Hive Health

Sermo is a social networking site we have been following here for a little while. It’s bloody successful – 3,000,000 comments, 30,000 discussions and the largest physicians only network with around 50,000 members.  Sermo continuously reinforces its value proposition, making its community secure, more user friendly and in-line with its stated goals and vision.

The Sermo community has had a few tests over the last 8 months or so – each time with naysayers being promptly being put into place by the community. From my old politics days – it was one of the fundamentals of sovereignty that a state provides for its members during peace time and expects those members to look after it when under attack. Perhaps this tenant of nation state theory can be stretched online? I hope so – it make 3 years of my life less of a waste of time!

Initially pharma’s role in this community was seen as something to be defended against. CEO and founder of Sermo Daniel Palestrant stated in an interview with (the ridiculously named) New Paradigm; “As a doctor I thought that other doctors were tired with interacting with Pharma…then we started having more and more members of the community saying, “Hey, where’s Pharma… why aren’t they in the system?”.

Sermo sought further input asking – “Do we want Pharma in here? The result – between 60% – 80% of the community felt a need for Pharma involvement somehow.” This feedback has been taken to heart and given rise to a recent announcement a partnership with Pfizer. Reading this made me feel warm about the benefits of online communities and the requirement physicians have for us lot to be involved.

I am not a loser. But I love learning stuff.  I really delight in finding something that inspires me to alter the way I think or my understanding of things I do everyday. 

The world of online seminars, webcasts, blogs and all the other stuff can often be a source of loads of junk, often presented by some  shiny suited loon, ready to strong-grip-clammy-shake my virtual hand.

It’s not all this way – I love TED, not in a coming out way, but the global community, many million strong which is focused on exchanging and spreading ideas. Whoever you are, wherever you live, you can join the TED community. I would reccomend you do.  

TEDs latest gem – has come from Sir Ken Robinson speaking on Do schools kill creativity?  Sir Ken argues that it’s because we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies – far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity – are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. 

In our business – we need creativity, whether that be conceptual, strategic or just a better way of organising the desks. I really like an approach that encourages anyone to give it a go and be prepared to get it wrong and considers this an integral part of any creative process.

A couple of weekends ago Kathryn and I had the pleasure of attending an Epilepsy Action London Forum meeting at UCL. What we experienced was truly moving, a group of people with epilepsy willing to talk to us openly about their lives. This involved laughter, tears and then more laughter. What an amazing group of individuals.

Marie, who is the Regional Services Manager for the South East told us how difficult it was for her to find the space she needs to hold these meetings. After exchanging emails with her for a few days, she sent me this message:

“I am interested in the footnote to your email about a desk in London. We sometimes need meeting places in London for committees – 8-10 people for about 2hrs is this something that this message might apply to?  ”

I replied in the affirmative. We are now hosting three meetings for Epilepsy Action at our offices over the course of the year. We are pleased and proud to be getting something a little different out of our patient-centric ethic:  the chance to help people directly, even when we’re not at work!

Children with chronic disease often fail to adhere to prescribed treatment regimens, especially self-administered treatments. This is a significant challenge to overcome. Several cognitive and motivational processes are thought to influence adherence, including: (i) knowledge about the therapy and its relationship to health; (ii) perceptions of one’s ability to influence health outcomes (perceived control); and (iii) confidence in one’s ability to meet the demands of treatment and recovery (self-efficacy). This is true of both children and adults, although the specific barriers to adherence most likely differ depending on age. Children-specific interventions to improve adherence, in my experience, fail to engage. And engagement is a necessary component of effectiveness.
Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled across Re-Mission, a computer game designed to improve adherence to self-administered chemotherapy in children with cancer. In the game, players control a tiny robot, called ‘Roxxi’ (strangely attractive, see picture) within the body of a young cancer patient – the objective is to ensure that the virtual patients engage in self-care behaviours, such as taking oral chemotherapy to combat the cancer cells, taking antibiotics to fight infection, using relaxation techniques to reduce stress, and eating food to gain energy. The game is very playable, and there’s something intrinsically therapeutic about blasting the crap out of a malignant cancer cell, even for me

I know what the cynical among you are thinking, because I thought it to. Gimmick. And that’s why I was especially pleased to learn that Re-Mission had been evaluated in a peer-reviewed journal, and that the evaluation is positive. The conclusion? “The video-game intervention significantly improved treatment adherence and indicators of cancer-related self-efficacy and knowledge in adolescents and young adults who were undergoing cancer therapy. The findings support current efforts to develop effective video-game interventions for education and training in health care.“