Got the sniffles? Tweet about it: The push to share illness data online

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The truth hurts. We’re currently in the throes of flu season with no reassuring end in sight. Whether it’s a fever, the chills, a runny nose or the ever-dreaded stomach bug, recent data trends show that sicklings across America like to share their not-so-pleasant illness narratives on the World Wide Web. According to Boston Children’s Hospital computational epidemiologist John Brownstein, a keynote speaker at this week’s mHealth Summit in DC, we should be thanking these individuals—they’re allowing digital public health companies to capture valuable data to create meaningful insights for users.

Brownstein highlighted several noteworthy collaborations and projects while at the Summit. Boston-based HealthMap currently deploys Google’s “Vaccine Finder,” enabling health consumers to search by location and vaccine type across the United States. In a pilot with UberHealth, HealthMap used Uber cars to help nurses deliver flu vaccines to individuals at work and at home in both New York City and Boston.

Brownstein, one of HealthMap’s chief architects, also highlighted the startup’s cooperation with Yelp to collect reports on food poisoning to track foodborne illnesses—which average about 10,000 cases per year. Through HealthMap’s Outbreaks Near Me app, iOS and Android users can report outbreaks of a variety of illnesses for identification and tracking.

So, to the tissue-hogging, fever-running, congested and unhappy folks out there—keep blogging, keep Tweeting, and keep Facebook posting. HealthMap and other soon-to-be digital public health companies seem to have you covered for now and for the future of illness outbreak tracking.

To hear more from John Brownstein, check out his interview from this week’s mHealth Summit here!

SOURCES: MEDCITY News

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

#IceBucketChallenge Meets the Digital Health Sphere

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There is simply no other way to say it— the #icebucketchallenge to combat ALS has gone viral. With over 2.4 million related videos shared and more than 28 million related posts, many are calling attention to the “pure brilliance” of this campaign on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The Ice Bucket Challenge campaign has generated astounding financial gains for the ALS Association as well. Since July 29, the Association has received more than $22.9 million from roughly 500,000 new donors.

The Ice Bucket Challenge is communally increasing support and awareness of ALS across all industry sectors, including digital health. One particular healthtech company with close ties to the ALS cause, PatientsLikeMe, accepted the Ice Bucket Challenge on August 5^th. Five years prior to the company’s founding in 2004, Ben and Jamie Heywood, Co-founders, received news that their brother had been diagnosed with ALS. The search to build a health data-sharing platform that would allow patients to manage their own conditions was born. Today, PatientsLikeMe is a patient network and real-time research platform that provides support for a variety of diseases including Diabetes, Crohn’s Disease and ALS.  Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, PatientsLikeMe is continuing its disease awareness efforts on a daily basis with online patient support communities, patient profile blog posts—and of course, new Ice Bucket Challenge requests.

Sources: Forbes Magazine, New York Times, and PatientsLikeMe

To learn more about PatientsLikeMe’s investment in the ALS cause and to watch the epic PatientsLikeMe Ice Bucket Challenge, check out this recent blog post!

About DoseSpot

DoseSpot is a Surescripts™ certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

Healthcare Startup Spotlight: AdhereTech

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Startup: AdhereTech
Website: www.adheretech.com
Funding: $2.35 Million as of July 9, 2014
Overview: AdhereTech created patented smart pill bottles to improve medication adherence and patient engagement. These bottles automatically measure if patients are adherent, and all data is wirelessly transmitted and analyzed in real-time. If a dose is missed, AdhereTech reminds the patient via automated phone call or text message – and on-bottle lights and chimes. Additionally, the system can solicit feedback from patients via text or phone call, determining why the dose was missed.

Sources: angel.co/adheretech & adheretech.com

About DoseSpot

DoseSpot is a Surescripts™ certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

ADA 2013 Photo Recap

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It was Halloween and the Rex Sox just won the World Series (go Sox!) as we arrived at ADA 2013, joining a crowd of more than 23,000 dental enthusiasts.  The three day Annual Session was nothing short of outstanding and we are pleased to say we accomplished each item on our bucket list while in New Orleans.  Between the wonderful dentists we met and the awesome food we ate, it was a meeting to be remembered.

Check out a compilation of pictures taken at ADA 2013 below of booth attendees writing their first mock e-Prescription and getting #DoseSpotted!

ADA 2013 Photo Recap

We’re working to compile answers to the most commonly asked questions about e-Prescribing at ADA for our next blog post.  Tweet any questions you have for us @DoseSpot and your question may be featured!

Healthcare Hashtags and Trends

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Utilizing social media in Health IT has its challenges with complex terminology and acronyms.  Every time we tweet from @DoseSpot, the age old debate of whether to use #healthIT or #HIT comes up.  Recently launched, the Healthcare Hashtag Project curated by Symplur, a leading Healthcare Social Media Consultancy, created the project to help individuals and companies address these issues and to:

• Find where healthcare conversations are taking place
• Learn who to follow within a specialty or disease
• Follow trends from conferences in real-time or in archive

The project measures everything from trending hashtags and topics to the most talked about disease states and who is leading the conversations.  We plan to utilize this tool in the following ways:

1. Track trending hashtags when curating Tweets to increase readership
2. Follow influential health IT voices in social media
3. Get involved in conversations at medical meetings by utilizing official conference hashtags

E-Prescribing 101

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Electronic prescribing is not just the ability to send prescriptions electronically to pharmacies. E-Prescribing can also increase care quality in a number of ways:

• E-prescribing makes sure that the prescriber is providing enough specific information for the pharmacist to fill the prescription, including the name of the drug, the dosage, its physical form, the route, and the physician’s instructions.
• Electronic prescribing software eliminates the time and effort of trying to understand the prescriber’s handwriting, as well as the chance of an error in that translation.
• E-prescribing significantly reduces the chance that the prescriber’s intentions are misinterpreted.
• E-prescribing is often used in conjuction with clinical decision support to ensure that any drug to drug interactions or drug to diagnosis issues are found and reported to the physician before the prescription order is completed.

Electronic prescribing is considered one of the most important areas of Healthcare IT, which is why Medicare created payment incentives for physicians who use a qualified e-prescribing system. In 2009, the incentives are an increase of 2% in revenue for each patient when e-prescribing is used. Due to the 2009 HITECH Act, electronic prescribing is required as part of any EMR (EHR) which qualifies for Medicare reimbursement in 2011.