Health Horizons

Reinventing Health Care in a Mobile World

Jeff Burgan — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:11:12 -0700

We are very pleased to announce the IFTF Health Horizons Fall Conference on Reinventing Health Care in a Mobile World. The conference will be held on October 14-15, 2008 at the Fairmont Hotel in
San Francisco.

Health Horizons

Pew Project wants to "crowdsource" new Internet health survey

Richard Adler — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:04:22 -0700

September 29, 2008
Crowdsourcing a Survey: Health Topics

The Pew Internet Project will conduct a national telephone survey this fall about the internet's impact on health and health care. One of the first tasks is to look at our tried and true "trend" questions and decide which ones we should repeat as is and which ones need to be updated.

Health Horizons

Americans doing more texting than calling

Richard Adler — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:34:42 -0700

According to the New York Times, Sept 29:

In the fourth quarter of 2007, American cellphone subscribers for the first time sent text messages- more than they phoned, according to Nielsen Mobile. Since then, the average subscriber’s volume of text messages has shot upward by 64 percent, while the average number of calls has dropped slightly.

Health Horizons

Raising our Collective Health

Vivian Distler — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:48:16 -0700

Yikes. I haven't blogged in weeks. Well, that's not entirely true. I had written a long post that got eaten by the computer, and I haven't been the same since. But news of HealthRaising, a current Health Horizons project, deserves to be shared.

Mobile Health

The Service of Healthcare Conference

Vivian Distler — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:12:12 -0700

While I have been remiss of late in keeping up with my blogging responsibilities, IFTF Affiliate Richard Adler has been picking up the slack. (Thanks, Richard!) We have all been busy getting ready for our Fall Conference on Mobile Health. Of course, one can't look ahead to the election season and the months to come without thinking about healthcare itself.

Health Horizons

Mobile weight loss pilot in Japan

Richard Adler — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:17:52 -0700

Yesterday, Rod Falcon and I met with Dr. Atsushi Ito from the KDDI R&D Laboratories (KDDI is the #2 mobile carrier in Japan). He told us about a pilot that his lab ran designed to support weight loss among company employees. This is an important application since the Japanese government is requiring companies to work with overweight employees to lose weight (or be fined). The second version of the pilot will be launched later this year with a larger group of employees.

Health Horizons

"'Virtual' self can help dieting, exercise"

Vivian Distler — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:40:18 -0700

So read the subtitle of a story in today's Palo Alto Weekly. Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab researchers have been studying how people change their real-world behavior by watching virtual representations of themselves (known as avatars). The researchers have found evidence that what one's avatar does in a virtual-reality game or world (like Second Life) can have real health implications in everyday life. For example, watching your virtual self get fat on-screen will help you decide to skip the chocolate bar at snack time.

Health Horizons

Bye bye, bad-for-you foods (at least in California)

Vivian Distler — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:43:03 -0700

I've been meaning to post something about California becoming the first state to ban the use of trans fats--which are known to increase the risk of heart disease--by restaurants and other food facilities, but haven't gotten around to it yet. My aplogies doe the delay. (By the way, New York City has already done adopted a similar ban, as have Philadelphia, Stamford, Conn., and Montgomery County, Md.)

Health Horizons

Open Health Map of Disruptive Innovation and Companion Toolkit

Neela Nuristani — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:20:09 -0700

The Health Horizons Program has released tools to help companies navigate within the Open Health landscape—the Open Health Map of Disruptive Innovation (SR-1117A) and its companion report, Open Health Toolkit (SR-1117B).

Health Horizons

What if where you live doesn't have enough food to feed you?

Vivian Distler — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:51:27 -0700

The New York Times recently published a map that illustrates the potential for such a Malthusian catastrophe.

You can view the map in detail here

Health Horizons

A conference about Web 2.0 as it relates to medicine and health

Vivian Distler — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:23:54 -0700

Medicine 2.0™ is an international conference on Web 2.0 applications in health and medicine, organized and co-sponsored by the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the International Medical Informatics Association, the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, CHIRAD, and others. (When I first saw the announcement, I squirmed a bit at the "2.0" modifier and its trademark notice--doesn't 2.0 seem to be overused these days?) Anyhow, here's how the conference organizers define Medicine 2.0:

Health Horizons

Open Health and a health-related application for the iPhone

Vivian Distler — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 10:15:30 -0700

The innovation technology lab inSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters) has issued a call to developers willing to volunteer their time to build an SMS GeoChat application for the iPhone that emergency responders and aid workers will be able to communicate their exact location; message recipients will be able to view the sender’s location in Google Earth, Google Maps, Live Earth, etc.

Health Horizons

BioBarCamp, Live!

Vivian Distler — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:24:00 -0700

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about BioBarCamp, which IFTF has been hosting over the past two days. It has been fascinating stuff--both in terms of process and content--and my colleagues and/or I will be blogging about it in the coming days. I have found live blogging to be too challenging to be useful. So I won't even try to capture what we are talking about right now. Stay tuned, though!

Health Horizons

Medical experts wanted

Vivian Distler — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:53:35 -0700

By now, I think that it is safe to say that Wikipedia plays a ubiquitous role in the world of online information. This is even true for health information. At our Spring 2007 conference on Biocitizens and New Media Technology, Health Horizons Program Director Rod Falcon noted in his presentation that, "Wikipedia is the most frequently cited source [of user-generated health content] and appears on the first page of 63% of health searches" (emphasis is mine--I marvel at this phenomenon).

A new player will soon be entering the field of online medical information: MedPedia.

Health Horizons

A new player in the online health care marketplace

Vivian Distler — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:30:38 -0700

Courtesy of my colleague, IFTF Research Affiliate Richard Adler:

American Well is a new company that is creating a "online healthcare marketplace." On its website (www.americanwell.com), it states that consumers can,

"Talk to a doctor anytime, without leaving home or scheduling an appointment. Choose from a variety of specialties and connect with the doctor who is right for you."

Mobile Health

read more

New Study Documents Savings from Health Promotion

Richard Adler — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:06:38 -0700

Disease Prevention Could Lead to Significant Savings

The Trust for America's Health has released a report that posits that a small investment in disease prevention can lead to significant savings for both public and private health care programs. Prevention for a Healthier America found that a modest investment of $10 per person per year in proven community-based programs to increase physical activity, improve nutrition, and prevent smoking and other tobacco use could save the country more than $16 billion annually within five years.

Health Horizons

Apple & Nike partnership to promote health

Richard Adler — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:18:57 -0700

Here is the latest from the partnership of Apple & Nike to promote physical fitness.

The American Heart Association Social Media Project

Open Bioscience: Where Will the Distributed Scientists Go to Work?

Anthony Townsend — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:21:29 -0700

IFTF researcher David Pescovitz shared an article from Nature News today that covers the proliferation of crowdsourced biodata sharing. Recent months have seen a flurry of launches of open, loosely structured repositories of complex biochemical pathways like WikiPathways, Protein Data Bank Wiki and WikiGene.

X2 Project

Putting in context another newly-launched health-related social networking site

Vivian Distler — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:45:47 -0700

Trusera--a website that allows people to share their real-world health experiences--launched last month. Its tag is "Come experience the Power of Been There." When I first came across the announcement on the bbgm blog, I wondered what would set Tujera apart from similar sites, like Daily Strength or iMedix, which I blogged about here.

Health Horizons

Four Ps represent the future of medicine

Vivian Distler — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:46:50 -0700

Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) claims a trademark in the term "P4 Medicine," which represents its take on the future of health care: Predictive, Preventive, Personalized, and Participatory. It emphasizes improved personal measurements and personalized treatments as the key to improving health care.

As the ISB website explains, "The goal of systems biology is to fundamentally transform the practice of medicine." How will medicine change? Let's go back to the four Ps:

Health Horizons

CCRRC Releases IFTF Research on the Future of Health and Wellness in Food Retailing

Neela Nuristani — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:20:54 -0700

In May 2008, the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council (CCRRC) publicly released the results of a year-long research endeavor by the Institute for the Future's Health Horizons Program, studying the Future of Health and Wellness in Food Retailing. The CCRRC asked two key questions to kick off the research effort:

• “What might the connections between food, health, and food retailing look like over the next 10 years?”
• “How can food retailers respond to those future directions today?”

Health Horizons

DNA-based dating

Vivian Distler — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:57:48 -0700

Courtesy of TechCrunch, a tangentially related health story . . . GenePartner, a dating site that looks for potential matches based on DNA compatibility. The Swiss company uses a $199 DNA test to help you find your statistically perfect mate.

Health Horizons

Avon calling . . . to improve health in developing countries?

Vivian Distler — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:12:27 -0700

I came across an organization called LivingGoods--the banner on its website certainly piqued my interest:

But the first sentence in the description of LivingGoods struck me as odd: "Living Goods operates Avon-like networks of door-to-door Health Promoters who make a modest income selling essential health products at prices affordable to the poor." Avon calling? In Africa?

Health Horizons

BioBarCamp

Vivian Distler — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:31:29 -0700

In a blog post the other day, I mentioned FooCamp--which is an annual invitation-only participant driven conference hosted by open source publishing legend Tim O'Reilly (who, interestingly enough, is credited with coining the term "Web 2.0"). On August 6th & 7th, the Institute will be hosting BioBarCamp. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, BarCamps are user-generated conferences—open, participatory workshop-events, during which content is provided by participants. They are sometimes referred to as unconferences. My colleague, Alex Pang, has observed, "[T]hese camps . . . at their best are semi-chaotic but intellectually exciting affairs." You can read more about BarCamps here.

Health Horizons

Talking anytime, anyplace health over a potluck dinner

Vivian Distler — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:35:37 -0700

While some of my colleagues in IFTF's Technology Horizons program were busy rubbing elbows at FooCamp, I attended a group dinner on Friday night to which I had kind of randomly been invited. I ended up sitting next to a guy whose description of his start-up company caught my attention.

Health Horizons

Get organized, get $$

Vivian Distler — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:39:56 -0700

OrganizedWisdom is a human-powered search engine that launched in 2006. A couple of weeks ago, it raised $2.3 million in a Series A round led by ETF Venture Fund, Esther Dyson, and a number of other investors. As Tech Crunch puts it, OrganizedWisdom is a "member of the very-crowded health advice space, and sees competition from the likes of WebMD and HealthLine."

Health Horizons

Revolution Health's health?

Vivian Distler — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:06:25 -0700

Just as I was starting to look for something to blog about today, I got an e-mail from a client asking what I know about whether Revolution Health is going under or merging or otherwise transforming itself. Launched officially in April 2007, Revolution Health was intended by its chairman/CEO, AOL co-founder Steve Case, to . . .well, revolutionize health care by providing health-related online tools and content from a variety of trusted sources and enabling individuals to take greater control of their health management.

Health Horizons

On-the-go heart monitoring

Vivian Distler — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:24:34 -0700

Researchers affiliated with Northern Ireland's University of Ulster have developed a disposable adhesive electrode patch that uses wireless technology to transmit information about a patient's heart and other vital data (like respiratory rate, temperature, and blood oxygenation levels). According to the university's press release,

Health Horizons

Cease-and-desist letter sent to California-based personalized genetics startups

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:51:09 -0700

California likes to think of itself as a high-tech friendly place, and generally it is. However, Alexis Madrigal reports that the state government has decided to go after personal genetics companies:

Last Monday, the state's laboratory field services group issued 13 cease-and-desist letters to genetic testing companies. Wired.com obtained a copy of the letters (pdf.) from two recipients. And the tough talk in a recent teleconference among regulatory officials confirms the seriousness of the department's intent.

"We [are] no longer tolerating direct-to-consumer genetic testing in California," Karen Nickles, Chief of Laboratory Field Services at the health department, told members of the Clinical Laboratories Advisory Committee on June 13.

Targeted companies include personal genomics startups 23andMe and Navigenics. These services are seen as the leading edge of a new type of health care in which consumers can use their genetic profile to tailor their medical and lifestyle choices. The established medical community, however, is wary of the technology arguing that the medical utility of some tests is unproven. Doctors also complain that direct-to-consumer services bypass them as the gatekeepers and analysts of medical information, which they worry could confuse consumers, not to mention cost them a billing event.

The health department's actions are a direct challenge to the viability of the infant DNA-testing industry, for which physician involvement is shaping up to be a major battleground. As far back as a September 2006 meeting, health department officials were voicing concerns over "nutrigenetic tests that analyze a limited number of genes to give personalized nutritional and lifestyle recommendations."

(via Virginia Postrel's Dynamist Blog)

Health Horizons

iPhone and citizen science

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:07:18 -0700

Alexis Madrigal throws a link to the X2 Project in his post on the addition of GPS in the iPhone:

With Steve Jobs' announcement that the iPhone 3G will have geolocation built-in, plenty of people are excited about finding good restaurants near them or worried about the privacy implications....

X2 Project

read more

"Walking" in Second Life

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:09:24 -0700

A Japanese team of researchers, led by Keio University biosciences and informatics professor Junichi Ushiba, has created a system that allows a paralyzed man to "walk" in Second Life.
Wired reports,

Researchers at Japan's Keio University have created an experimental headset designed to monitor brain waves that allowed a man who had been paralyzed for more than 30 years to control a Second Life avatar using only his thoughts.

Health Horizons

read more

Ecorazzi.com The Latest in Green Gossip

Neela Nuristani — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:24:36 -0700

This site was created to showcase the combination of celebrity gossip
and environmental causes! At first it was just an experiment, but it
turned out to be a success for gossip fanatics. It is a great way to
grab different audiences, and providing them with awareness of the
green issue that is occuring today. This site incoporates gossip news
of how, why, and when celebs have interacted in some way, shape, or
form to the green issue.

http://www.ecorazzi.com

Health Horizons

Wii Fitness

Vivian Distler — Sun, 18 May 2008 11:35:45 -0700

This week, Wii Fitness will hit U.S. stores. We already know that people -- particularly seniors --

have been using the popular game console to increase their level of physical activity, and others have adopted it as a tool for rehabbing from serious injuries (see this earlier post).

Health Horizons

Meat vs. Miles

Jamais Cascio — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:14:20 -0700

Carnegie Mellon University's Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews argue in a new report in Environmental Science and Technology that, when it comes to the environmental (especially carbon) impact of food webs, the presence of meat in the diet matters more than the distance the food has traveled.

Ten-Year Forecast

Fast food facts on the go

Vivian Distler — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:40:24 -0700

I love it when our local rag, the Palo Alto Daily News, is the the source for one of my posts. And it's even more fun when a headline is brought to my attention by a colleague while we are in downtown Palo Alto's only "dive" bar. (I hope I don't get in trouble for revealing too much!) And best of all, the story is about a company that I recently discovered and about which I have been meaning to write something.

"Getting your fingers on fast-food nutritional details" ran yesterday. As the lead 'graph says: "Calorie-counting fast-food lovers may be heartened to know there's a new source for nutrition information at their fingertips."

Mobile Health

Have cell phone, will get medical care

Vivian Distler — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:08:49 -0700

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a Business Week headline that warmed the cockles of my Health Horizons blogger heart: "Medical Advances--Through Your iPhone?" The article describes several mobile phone health apps.

Mobile Health

Cell phones and health in the developing world

Vivian Distler — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:36:16 -0700

Jan Chipchase is a "user anthropologist" for Nokia, the Finnish cell phone company; he travels the globe to study how people use and think about cell phones. A recent New York Times Magazine article profiles Jan and examines the role of cell phones in the developing world.

Mobile Health

Have you taken your smart pill today?

Vivian Distler — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:19:53 -0700

Coming soon to a pharmacy near you . . . pills that can monitor when they have been taken and what effects they are having on your body. Michael Chorost, who spoke at IFTF's recent Ten Year Forecast Conference, reports in MIT's Technology Review about Proteus Biomedical's development of in-body computing platforms.

Health Horizons

DNA testing companies come under scrutiny

Miriam Lueck — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:39:40 -0700

Both the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News broke stories yesterday about impending investigaitons by the Departments of Public Health in California and New York into six online genetic testing companies.

Health Horizons

Grad students designing the future

Vivian Distler — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:07:23 -0700

The Health Horizons Program often uses "iBuyRight" as a signal of the impact of mobile phone technology. It is an application that can provide shoppers with social and environmental information about a product, enabling them to make purchases aligned with their personal values. iBuyRight was developed as a thesis project by some graduate students at UCBerkeley's School of Information.

Mobile Health

Biocitizens and Advertizing

Miriam Lueck — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:33:43 -0700

A recent piece in the NYT BITS blog has some interesting ramifications for our forecasts on biosocial identities and affinities. It discusses a set of “compromises” reached by the Network Advertising Initiative, an advertising trade association.

The lists of restrictions and red-flag categories represented here is about as culturally loaded as you can get, but what drew my attention was the way that biological identities, biological affinities, online collective organization were called out as particularly tricky areas of “behavioral correlation.”

Health Horizons

Regular strength or extra strength? Drowsy or non-drowsy formula? Brand name or knock off?

Vivian Distler — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:28:04 -0700

These are the questions I often find myself pondering as I stand in the cold medicine aisle at my local drugstore. This morning, Rod Falcon, Director of the Health Horizons Program, dropped a good old-fashioned newspaper on my desk that announced a solution to these dilemmas. Evincii, a Mountain View, CA, startup that has been in (mostly) stealth mode since 2005, has now formally unveiled its in-store, interactive, over-the-counter (OTC) drug information kiosk.

Health Horizons

WELCOME!

Vivian Distler — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:47:45 -0700

Welcome to the Institute for the Future's new and improved website, and the Health Horizons Program's home page. From here, you can access our publications archives (right column) and, if you are a member of Health Horizons, our most recent reports and our conference materials from the last two years. We hope you will come back often to read our blog, which highlights signals we see on the horizon of the global health economy. Your comments are valued--please let us know what you think.

Health Horizons

Online relief is in sight for pain sufferers

Vivian Distler — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:32:39 -0700

Another interesting health app I have recently discovered is called ReliefInsite. It bills itself as a source of secure online pain management services, offering real-time pain mapping, monitoring, and analysis. I was struck by its three-pronged approach--it's home page targets patients themselves, health care companies, and health care providers.

Health Horizons

A standout (?) among examples of Health 2.0 apps

Vivian Distler — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:10:42 -0700

The ReadWriteWeb blog offers this list of favorite Health 2.0 sites. Many will be familiar to HH members, but one relatively new entrant--Carol.com--stands out for being different. It is not a social networking site; rather, it is a health care marketplace. Limited in scope (for now) to the Minneapolis-St.

Health Horizons

Retail DNA

Vivian Distler — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:40:43 -0700

Navigenics is not the only company to market consumer genetic testing (see 23andMe and deCODEme), but it may be the first to do so in a retail setting (at least one as trendy as Manhattan's SoHo District). The New York Times has a short piece about Navigenics' temporary storefront in SoHo.

Health Horizons

Health Horizons' 2008 Spring Conference: Green Health and Sustainability

Vivian Distler — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:25:49 -0700

The Health Horizons Program will hold its "Green Health and Sustainability" conference on June 3-4 at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco.

Health Horizons

Citizen Science meets art in San Francisco

Vivian Distler — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:42:13 -0700

Last weekend, an artist-run organization called Southern Exposure (SoEx) held a hands-on workshop in San Francisco that invited people to "[j]oin a team of researchers, artists, and practitioners in a citizen based participatory field study." Participants took part in "collecting, gathering, and analyzing the urban environment in [the city] using a collection of mobile, networked sensors called sensr: citizen science * air quality.

Mobile Health

Walgreens is on the job

Vivian Distler — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:02:13 -0700

With apologies for not reporting this news item when it happened a couple of weeks ago . . . Drugstore chain Walgreen is moving into the workplace to provide on-site health care for employers. On March 17th, the company announced that it would purchase I-trax for about $260 million and Whole Health Management for an undisclosed amount.

Health Horizons

Microsoft's vision of the future of health

Vivian Distler — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:55:54 -0700

At last month's Mix08 conference, Microsoft played a video created by its Office Labs to share their vision of the future of personal health management It features ubiquitous integrated displays, instant sharing of information, projecting displays, and other advances in natural interface interactions.

Technology Horizons