Dmitriy Kruglyak of Trusted.MD has been working up a Provigil webcast, taking place Dec. 13, to be hosted by a doc and sponsored by the biopharma company selling this sleep apnea drug. I think Dmitriy is doing his client a service by promoting the sort of on-line dialogue that consumers are clamoring for. (Presumably the webcast will be littered with the all the sorts of warnings that FDA rules require. When a one-page magazine ad for a prescription drug is followed by another full page of disclaimers, warnings, etc., one starts to wonder about the usefulness of both the ad and the disclaimers. I also wonder how prominent the disclaimers ought to be in the context of a webcast.)
Some of the current hype and gee-whiz atmosphere around "Health 2.0" seems to be confusing the medium with the message. Here’s hoping that the medium can carry the message to (and from) consumers in a manner that is beneficial to all involved.
David, thanks for posting.
Hope you and/or your readers would be able to join the webcast.
In my view, programs like this one is just the natural evolution of patient education formats that already exist. What is new here is focus on bloggers – the new online influencers, whose reach keeps growing.
I have been vocal in saying that instead of meaningless jargon (such as Health 2.0) we need practical programs that can be adopted by institutions that actually provide healthcare – not just a bunch of new dotcoms.
This is a precursor of things to come.