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News

April 20, 2011 - By Deb Linton   0 6

This week, American Well goes mass market. They’ve been the leader in creating an online marketplace where consumers and physicians can process care via health plans using the basic health plan billing and coverage infrastructure. At least, that had been their strategy since they first introduced the product at Heath 2.0 back in 2008.  However, this week, they are providing a system that practices can adopt directly and offer to their patients without needing a plan affiliation. Check out The Health Care Blog for more info.

Wal-Mart has bought search & content site Kosmix for a reported $300M. Kosmix has been doing various things around presentation of search information from different sites and places on the web (including an interesting mash-up of Twitter calledTweetbeat. But it’s most of interest to us as its flagship RightHealth site has been a leader in Health 2.0. See Tech Crunch or The Health Care Blog for details.

Health 2.0 would like to publicly thank WiserCare for donating $500 to the Health 2.0 Japan Relief Fund. They not only helped us reach our goal but inspired us to set our own bar a little higher. Although we reached our inital goal of raising $1000 with our matching donations, we’ve set a new goal of $2000. Thanks to the support of groups like WiserCare and individuals like Ethan Austin of GiveForward or Adam Gross atTufts Health we know this new goal is possible. We have only $306 to go and there’s still time to donate!

MIT’s New Media Medicine group is posting a series of videos on their Health and Wellness Innovation week. They used used the Kinect, Wii, and other health sensors in some really interesting applications, many of which leverage MIT’s CollaboRhythmplatform. You can find most of the videos on the New Media Medicine blog or check back with Health 2.0 for a detailed report later this month.

HealthTap launched a beta of its free interactive health and wellness platform. The site offers tailored information unique to each user based on their individual health characteristics. Initially focused on pregnancy and the first year of life, HealthTap will soon expand to cover health for all. More information can be found here.

The maker of Epocrates raised $10.8M for their latest start up, Doximity. The platform enables physicians to use their iPhone, iPad, Android device or computer to connect with other healthcare professional in the U.S. to collaborate on patient treatment and patient referrals. Series A venture capital came from Emergence Capital Partners andInterWest Partners. See TechCrunch for a quick video tour of Doximity.

Gary Thompson, Co-Founder & CEO of the Consortium for Local Ownership and Use of Data (CLOUD) asks the question: If in the physical world, people are connected by a contextual layer – shouldn’t it be the same in the semantic web? Read his post about CLOUD, an Austin-based organization, that believes the Internet will be navigated using a language called CTML, which stands for “contextual markup language” and what that could mean for improved care. Be sure to check out his recent TEDx talkhere.

Healthline Networks,  provider of intelligent health information services, announced the addition of major publishing partners to its Media Network, including DoctorOz.com,DailyStrength, DailyRx, Inspire, and the Forward Health publisher group, which includes properties such as Women’s Health Base, Men’s Health Base, All-Allergiesand Good Cholesterol Count. The addition of Ask.com, the first Q&A site to join the Media Network, will allow advertisers to reach millions of consumers seeking answers to health-related questions. The Media Network and HealthSTAT contextual targeting aim to provide these advertisers with vehicles to reach consumers without compromising privacy.

Fooducate interviewed Dr. Alan Greene about his WhiteOut Campaign which was recently featured at our Health 2.0 conference. WhiteOut aims to end infant white rice cereal consumption by Thanksgiving 2011 as it is the metabolic equivalent of feeding children straight sugar. We’re happy to see these two nutritional initiative join forces and encourage you to learn more about how they’re taking on the obesity epidemic.

Our friends at MeYou Health just launched Path to Well-Being, a calm but interactive Facebook app that helps individuals evaluate their well-being and determines where they can make easy health improvements. Anyone with a Facebook account can check it out for a quick well-being check-up or you can read more here.