30.11.09

Learn the five secrets of innovation - CNN.com

For them, everything is to be experimented upon -- for example, if they walk into a bookstore and they're used to reading history they might try psychology. All these behaviors are powerfully enhanced by a capacity to ask provocative, challenging questions of the world around them.

Question, question, question.

If we don't ask the hard questions about health/healthcare and what motivates healthier behaviors, for ourselves, for others - who will?

The responsibility, the exploration, is ours to embark upon. Or not.

Cyber Monday. Not just for shopping. Explore the current online health and wellness landscape. Question assumptions.

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

29.11.09

For All My Startup Founders Workin' it Out on a Sunday...

Listening to this on the Blip.FM ContagionHealth channel while working on getupandmove.me UserVoice stuff.

Bang bang bang bang, vamanos, vamanos...

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

26.11.09

Contagion Health's First Web App Launches! Get Up and MOVE it!

I'll admit it. I fell off the wagon.

As a former cross country runner, newly minted vegequarian (pescatarian) and health 2.0 type, I used to live a pretty healthy life, full of 1.5 hour workouts. 

Ahh, those beautiful runs along the Embarcadero, those 3.5 hour, 7 mile hikes around Flag Pond in Southern Maryland. Gone, all gone, as soon as I got semi-serious about starting Contagion Health. 

When you're founding a health software company, ironically fitness is the last thing on your mind. 

About 3 weeks ago I pulled on a pair of jeans and realized something was amiss. Largely amiss. And I decided to do something about it. 

But with healthcare conference season in full swing, a gig helping the kick-ass team at Dealmaker Media for a bit, a fellowship with the Health Strategy Innovation Cell at Massey College, UToronto, it was ridiculously hard to block off 1.5 hours to work out. 

To fix this big and increasingly burgeoning Battle of the Bulge, I'd need to start small. REALLY small. 

5 minutes of jogging here, dancing to a song while making morning coffee there, walking instead of taking the BART for 15 minutes to get to Safeway. 

"Losing weight" wasn't the answer; it was committing myself to the idea that small acts of fitness, healthier microchoices made minute by minute - the way I live the rest of this crazy startup life - might actually have the power to add up and help me get back into my favorite pair of jeans. 

So I started asking friends to help motivate me.

Turns out, lack of motivation is one of the biggest problems we all have. It's contagious. And it helped me realize why obesity may be epidemic. 

Talking with @alexdmoore and @garrytan about starting companies, I realized we're all wailing about the same problems - a lack of motivation and a lack of time. 

We're talking about people who don't sleep here, who take our laptops into the bathroom with us. 

Unfortunately, these symptoms aren't limited to startup founders.

Many of you who have been active and healthy at various times in your lives probably *used* to exercise a lot more. 

I have an uncle who *used* to run marathons. And several others are military vets and talk semi-longingly about PT.

But we all agree - in today's crazy world it's hard to get a workout in edgewise.

So at SuperHappyDevHouse (hosted by Palantir Technologies - @palantirtech), I started thinking big about getting healthy by starting small.

If I just needed to move more during my daily routine (or lack thereof) when I could fit in acts of microfitness - a few jumping jacks here, a few crunches there - and I just needed someone I know to help me get up off my a&^ and get moving, I'd use...

Twitter! 

Yep. If the people I know who use Twitter would just challenge me a bit, just ask me to get up and move, I'd feel beholden to answer their call. 

I'd feel obligated to #getupandmove more. 

I feel a responsibility and tie to my community there, especially since I've met (and worked with, and laughed with) many of you IRL.

So I roped a super-smart developer I know into working with me to motivate healthier microchoices, a few minutes of movement at a time. 

It's microfitness for microblogging.

We're trying not to assume too much about what motivates people.

We don't know which person or what time period or what challenge will motivate you to move, but your FRIENDS and family using Twitter and Facebook *will.* 

The Get Up and Move web app lets you challenge people to small acts of microfitness - but with a spin - challenges are issued via Twitter and they're private by default, sent through Direct Message. If you want to up the ante, you can RT the challenges publicly. 

And, you have to barter your own movement to issue a challenge. 

You have to shake it too in order to get someone else to move. 

As my co-creator Andrey Petrov (@shazow) says "Sometimes an excuse is all you need...Happy to be that vessel for people."

It's the first app Andrey and I built together, and he coded it in like .002 seconds (ok, so really it was like a week). 

There will be many future feature goodies and changes coming up as we iterate rapidly.

As you challenge us and we challenge you we learn more about what feels good, and what doesn't. 

And by the way, please feel free to challenge Andrey (@shazow) and I (@jensmccabe) personally to get up and move. You can bet I'll be doing the same for you.

It's amazing what the ability to check off a completed challenge and say I've done my part can do. 

Tonight after cleaning up the remnants of a great Thanksgiving meal, @oldbailey and I checked out my Get Up and Move challenges and then went for a long walk/jog along Route 243 in St. Mary's County. 

It was a beautiful night with stars visible and fog hugging the fields low and tight. I sung a few Christmas carols and we both talked about startup life. 

For the first time, working out didn't feel like a burden - it felt like doing a favor for a friend who asked. 

So, I invite you to get up and move with us. Let us know what you want, what you think, what works, what doesn't. 

Getting started is simple:

1. Follow @contagionhealth on Twitter.
2. Visit www.getupandmove.me and issue your first challenge. 
3. Be prepared to move it!

Tomorrow is Black Friday, and while you're spending hard earned bucks to buy gifts, consider challenging someone to walk for 15 minutes. 

Best Buy will be crowded, but you'll be motivating someone else to get healthy, a few minutes at a time. 

Now excuse me, I've got to go dance to 2 songs for @jeffreybrick.

Happy, healthy holidays to all!

Jen S. McCabe
@jensmccabe

CEO/Founder: Contagion Health 

CoFounder: NextHealth (NL)

LinkedIn: Jen McCabe 
Skype: jenmccabe

iPhone: 301.904.5136 
Dutch Mobile:  +31655585351

jennifermccabegorman@yahoo.com

Posted via email from Jen's Posterous

25.11.09

I'm Thankful For...Teachers AND the Intarwebs

I don't understand why I have to go to school at all, the internet knows more than all the teachers there put together.

From: "Too cool for school."

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

Police arrest people just to create DNA records, claims ex-officer | Pinsent Masons LLP

Police are arresting people purely for the purpose of ensuring that their DNA is sampled and recorded on the police's national database, a report by Government advisory body the Human Genetics Commission (HGC) has said.

advert: Pinsent Masons Data Protection and Freedom of Information Advice Lines

The report recommends that police stop automatically taking DNA samples in England and Wales when someone is arrested and says that they should be given guidance on when and when not to take a DNA sample

!!!!!

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

23.11.09

The Redefining Patienthood Project Launches - Aims, Goals, and Many, Many Questions Ahead

Our goal, above all else, is to make care better for patients, and to make it patient-centered. Information policy and health IT policy should serve that goal.

From: "Blumenthal: Tear down walls that block information exchange | Healthcare IT News."

For almost 3 months I've been working with one of my favorite recovering MDs, Carlos Rizo, to try and figure out what being an epatient really means, and why some of us 'level up' from self directed, n=1 personal advocacy to become mentors and wayfinders for others.

Some questions that haunted us after we'd closed the latest Skype chat window...Do we need new nomenclature to describe the experience of being the focal point of goods and services along the healthcare delivery spectrum?

What does the 'normal' patient think of 'patienthood?' Do patients want/need to put an 'e' in front of it?

The central tenet of our exploration is that those who are at the receiving end of medical care are also at the receiving end of 'naming' or labeling within the global healthcare delivery system.

We tossed around plenty of name-calling and talked for hours about our own feelings regarding labeling and patienthood, but finally arrived at the brilliant conclusion that this study was too big for coffee-cup and Skype discussions to define.

The only way to see how people feel about patienthood - and determine whether or not subjective claiming or refutation of the terminology and connotations and baggage we posit it carries weight in brick-and-mortar vs. online communities of care - is to ask.

So that's exactly what we're doing.

Today the Redefining Patienthood Project launches with the first in a series of short surveys.

Please, if you have feelings on the topic, and the subjective sharing of patient experiential narratives online concerns you, participate.

Our goal for the survey series is 150 participants. I hope to count many of you among them.

I promise not to take more than 2 minutes of your day as you complete the form here:

http://myhealthinnovation.com/blog/archive/2009/11/redefining-patienthood

In every industry experts are "believed to have special knowledge of a subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially (and legally) rely upon the individual's opinion."

Doctors, nurses, therapists and other allied health workers undergo rigorous accreditation, training, and higher education processes to become relied upon to delivery safe, effective care.

But, can patients be experts? And can they be regarded as such by healthcare workers?

Perhaps, but perhaps not.

Online sharing in peer 'expert' communities is well established with social networks designed for providers like WebMD and Ozmosis.

There now exists a wiki to help pharma and biotech researchers collaborate with peers: http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/story/wikis-open-drug-development-sharing/2009-11-23

But wherefore art the ePatients?

We are helping each other in networks like ACOR, Patients Like Me, and Cure Together, but what is it that drives us outside our self-interested shells to try and change others' trajectories? To provide support, assistance, tools, all by first owning or refusing the traditional patient nomenclature?

And what happens if we accept the 'epatient' moniker? Do we consider ourselves experts with a specialty scope of practice? I for example might be considered Jen McCabe, eP, with a specialty in experiential orthopaedic rehab.

But do the titles matter? One hypothesis is that some claim the 'epatient' label because it allows us to establish a reputation as an 'expert' which we can then monetize.

In any case, does our patient experience, like many other events which shape us personally and professionally, become so valuable in the market that we might begin to consider it an asset instead of a liability?

In simple, accessible language, the goals of the Redefining Patienthood Project are to explore the following themes and questions:
1. What "expert" means today
2. What "patient" means today
3. Can patients be experts? Review of experiential literature and survey(s)
4. Patients claiming expert status - is it already happening?
5. What is the new definition/definitions of "expert patient" or "epatient?" Are the terms synonymous?
6. What prescriptions for epatients to advocate/engage in the real world of hospital interactions does the community recommend?

Disclaimer: I am not an academic. I do not have anything higher than a Bachelor of Arts degree.

If you would like to discount these explorations as a result, feel free to do so. I encourage you, however, to approach this project in the spirit in which it is intended - as an exploratory beginning approach to the topic, rather than an authoritative end-point.

Although I was headed to Georgetown to participate in the Master of Health Systems Administration Program, I deferred and eventually declined admission to continue 'real world' learning, including a current fellowship at the Health Strategy Innovation Cell, Massey College, UToronto, where this project lives.

The desire to explore the power of naming and self-selected nomenclature for consumers in the healthcare planning and delivery ecosystem grew out of my own journey from patient advocate (in a local community hospital ED) to patient to activated patient to epatient advocate.

Some of you may be familiar with why I do what I do, but a detailed self-exam of my motivations and drivers is here:

And now, for those of you who are located within the hallowed walls of the academe, the gritty details:

Paper working title = I Am A Patient, A Survivor, A Coach! An Exploration Of How Sufferers Become Students And, Sometimes, Thriving Experts in Navigating the Medical System

Authors = Jen McCabe, Carlos Rizo, Neil Seeman

Affiliation: Health Strategy Innovation Cell

Corresponding Author:
Jen S McCabe
Kisaut Fellow, Health Strategy Innovation Cell
Massey College, University of Toronto
4 Devonshire Place
Toronto, Canada

Initial Outline:
BASIC OUTLINE:

I. Introduction
Discuss current patient definitions (Web scan, Wikipedia, WHO)
State why is this study needed?
State what would this study add?
Briefly summarize what is know so far: Conduct a very short Literature Review of academic studies examining patient/consumer nomenclature in peer reviewed journals
Briefly summarize what do hospitals say: Conduct Brief Review of Hospital Marketing Language
Briefly summarize What do patients say: Extract definition from e-Patients.net
Discuss why Social Media may have new answers

[CR]: II. Methodology
What design suits better your research questions? Describe the survey
Why Twitter?
Why crowdsource?
What questions are we asking?
How are we going to analyze the responses?
How many people are we going to ask?

[CR]: III. Results
[CR]: IV. Discussion
[CR]: V. References
M5S 2E1

Some of our research questions:

1. Can patients truly become healthcare navigation experts?

2. Are or can patients be regarded as healthcare navigation experts by health professionals (both those who treat the patient individually and those who participate in the wider system of patient care delivery)?

3. What is the role of patienthood today? In and out of the medical system?

4. What drives patients to become advocates for self? For others? To mentor 'e-patients' (including 'emerging' and 'online' patients)

5. Is patienthood an outmoded term? Could we (patients and/or providers) benefit more by abandoning it? By revitalizing it? By revising it?

6. What do the current semantics of illness and recovery and healing look like? Does the current lexicon need to be challenged?

7. Is the 'position' power of being a patient underestimated? By providers of care? By fellow patients? By patients ourselves?

8. Is there a progression from epatienthood --> participatory medicine ---> choice/control aware care? If so, what does this look like (in theory and in practice)? And is there more than one model?

My ultimate goal is to end this project at a new beginning point - a crowdsourced, community-oriented redefinition of patienthood that will drive discussions about 'meaningful use' and access to health information, as well as how organizations like the US FDA will examine the utility of social media in experiential patient knowledge exchange.

If you'd like to join the researchers working on this topic, please comment below. Your rigor, your inquiring mind, your curiosity, your experiences are all valuable and valued here.

What does patienthood mean to you?

And is this a term that needs revising and re-envisioning by the grassroots social media communities who use it in both a positive and pejorative fashion?

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

22.11.09

Woman Loses Health Insurance Due to Facebook | e-Patients.net

Yes, a Canadian insurance company decided to keep tabs on a woman it was paying sick leave benefits to, and lo and behold, that woman was having — wait for it — fun!

Nathalie Blanchard, a 29-year-old IBM employee from Quebec, took a long-term sick leave from her job after being diagnosed with major depression. Her doctor told her to try & have fun, and to take a sunny vacation to get away from her problems. She did just that while she received monthly sick-leave benefits from Manulife.

And she posted her vacation photos on her private Facebook profile. But recently, the monthly payments stopped.

Why? Because Manulife, her insurance company, found the photos and made the medical diagnosis — from a photo, mind you — that she no longer suffered from major depression. From a photo.

!!!!

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

20.11.09

Right Idea, Wrong Asset Holder - Patients Should be Traded Like Free Agents

What if your long-term health profile were a corporate asset of your health plan? What if, when you changed health plans, the new health plan had to pay the old health plan for the rights to insure you? Call this a health plan member's Net Asset Value.

From: "The Health Care Blog: Sell Patients like Baseball Players - Seriously ."

If I'm a 'star' patient with an MVP long term health profile (great biometric stats, low risk, great genetic indicators, etc) then health insurers should approach me (and my chosen agent) like the next Great Bambino, and attempt to woo me to their plan with a long term contract and low rates.

Interesting idea, but this would build a system that's predisposed against the sick, and getting ill isn't a bit like having a ton of talent in baseball.

Luckily, the Dutch system provides some examples of how we may do this right...provide MORE incentives for treating those who are sick to insurers and hospitals, not less (paying attention CMS?) so people want those kind of MVPs in their portfolios too.

The idea of health insurers controlling and trading my net asset value at will, to be sold and resold without my control like my student loan balances, makes me a commodity good in the healthcare marketplace.

And how, actually, is that any different than the scenario we've got today?

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

Illinois Health Care Report Card

Take a look - data like whoa. Also note user friendly, non 1998 Windows fabulous user interface.

We're getting there, slowly but surely...

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

There are few things cooler than Space Ice Cream...

From: "Technology Review: Blogs: Delta-V: Designing Astronaut Gloves."

But this is one of them. Testing gloves that protect astronaut digits from the outer limits.

Speaking of the final frontier, imagine if US healthcare had a body like NASA in the 50s. Recruit the brightest engineers, rouse everyone for a mission impossible, and test every component, even a glove, with this level of exacting reason and an expectation that failure is not an option.

If we won't lose a man or woman in space, why is it ok to lose a man or woman in the hospital as a result of medical error?

We need a duct tape solution for healthcare. I'm betting it's engineers in the Valley who will figure out how to solve American healthcare's Apollo 13 scenario.

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

18.11.09

Be Master of Your Cheese, Til the Last Piece...

From: "Face value: Salesman of the irrational | The Economist."

Lessons from Jean-Claude Biver, Hublot watches:

1. Make your own stuff. Sell it if you must, but dole it out with due process to people you love and respect. Be master of your cheese, til the last piece is gone.

"His cheese can send the authors of Michelin guidebooks into rapture; Switzerland’s best chefs regularly call him begging for some. But he parcels it out only to family and friends, and to restaurants that he particularly likes. And he always refuses payment for the stuff. “If I don’t sell it,” explains Mr Biver, “then I will decide who gets it and who doesn’t. I will be the master of my cheese until the last piece.”"

2. A little bit of rationality helps sell irrationality.

" “You only desire what you cannot get,” he says. “People want exclusivity, so you must always keep the customer hungry and frustrated.”"

Not sure I agree on the need for hungry and frustrated customers...the Posterous crew does an amazing job of keeping me full and unfrustrated, and I respect them (and the tech/design that enables my Posterous experience) the more for it.

However, I did also hear recently advice to always have something go wrong at a conference (lose the wifi, turn down the heat, etc) so that organizers have control over what people are complaining about.

Personally, I'll go with the glass half full view and trust users over manipulating them every time.

But being master of your own product - and knowing when and why you sell it versus give it away - is a good gut check question to ask yourself in the mirror every morning.

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

Leadership Skills You Probably Don't Have...

From: "LeaderGap.jpg 640×476 pixels."

Minus 10 points for general 'composure.' :)

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

I Can't Get No...Today's Startup Life Lesson from Chrys Bader

To sum it all up, successful entrepreneurs live in a distorted reality that they create for themselves. They have a vision that they pursue like food during a famine. Satisfaction is rare and never immediate. To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to live in a world that doesn't exist yet: the world that you want to create.

From: "Chrys Bader - Tales of an Entrepreneur."

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

Exposure: 1 Heart Attack, 725 X Rays, 1/3 Nuclear Power Plant Workers Upper Annual Limit

On average, a patient admitted to an academic hospital with a heart attack had a cumulative effective radiation dose of 14.5 millisieverts -- about a third the annual maximum accumulation permitted for workers in nuclear power plants.

The average American can expect to receive about 3 millisieverts a year from ground radon or flying in an airplane.

From: "Just one heart attack leads to 725 X-rays | Health | Reuters."

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

17.11.09

Next Gen Pain Management - Facebook Therapy?!

"When the women were just looking at pictures of their partner, they actually reported less pain to the heat stimuli than when they were looking at pictures of an object or pictures of a stranger," said study co-author Naomi Eisenberger, assistant professor of psychology and director of UCLA's Social and Affective Laboratory. "Thus, the mere reminder of one's partner through a simple photograph was capable of reducing pain."

"This changes our notion of how influences people," she added. "Typically, we think that in order for social support to make us feel good, it has to be the kind of support that is very responsive to our emotional needs. Here, however, we are seeing that just a photo of one's significant other can have the same effect."

From: "Can thinking of a loved one reduce your pain?" via @Physorg

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

EMRs are *NOT* the Holy Grail of Healthcare Reform - Yet...

The way electronic medical records are used now has not yet had a real impact on the quality or cost of health care,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, who led the research project.

From: "Little Benefit Seen, So Far, in Electronic Patient Records - NYTimes.com."

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

Q3: Top Health Insurance Company Earnings Reports - FierceHealthFinance - Health Finance, Healthcare Finance

Between CEOs earning exorbitant salaries and news of frequent patient policy cancellations, the public, and many within the healthcare industry itself, are expressing outrage over the huge profits that health insurance companies continue to enjoy, and are increasingly casting the insurance industry as the villians in the health reform debate

But just how well are these companies really doing?

From: "Q3: Top Health Insurance Company Earnings Reports - FierceHealthFinance - Health Finance, Healthcare Finance."

Whoops - forgot to add health insurance to the startup budget....;)

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

16.11.09

Evolution of Online Conversations: Day 1 Still D-Day

80 percent of engagement around a post happens on day one, and that 60 percent of that happens within the first hour. What was surprising, however, is that this is actually a decrease from the numbers Grigorik has for 2007. According to his data from two years ago, 95 percent of engagement happened on the first day, and 90 percent of that was within the first hour.

From: "Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: The Speed of Online Conversation."

This article is a must read - Grigorik believes online conversations' D-day replication is slowing down a bit as our distributed networks increase in size via weak ties, which have slightly slower bonding/sending capabilities.

Social networks are getting more complex via nodal interactions, so our filtering of value slows down about 15%. It'll be interesting to see what happens in another year of social networking distribution.

Will our weak tie/"friend of a friend" human filters cause engagement to drop another 15% or so?

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

13.11.09

Thin Line Between Love and Hate Stops at...Oxytocin?

Previous studies have shown that the has a positive effect on . The hormone is released in the body naturally during childbirth and when engaging in . Participants in an experiment who inhaled the synthetic form of the hormone displayed higher levels of altruistic feelings, and it is supposed that the hormone plays an important role in the formation of relationships between people.

However, in earlier studies carried out by other investigators with rodents, it was found that the hormone is also related to higher levels of aggression. Therefore, it was decided to examine whether the hormone also affects negative social sentiments. The present study, which was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, included 56 participants.

From: "The narrow line between love and jealousy."

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

10.11.09

Doctor-Patient Dialog on Social Media: A Bad Idea? - 33 Charts

 Sharing detailed personal health information in a public forum isn’t smart.  Sure the tongue-in-cheek comment about your ingrown toenail isn’t likely to create problems.  Discussions about anything more serious isn’t for others to hear.  Keep in mind that everyone from employers to insurance companies are tuning in to what you have to say.

Hmmm.

Having problems getting past that first sentence and the general fear factor approach.

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here, Have Something Messed Up Happen?

"Hope is an important part of happiness. But there's a dark side to hope," a co-author of the study, Dr. Peter A. Ubel, said in a news release. "We think [the permanent colostomy patients] were happier because they got on with their lives. They realized the cards they were dealt, and recognized that they had no choice but to play with those cards. The other group was waiting for their colostomy to be reversed. They contrasted their current life with the life they hoped to lead, and didn't make the best of their current situation."

There's a lesson here for healthcare professionals, too, the authors wrote. Healthcare professionals want to give their patients hope and may be reluctant to correct false hopes. But patients may be better off facing the truth.

"While hopeful news may be easiest to deliver, it may not at all be in the interests of the recipients because it may interfere with emotional adaptation," the authors wrote.

From: "Sometimes patients shouldn't hold on to hope | Booster Shots | Los Angeles Times."

Whose job is it to 'correct' false hopes?

If someone had 'corrected' my unrealistic (clinically speaking) hope that I'd keep my right leg, if someone had 'corrected' my unrealistic (clinically speaking) hope that someday I'd run again (multiple 5ks and a Sprint Tri later), if someone had 'corrected' my unrealistic (clinically speaking) hope that I'd be able to wear a 1.75 inch heeled shoe, would that mean they were just helping me "play the cards" I'd been dealt?

Whose job is it to 'correct' my emotional adaptations to 'reality?'

If anyone succeeded in doing that, I wouldn't be here, in Silicon Valley, starting a health tech company, with no previous tech experience.

Facing my medical truths was about *not* abandoning hope. In fact, it was facing my medical truths that led me to move to San Francisco and begin to build things that help other people who are patients NOT abandon hope.

People want to know what to do, yes. People want to know what to worry about, yes. People want to know what to expect (good/bad), yes.

But sometimes holding on to hope is the only thing that keeps us holding *on* to our lives, much less "getting on" with them.

The day our healthcare system advocates killing hope is the day we have truly buried a system that operates "in the interests of the recipients."

You know what I hope? I hope I don't live to see that day realized.

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

Fish Yourself, Or Teach a Man to Fish? Mobile Strategy

Chinese Proverb: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie @ Blackberry Dev Con:

"We've been beavering away on a lot of things these last couple of years," said RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie during his opening keynote Monday morning. "This is not about thousands of islands of applications. It's about deep, rich integration to enable transformative experiences. Our view is that we have an environment with tremendous possibilities for contextualization."

From "Gmail - | 11.10.09 | New browser, platform enhancements juice up BlackBerry - contagionhealth@gmail.com. Which mobile/handset strategy will win? The one creating a singular 'deep' platform (RIM) that developers must adhere to in order to create those mind-blowing contextually relevant experiences, or the one that throws wide the gates (Apple) and lets merchants (and prospective merchants) themselves plan the layout of the bazaar? Seems to me you always win by going with the exponential power of teaching man (or woman) to fish for themselves...
Jen S. McCabe
@jensmccabe

CEO/Founder: Contagion Health 

CoFounder: NextHealth (NL)

LinkedIn: Jen McCabe 
Skype: jenmccabe

iPhone: 301.904.5136 
Dutch Mobile:  +31655585351

jennifermccabegorman@yahoo.com

Posted via email from Jen's Posterous

5.11.09

The Anatomy of Determination

In some very energetic people's lives you see something like wing flutter, where they alternate between doing great work and doing absolutely nothing. Externally this would look a lot like bipolar disorder.

Paul Graham may be a genius. Lisa Haneberg is the first person who told me to 'flap my wings' at a SIPA meeting, my first time visiting Silicon Valley, in 2006.

How right she was about being aflutter...

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

Beware the Siren Call of Becoming a "Change Agent" - They're Usually Killed in the Line of Duty

Related to the difficulties of delivering on time and on budget are other promises that should never be taken at face value:

"We want you to be a change agent and shake things up."

Bosses and boards often espouse change as a desirable goal but less often embrace its implications — e.g., firing old hands, closing or selling historically-core assets, or challenging organizational assumptions. Officials generally like things stirred but not shaken (unlike James Bond's martini). So if you are told that you've been hired or assigned to shake things up in the interests of change, don't believe it — even if it's clear that a turnaround is necessary.

This promise tastes dust the minute controversy surfaces. Controversy is embarrassing, time-consuming, and takes eyes off the situation needing change and onto the personality of the change agent.

From: "Promises You Should Never Believe (or Make) - Rosabeth Moss Kanter - HarvardBusiness.org."

Before you try to 'shake things up,' always consider, deeply, realistically, your motivations for doing so.

Maybe the only change agents who actually change things leave organizations where they've found 'stirring' ineffective and start their own gig?

Open to commentology...

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

2.11.09

YouTube and Healthcare - We Can Haz Cool Videos? Yes. We Can Haz.

If you still think YouTube is just for those durned kids, you're really missing out. We at FierceHealthcare have decided to present seven of our favorite healthcare videos, with topics ranging from the serious (a critique of U.S. public health efforts in controlling H1N1) to the purely silly (an anesthesiologist singing about his duty to "sit and listen to the beep.") 

For their creativity, educational value and pure passion, we hereby deem these videos Fierce! Have fun checking them out; we certainly did.

 
 Diagnosis Wenckebach

 

 
 Bringin' Safety Back

 

 
 UAB Emergency Department Rap

 

 
 Breathe

 

 
 The Anesthetist's Hymn

 

 
 H1N1 Rap

 

 
 H1N1 Influenza Update Briefing


From: "7 YouTube Healthcare Videos Worth Watching - FierceHealthcare."

PS - Chad Hurley, sorry again for not recognizing you right off at TEDMED. All the jumping around must have jostled my brain pan...

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous