Hack Health

Jason Berek-Lewis Founder, Healthy Startups 

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A little late to the party, but inspiring! Hat tip to Marianna Berek-Lewis at www.5678design.com

I'm so excited about Healthivate 2013 bloggers conference in Sydney on 2 March 2013

Jason Berek-Lewis Founder, Healthy Startups 

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This March, I am attending my first bloggers conference and I can barely contain my excitement! Why? Well, just take a look at some of the speakers:

• Jessica Gottlieb One of the World’s Most Influential ‘Mummy Bloggers’ with one million page views per month. She has traveled with Oprah Winfrey, met with President Bill Clinton and appeared on CNN, CBS, Fox News, Dr Phil, Wendy Williams and more while talking about the intersection of parenting, health and technology. 
• Claire Diaz Ortiz Author and speaker who leads social innovation at Twitter. Named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company, she is the author of Twitter for Good: Change the World, One Tweet at a Time.
• Dr George Margelis Over the last 3 decades, Dr George Margelis has been deeply involved in both the healthcare and the technology world, and sees a natural fit between the two. Working on projects in hospital and community care he has been at the forefront of the use of technology. During that time he has remained a staunch supporter of participatory medicine, with a strong focus on building communications between healthcare providers and consumers. George is an active health policy blogger and speaker at local and international events.

I am most excited about listening to and meeting Clare Diaz Ortiz. Twitter has long been my favourite startup - it has revolutionised communication, sharing, networking and democracy. I am looking forward to hearing more about the role Twitter plays in social change, but my biggest interest in Twitter is its ability to empower people to manage their own health.

The event is organised by Kathie Melocco (see http://www.kathiemelocco.com) teacher, coach and speaker on the business of digital storytelling for health care practitioners, pharma, activists, startups and social entrepreneurs. 

By the way, I'll be at Healthivate talking about Healthy Cyborgs (see http://healthystartups.com/founders-blog/2011/11/10/the-rise-of-healthy-cyborgs.html) - hope to see you there!

Healthivate is being held in Sydney, Australia on 2 March 2013. You can find out more about Healthivate and register to come along at http://www.healthivate.com 

100 trends that will change healthcare in 2013

Jason Berek-Lewis Founder, Healthy Startups 

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1 The rise of healthy cyborgs

2 Health app developers go Android first

3 Ambient social networking

4 Health on every screen

5 The internet of things

6 Quantified self goes mainstream

7 Health apps that are not health apps

8 Google Now

9 UI and UX are the new brand differentiation across the whole healthcare experience

10 Context and the adaptive web

11 Healthcare startup clones

12 Mhealth becomes location aware

13 Content creation and curation

14 Seniors become the big healthcare disruptors

15 Medicine without borders

16 Google+ dominates

17 3D printing of tissues, medicines/vaccines, simple medical tools/ devices

18 Massive data

19 Stand up desks

20 Stress monitoring apps

21 Virtual medical tourism

22 Trust ratings

23 Healthcare in a box

24 Smart clothing

25 African startups

26 Apps are the new medicine

27 Wearable tech/ flexible screens

28 Thin is in

29 Health goes green

30 Mobile health clinics

31 The emergence of wellness clinics

32 It's all about nurses

33 China and India

34 The health graph

35 Startups

36 Health maps

37 Patient broadcasters

38 Intrapreneurs

39 Evangelists

40 Call centre medicine

41 Medical tourism

42 The end of privacy

43 Gamification

44 Online patient support groups

45 Less email

46 BYOD

47 iPads in the surgery/ waiting room

48 Analytics everywhere

49 Viral video public health campaigns

50 Virtual assistants

51 Governments look to startups

52 Crowd funding for healthcare

53 Genetic medicine

54 Children are cyborgs

55 Constant Connection Conditions

56 Biotechnology

57 Celebrity angel investors

58 Hospital YouTube Networks

59 Tricorders are real

60 911 Skype/ video calls

61 Memory augmentation

62 Exoskeletons help the paralysed to walk

63 Flexible screens/ devices

64 Digital depression

65 $50 smart phones and $75 tablets - Android dominates the market

66 Online booking for medical appointments

67 The blossoming affair between healthcare/ Silicon Valley 

68 Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records go mainstream

69 Augmented reality and Google Glass

70 In car health

71 Diagnosis via smartphone camera

72 Facebook ads

73 Women lead the healthcare startup revolution

74 Hospitals are the new health startup incubators

75 The interest graph, the knowledge graph and the health graph

76 Photo blogging

77 Push notifications on your smartphone

78 Startups will pay patients to be healthy

79 Tobacco companies market virtual 'healthy' cigarettes

80 Robots as surgeons

81 Startups disrupt medical hardware

82 Microsoft, Google, Apple or Facebook make a big push in mhealth and/ or start acquihiring health startups

83 More doctors, nurses and healthcare workers leave the health system to become entrepreneurs

84 International standards for mHealth

85 University/ College degrees in Digital Medicine

86 Crowd sourced cures

87 Home/ self monitoring

88 Disease specific social networks

89 Doctors are the new search engines

90 iPad guided surgery

91 Health insurer branded Android phones and tablets come preloaded with health apps

92 mHealth inches closer to being a $10 billion+ opportunity

93 Baby Boomers are the new healthcare disruptors

94 Owning your own DNA

95 Workplace wellness programs

96 Entrepreneurs and startups move into aged care

97 .com becomes .yournamehere and changes online healthcare marketing

98 NFC and tap to share apps for exchanging health information and paying for healthcare services

99 Personalised medicine

100 Habit, not monetization, is the number 1 challenge for healthcare entrepreneurs and platform/ app developers

Which trends do you think will shape 2013? Please share your thoughts in the comments below, or you could write a short post for our Startup Blog. If you are interested in contributing to the site, email me on jason AT healthystartups DOT com

Doctors are the new search engines

Jason Berek-Lewis Founder, Healthy Startups 
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With research showing that patients, or healthy cyborgs (see http://healthystartups.com/founders-blog/2011/11/10/the-rise-of-healthy-cyborgs.html), are going online seeking information to spark discussions with their trusted health professionals, and some research showing that 4/5 people search online for health information, it's time for doctors to fight back...  

The trap for healthy cyborgs

The 0s and 1s revolution means that we now have access to more information than at any time in our history. But, how much of the health information online is trustworthy? A 2010 study conducted in the United Kingdom found that only 39 percent of sampled health websites provided accurate information (see http://www.bupa.com.au/staticfiles/Bupa/HealthAndWellness/MediaFiles/PDF/LSE_Report_Online_Health.pdf). The large volume of dubious online health information provides a unique opportunity for medcial professionals to create a new role for themselves in the information economy.

Doctors fight back!

The web now puts nearly infinite amount of information at the finger tips of our parents/patients. This can be good and bad. However, pediatrician(s) are specialist(s) that are educated in a very specific discipline thus making them highly trusted sources of information. This puts them in an excellent position to curate, manage, filter and organize the information that is on the web.

The truth is, there is a lot of bad information out there regarding pediatric health issues. And as long as that information remains unchecked, parents will assimilate it and credit it as factual. But by embracing the web as pediatric curators, pediatricians have the potential to procure the best healthcare related information on the web and share it with their network.

 Brandon Betancourt writing on http://www.kevinmd.com

Our trust in doctors and medical professionals remains strong (see http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2818/Doctors-are-most-trusted-profession-politicians-least-trusted.aspx). Doctors have an opportunity to use this position of trust to become the new curators of health information.

Doctors who understand curation, who know how to use social bookmarking tools like Pinterest, who know where to find the best and most relevant information will be the ones who add real value to care of their patients - whether they are healthy cyborgs or not... 

Do you think patients want their doctors to act as search engines? Are doctors ready to fill this role? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 

5 reasons why your health app will fail

Jason Berek-Lewis Creator, Healthy Startups 
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Image via ihealthstudio.com

Your consumer healthcare app exists for 1 reason only - to change behaviour. If you have created your app to do something else you have already failed. Here are 5 other reasons why your health app will fail:

You are not solving a real problem

What is the genuine problem your app solves? What is the real value offered by a calorie counter, an exercise tracker or a muscle toning guide? 

You might be trying to make it easier for lawn bowls enthusiasts to track their performance, but is there really a need for an app to do that? Why are you creating another tracking app? We already have apps that log how much you eat, how far you run, how often you cycle - we don't need another one.

Perhaps your app helps patients to achieve rock hard abs in only 30 days. That's great for when they head to muscle beach, but really - there are bigger health fish to fry. 

You are trying to solve too many problems

You've seen these in the App Store or Google Play - one stop guides to men's health, looking after your baby or diet shopping lists... These types of apps take to much of a 'catch all' approach to health and end up offering no real value. I once reviewed a men's health app developed by a hospital: the app itself was nicely designed with good intentions, but it tried to cover too many areas of men's health leading to vague content with no real calls to action, even around serious symptoms. With no clear focus the app offered minimum value. Avoid this at all costs.  

You are not providing your users with data they can action 

Many apps, not only health apps, generate streams of data - but what does it all mean? Sorry to keep picking on food apps, but a calorie counter or a prompt thay says my diet only contains 32 percent of my recommended daily intake of calcium isn't really of any value to me. How can I action this? Your food app needs to tell me what steps I need to take to remedy the lack of calcium in my diet. I realise it's difficult for an app to provide specific information for each user, but then why provide this data in the first place? This type of data leads to confusion and users wondering why they ever downloaded your app in the first place.

Your app is too complicated to use 

With the proliferation of mobile devices, our constant connections to the internet and our inability to 'turn off' - things are already too complicated. If your app isn't straight forward or you haven't spent enough time testing the UI with potential users you might find that your users find it all too much. Go for big clear buttons to hit, clean and simple displays of data, straight forward options for sharing data or images. Keep it simple, stupid works. 

Your solution is too easy to clone 

Cloning can be a quicker, surer path to startup success (see Attack of the health startup clones here: http://healthystartups.com/founders-blog/2012/6/10/attack-of-the-healthcare-startup-clones.html) which means that your idea might be replicated by another developer or, worse, improved on by another developer who offers a similar app with more features for a lower price. Take a look at the app stores and see how many tracking apps there are (for example). If your app is too easy to clone, or if there are already similar offerings, how are you going to stand out? How will you avoid vanishing into obscurity? 


Sorry to write such a pessimistic app. Think of it this way: somebody is already doing it wrong. Let them make the mistakes. Make sure you learn from them. Go out and get it right and change health for the better!