Insurance companies want us to be healthy. Really, they do. They have our interests at heart, and they defend those interests with an unusual zeal. This is why I am wondering which details might be missing from the tale of Natalie Blanchard.
According to the Associated Press, Blanchard, a 29-year-old IBM employee from Bromont, Quebec, was suffering from depression and took time away from work, relying on sick-leave benefits from her insurer, Manulife Financial.
The monthly payments were suddenly halted. When she called Manulife to ask why, she says she was told that it had espied photos on her Facebook page that showed her cheerful. Ergo, the argument allegedly went, she was able to work. Which led to the second ergo: no more payments.
The pictures, about which I am sure you are already wondering, were of her at a show featuring those tensing torsos, the Chippendales, as well as at a birthday party and on a beach holiday.
Depression is a nasty business. Cures are not exactly logical. And Blanchard says she went on three trips, each of a four-day duration, after consulting with her psychiatrist.
Manulife, while confirming (footage from Sky News embedded here) that it does use social-networking sites to, well, check up on its customers, also said, "We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on Web sites such as Facebook."
Perhaps you, too, have some questions. What sort of a life is it when you spend your days trawling social-networking sites to sniff around your customers' personal existence? How is it that Manulife observed Blanchard's photos? Did she leave her Facebook page entirely open, or could it be that she had her insurance agent as one of her Facebook friends? Was she, indeed, already under suspicion before the Facebook trawling began?
December 8, this case will be heard in the Quebec Superior Court. Surely, we will learn a little more about Natalie Blanchard and a little more about Manulife. Perhaps Facebook could provide a live feed from the proceedings?
Social networking is on the rise, both on and off the job, leaving companies uncertain how to monitor their use by employees, reports new survey.
More than 50 percent of companies questioned said they have no policy to address the use of social networking by employees outside the workplace, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association.
Typically, companies shy away from restricting an employee's actions off the job. But businesses are concerned about employees who use social networking and reveal private details or post inappropriate pictures that could embarrass the company.
Some organizations, such as the U.S. Marines, have already banned their recruits from using Facebook and Twitter. But the survey found that many businesses aren't sure what to do to restrict or monitor such usage.
Of the companies questioned in the survey, 34 percent said they have a general employee policy that addresses all online activity, including the use of social networking, both on and off the job. Only 10 percent said they have a policy specifically geared toward social networks.
More than half of the individuals said their company has no active system to monitor employees using social-networking sites. Around 32 percent said their company acts only when an issue is discovered.
Of all those surveyed, 24 percent said an employee in their company had been disciplined for inappropriate behavior on a social network, while 37 percent did not know. The percentage was higher in the nonprofit sector, noted the survey, with 33 percent reporting an employee incident versus only 13 percent in the for-profit sector.
"Business clearly hasn't caught up with what its employees are doing online," said Roy Snell, CEO of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. "The risks are twofold. First there remains the business risk of employees doing things online that may reflect badly on the company. The second is that, as business develops policies and procedures in this area, there are going to be a lot of people finding that what they have long done is no longer acceptable at work. During the adjustment period there is likely to be a great deal of friction created."
To conduct the survey in late August, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance compiled responses from 798 people in both profit and nonprofit organizations, as well as government agencies.
Rachael was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003. After surgery and beginning the onslaught of radiation therapy, she went online to search for information--"lurking," she calls it. What she found was much more than scientific information about her disease.
"Here was a community of ladies who had been there, done that," she said. "A real treat when you are overwhelmed and stressed to your limits."
Now, six years later, Rachael (who for purposes of anonymity prefers not to use her last name) is an active member of health information site WebMD. She checks in several times throughout the day and has written literally thousands of posts on medical information, personal experiences, or simple consolatory messages.
She's also just one the 61 percent of American adults who look online for medical advice and information, according to "The Social Life of Health Information," a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and the California HealthCare Foundation.
This report shows that more Americans are reading commentaries about medical issues, consulting rankings or reviews of doctors, or listening to health-related podcasts.
A smaller group of so-called e-patients, 20 percent, actively post comments and reviews on different online list-servs, blogs, or message boards. Rachael, for example, fits into this group. "We are beginning to see e-patients turning to interactive features both to help them find information tailored to their needs and to post their own contributions," said Susannah Fox, co-author of the report and associate director of Pew's Internet & American Life Project.
In 2000, 25 percent of American adults looked online for health information. Now, it's more than double and the majority are happy with the results they find, according to the report. Only a small portion of e-patients, 3 percent, say they or someone they know has been harmed by following medical advice found on the Internet.
It seems only natural that more people are turning to the Internet for health information because the entire medical landscape is also beginning to go digital. Hospitals and insurance companies, like Kaiser Permanente, are moving toward entirely paperless digital-only records, and in February, President Obama signed a stimulus bill that gives $19 billion to hospitals to improve their technology efforts.
Also, online health digitization goes hand-in-hand with social networking. Sydney Jones, co-author of the report and research assistant at the Pew Internet Project, points out that "the early Internet provided e-patients online tools that enabled research. Now the mobile, social Internet enables connection and conversation." These online conversations can be with other patients, doctors, pharmacists, and other health care providers.
Even though more Americans are using social networking or looking online for health-related information, the Internet still comes in third (tied with books) for sources that people turn to for assistance. According to the report, people are still going to doctors first and talking to friends or family members second.
"They treat the Internet as a supplement to traditional sources of information," said Fox, "using blogs, podcasts, and other online resources to deepen their understanding of a condition and sharpen their questions for a health professional."
In essence, this is why Rachael was drawn to her online community, she found an enhancement to the traditional information she was getting. "These individuals held out their hands to 'newbies,' gave all shoulders to cry on," she said. "Finding all the members not only receptive, but giving and caring kept me returning."
Just recently, Softbank Mobile, Japan's biggest cell phone carrier, signed a deal with Aoyama Gakuin University to provide iPhone 3Gs to 1,000 students to keep tabs of their attendance via the phone's Global Positioning System. The company now has a plan to equip the same amount of elementary-school students with GPS phones.
The iPhone 3G is one of the most popular GPS-enabled cell phones.
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)However, the purpose this time is much more serious than nabbing truants. As reported by the Associated Press, this is to test how GPS-enabled cell phones can help track the spreading of an infectious disease and stop it from becoming a pandemic. This is part of the Japanese government's effort to promote Japan's Internet and cellular infrastructure to new users.
This government-backed experiment uses a virtual sickness that is highly contagious. A few months from now, a few students will be chosen to be "infected" with this sickness. Their movements will then be tracked via their cell phones and compared with other students. Stored GPS data can then be used to determine which children have crossed paths with the infected students and are at risk of having contracted the disease.
The families of exposed students will be notified via cell phone messages with instructions on how to get them checked out by doctors. In a real-world outbreak, this could help better control the rate of new infections.
The significance of this level of control is demonstrated via Softbank's calculation: If an infected person spreads the illness to another three people per day, and each newly infected person then makes another three people sick, on the 10th day about 60,000 people would catch the disease. However, if each sick person only infected two people a day, after 10 days, then only about 1,500 people would get sick.
... Read More
Wireless industry wants in on health care stimulus money
Wireless industry is hoping it can reap the rewards of billions of dollars being spent on health care technology as part of the economic stimulus package.(Posted in Wireless by Marguerite Reardon)
April 7, 2009 4:00 AM PDT
Google Health expands deal with CVS
Customers of CVS' pharmacy will now be able to import their prescription records into Google Health.(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
April 6, 2009 12:48 PM PDT
Dell aims to grab more health care dollars
The hardware maker announced it is partnering with Perot Systems and Sam's Club to be a bigger player in the digitization of medical records.(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
April 6, 2009 11:54 AM PDT
N.Y. hospital taps Microsoft to digitize records
New York-Presbyterian Hospital will use the software maker's technology to help make health records electronically available to patients.(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
April 5, 2009 9:00 PM PDT
Updated March 5 at 10 a.m. to clarify link policy, and at 12:20 p.m. to address privacy concerns.
Google Health has introduced a new feature that lets people share their online health records with designated doctors, friends, and family members.
Google said the move is in response to people's concerns that caregivers and loved ones might not be up-to-date on all the details of a patient's health situation, especially in the event of an emergency.
Google Health now lets people share medical information online with caregivers and loved ones.
(Credit: Google)Sameer Samat, director of product management at Google, explained his personal impetus behind the new feature in a company blog post on Wednesday:
Just a few years ago, my father suffered a minor heart attack and was sent to the ER. I arrived on the scene in a panic, and was asked what medications he was taking. To my surprise, I had no clue. If my father had a Google Health account, and had shared his profile with me, I would have been up-to-date on his current medications.
Along with the sharing feature, Google added a graphing feature that lets people enter lab results and visually track trends in their medical test results, such as their cholesterol levels.
Google Health also lets people create graphs to track trends in their medical test results.
(Credit: Google)Recognizing the sensitive nature of sharing health records, Google said it has built in several security measures to preserve privacy. Users choose who can view their histories, and the link to the patient's profile will work only in connection with those people's e-mail addresses--meaning the link won't work if it is forwarded to a third party. Users can also decide what information they want to share, and those allowed to view the profile will not have the ability to edit the data. Users will also be able to see exactly who has reviewed the profile.
However, one security measure that is a bit confusing is a feature that restricts the usability lifespan of the e-mailed link to only 30 days. Unless the user is diligent about regularly sending links to loved ones, this protection could negate the feature's value in the event of an emergency. While this was initially interpreted by some to refer to a continuous process of sending e-mail links to partners, it apparently applies only to the initial invitation.
Google also announced a feature that lets users print wallet- and letter-size hard copies of their profile, including medications, allergies, conditions, and treatments. But the value of these printouts may be questionable if they are not updated regularly.
Users concerned with privacy should also note that Google Health isn't regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a federal law designed to protect patients' privacy. Google also admits that some employees will have access to users' records.
"Within Google, only the people who are operating and improving Google Health have access to user information, and they are bound by strict policies to not disclose this information to others, either within Google or to the outside world," Google said in a help page.
Google Health, which is dedicated to the digitization of health records, launched in May 2007. Microsoft has also planned a medical records service called HealthVault. President Obama, meanwhile, has made it clear that he plans to make digital health records part of his health care reform agenda.
AOL announced partnerships to bolster its AOL Health site with content from Caring.com, Health.com, and HealthCare.com, the Time Warner subsidiary said Monday.
Caring.com has information about helping care for elderly parents; Health.com is part of Time's Health brand; and HealthCare.com will supply AOL with access to its search facility for medical and dental professionals, AOL said.
AOL shows targeted advertising supplied by AOL's ad business, Platform-A, on its health site, which is part of the company's larger AOL Living site.
"Our goal at AOL Health is to create a comprehensive network of information that will help the entire family take care of their health needs," said Stephanie Dolgins, senior vice president of AOL women's and lifestyle programming, in a statement.
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