With the explosion of healthcare information technology companies providing tools and resources for consumers, finding a business model to enable Health 2.0 to flourish is the market's next big question, said the moderator of a Health 2.0 Conference panel this week.
Scott Shreeve, MD, founder of CrossOver Healthcare, told conference attendees that the market is at a point where it needs to cross the "chasm" and get "real busy, real fast."
Against the bigger picture of Fortune 50 companies scrutinizing the market to determine investments, evaluating criteria for implementation, measuring ROI and setting time horizons, four organizations presented their business case.
Kaiser Permanente focuses on a business model that centers on members accessing relevant data and having decision-support tools to take action, said Anna-Lisa Silvestre, Kaiser's vice president of online services.
The goal is to empower members to drive better management of their healthcare, she said.
Kaiser Permanente's metrics - 40 percent of members possessing active personal health records, 1 million page views per month and tripling of the adoption rate - are evidence of the success of its online services, Silvestre said.
In an effort to expand its business beyond current platforms, NBC Universal Digital Health has partnered with online companies to provide programming on their sites, said Mitzi Reaugh, the company's general manager.
With Jupiter Research reporting that 46 percent of all online consumers want healthcare information in video format, NBC Universal Digital Health is combining text and video to give users a more comprehensive experience.
Different models - advertising, subscription and license fees - work for different customers, Reaugh said. Variations in models are important because value and what will gain traction varies among partners and consumers, she said.
Safeway partnered with DestinationRX to provide a transparency tool for its employees regarding therapeutic equivalents. Ken Shachmut, vice president of health initiatives for Safeway, said the company ran the numbers and discovered a 20 percent savings on pharmaceutical spend for the food and drug company, whose healthcare spend topped $1 billion.
Health 2.0 helps Pfizer understand how technology is going to engage its multiple customers, how devices and health and wellness programs complement its products and how the longitudinal data collected in electronic health records are going to impact its business and the pharmaceutical industry, said Vita Cassese, vice president of Worldwide Innovation.
"The way we dialogue with customers is changing," she said. Pfizer is collaborating with Sermo to learn how to dialogue through social networking and how to drive true peer-to-peer physician discussions.
So far, it's been a successful collaboration, Cassese said. The discussions have resulted in better feedback, which leads to tailored product information, more meaningful clinical trial designs and a real-time understanding of how Pfizer products are perceived in the marketplace.