a few weeks ago about the FTC levying fines against two app makers that claimed users could erase their acne using colored lights from the iPHone.