I found an interesting article on Fast Company talking about the Facebook for Patients. Of course, I’m a sucker for anything that says Facebook and patients, so I had to check it out.

Turns out the article talks about a new Medical Social Network from IBM. Officially it’s being called the IBM Patient Empowerment System. From the description, it’s an interesting mix of PHR functions where you record your health information, patient to patient interaction like PatientsLikeMe, patient to doctor interaction, and even FDA alerts and drug checking.

Of course, I wanted to try this IBM patient empowerment system out myself, but the article didn’t have a link to it. So, I headed to Google and found no website, but the first result was this video about the IBM PHR along with some press releases:

Pretty hard to judge a system if you can’t use it. Plus, it’s hard to interact with other patients if patients can’t find the portal.

I suspect that the reason I can’t find the portal is that it seems like they’re doing a beta test of the website with Gacheon University Gil Hospital in Korea. It doesn’t seem like they’ve opened up the system to everyone yet. It will be interesting to see if they continue to do a partner based approach for rolling out the IBM PHR or if they choose to open it up to anyone and everyone that wants to join.

I’d say the most controversial part of what they’re doing is probably the FDA alerts and drug checking. This tweet by Neil Versel, blogger at Meaningful Health IT news, describes why these types of alerts and information is going to require a change:

Attitude adjustment needed, stat! RT @amednews: Only 8% of doctors say online research done by patients is helpful http://bit.ly/g5Yrzq

March 12, 2011 7:15 am via ÜberSocialReplyRetweetFavorite

@nversel

Neil Versel

The challenge to doctors is whether IBM does it or someone else, the empowered patient is already happening. IBM’s Facebook for Patients is just one piece in the puzzle.

UPDATE: See the comments from Randall Oates below where he explains that SOAPware is just one of the EMR/EHR options that will be connecting to the Collaborative Care Solution that IBM is offering. It seems the IBM offering amounts to more of an HIE specification that any and/or all EMR vendors can adopt. A little different idea than what I posted below.

I’m sure most people in the tech world remember the days when Big Blue ruled the tech world. In fact, there’s even a saying which I’ve been hearing more and more lately that basically goes that “no tech person ever got fired by choosing IBM.” Basically meaning that everyone was choosing IBM and so it was a safe bet. Kind of reminds me of Epic in the hospital IT space.

Well, last week IBM made an announcement about their new Collaborative Care Solution. The press release is honestly one of the worst I’ve seen. Usually amidst the PR speak you can at least summarize what they’re really doing in a couple sentences. Sadly, I can’t do that from the press release.

There was also a post about the IBM announcement on the SOAPware blog. Still not a very informative post, but it does provide the interesting connection between the solution IBM is offering that with the SOAPware EMR. A good announcement for SOAPware, especially after their release of the SOAPware PMS software.

I confirmed that the SOAPware EMR/PMS will be what IBM is offering with their Collaborative Care Solution. It will be interesting to see how this collaboration develops. Is it a real collaboration or just another marketing arm for SOAPware.

The products and services offered in nearly every industry, at their outset, are so complicated and expensive that only people with a lot of money can afford them, and only people with a lot of expertise can provide or use them … At some point, however, these industries were transformed, making their products and services so much more affordable and accessible that a much larger population of could purchase them, and people with less training could competently provide them and use them … To illustrate how these enablers of disruptive innovation (technology enabler, business model innovation, value network) can combine to transform a high-cost, expertise-intensive product into one that is much more affordable and simple, let’s briefly review how it transformed digital computing … By coupling the technological and business model enablers , IBM transformed the computing industry and much of the world with it, while DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) was swept away. [Dr. Jeff’s Note: read up on computers to see how this will happen with healthcare IT. We don’t have to accept the complex, expensive, unusable systems currently available. They will be replaced by better systems we can all use happily].

(The information above was taken from Clayton M. Christensen’s new book, The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care, Introduction pp. xix-xxi. )

I believe that this is happening with EMRs right now! We now have certain EMRs which are easy to use, simple to learn, affordable and effective. These EMRs will sweep away the complex, expensive clunkers put out by most EMR companies.

Your thoughts?