Data Revolution in Healthcare and Lifesciences Industry

If you need profits..if you really want to make it big in the top line...Read ON... It is important to differentiate between current visitors and target audience. If your stats are able to, the important information is return visitors and where they come from. There will always be random visitors from all over the world, arriving via search engines. They add to visitor numbers and page views, but what you need are visitors that bookmark your site and use it as a resource. They are the visitors who travel through many pages each visit, who read the content, and who are in a better mood to notice relevant advertisements. Many search engine visitors will only visit for a few seconds then go somewhere else. The advantage of Google Ads is that you get paid per click-through, regardless of whether the visitor ends up buying anything. From this point of view, it doesn't really matter where they come from - if they can read English there's a 1-3% chance they'll click on an ad. It i...

Creating support groups is a good Idea. The final destination should be linked to form the body of the page people originally arrived at, and given a much better impresssion of the depth of information your site contains. I suggest that the Support Group section be merged with Conditions section. The visitor should be able to visit your home page, click on Conditions, click on Epilepsy (See Epilepsy Journals from The Lancet as well), and reach a page that links to all the info your site has on the topic. When I get to the Epilepsy page, I would like to see a menu prominently displayed in the center of the page, that links to: - Introduction - Definition - Causes - Charateristics - Diagnosis - Treatment - Tips for living with Epilepsy - Articles - Myths surrounding epilepsy - Do's and Don'ts - Epilepsy & Women - Famous people with epilepsy - VNS Therapy - Support Groups Fixing the Navigation --------------------- What needs to be done is this, for each ailment, remedy or gen...

Revenue-------Your focus should be on advertisements. Web users don't mind qualityPortals having a banner ad at the top of the page, and Google Ads havethe ability to provide ads relevant to page content. Getting doctorsor hospitals to pay for inclusion in a your directory only becomesviable when they sense they *need* to be listed. Consider how longYahoo took before they charged for inclusion as the correct model. Which is the better option, from your visitors’ point of view? 1. A complete directory, supported by ads2. A patchy directory, supported by submission fees Revenue by section------------------In general, I do not think any gain can be made from dividing yoursite into sections for revenue purposes. Although there may be theoccasional section of your site worthy of special attention, it is notcommon for large sites to complicate their advertising in this way. If an individual page receives a lot of visitors, then a staticadvertisement that ties in well with the topic of t...

The IT and dotcom revolution has given the people a chance to explore business opportunities that never existed in the past. And they have taken those opportunities with both hands. Among them have been those looking for opportunities in the healthcare market. The absolute increase in population argues automatically in favour of a growing market for health care and health care products. The increasing levels of literacy and eduction argue likewise. The dissemination of information through the internet makes health care as a dotcom proposition sound more than a remote business opportunity. The rest of course depends upon individual business acumen and the ability to convert a chance into an opportunity and an opportunity into a viable business. Among the better known health care portals now up and running in India are: healthlibrary.com apollohealth.satyamonline.com 3. goodhealthyou.com 4. webhealthcenter.com 5. mdspeak.com 6. indmedica.com 7. doctoranywhere.com 8. healthcarehouse.com ...

Creating a successful company in any industry is a challenge, but the unique characteristics of the Internet make it particularly difficult. Still, e-health is considered by many to be the most promising hope for the information- and service-driven healthcare industry. Due to its sheer size, even a small increase in efficiency can produce billions of dollars in savings. Since the Internet has only existed in its current form for about 7 years, there is tremendous uncertainty about how to create a profitable Internet business. Popular trends wax and wane, and a company lucky enough to catch one can see tremendous, albeit temporary, success. What will support a start-up in the long term are its fundamentals. We have identified 4 fundamental factors that seem to be the most important in predicting the success or failure of an Internet company. These are: (1) a compelling value, (2) an unambiguous revenue model, (3) competitive barriers to entry, and (4) organizational structure for cost c...

E-Health portals are but one component of the growing trend toward total connectivity in healthcare. An effective e-health portal can be an important first step in helping organizations enter the e-healthcare arena and prepare for the future in which communication, claims submission, purchasing and other activities are all done online. By creating an effective e-health portal today, health plans and employers will be providing a valuable service to their members and employees and ensuring they are ready for the future of healthcare as well.

Provide interesting and meaningful content. The single most important element for an effective e-health portal is relevant and meaningful content. If the information on the site isn't interesting; if it doesn't encourage members or employees to visit a site, the employer or health plan sponsor will not be able to secure the benefits an e-health portal strategy can provide. Integrate the information with important benefit information. While people go to Internet sites to research healthcare information, as many e-health firms have discovered, content alone is not enough. The best sites today integrate meaningful educational content with pertinent health plan information and services involving claims, benefits, enrollment, provider directories, member services, and medical management programs. Provide a variety of information. A comprehensive and effective e-health portal allows health plan members to access the latest healthcare news and articles from consumer magazines and clin...

The majority of the population of the country is excluded from any statutory recognition of right to health. Constitutional recognition can, at the highest, only provide the framework for further statutory inroads. Judicial pronouncements, then, acquire significance. With the advent of public interest litigation, a large number of issues concerning the poor and marginalized are being agitated in courts across the land. It is important to follow the thinking of the courts on these issues. Even though judicial pronouncements may not have the same breadth as statutory laws, they constitute the law as applicable in given situations. Besides, these pronouncements give legitimacy, recognition and social acceptance to various ideas and constructs which can be used for strengthening rights based campaigns around issues.This Reader mainly looks at the Constitutional recognition and judicial pronouncements. These case law form the foundation of the right to health care and can support any furthe...

The idea of providing health information on the Internet never really went away, it just had a little relapse. One of the Web's most well-known health sites -- DrKoop.com, founded in 1997 by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop -- set a bad example when it had a much-publicized heart attack. The site went public in 2000 and at one point had a market value of more than $1 billion. But the company foundered and was delisted by Nasdaq only a year later. The site name was purchased for $186,000 by Vitacost and the brand is now operated by a group called MDchoice. The good news for health consumers -- which ultimately includes all of us -- is that reliable health-care information is becoming more widely available than ever. The upshot of this may be of great significance to you or your company. New Entrants Offer Expanded Health Info Three sites typify the new wave of health portals that are changing the way people get information about diseases, medications and treatments: • Pat...

.....Even though the Indian health insurance market grew by 38% in 2006-07, only ... were no third party administrators operating in India, and there was no direct settlement of claims between health Insurer and hospital. There were therefore issues concerning... Even though the Indian health insurance market grew by 38% in 2006-07, only 1.08% of India’s billion plus population has medical insurance. The general perception is that the prospects for growth in this sector of the insurance market are good. Background Health insurance policies were first introduced in 1986 at a time when the Indian insurance industry was nationalised. The policies on offer were complicated to read and offered limited cover. There were no third party administrators operating in India, and there was no direct settlement of claims between health Insurer and hospital. There were therefore issues concerning claims servicing, which involved an Insured following cumbersome procedures to get claims authenticated a...

Smart card technology holds great promise for the healthcare industry The Smart Card Alliance has formed a Healthcare Council to bring together payers, providers and technologists to promote the adoption of smart cards in U.S. healthcare organizations. Smart card technology is increasingly being used in healthcare applications to enable secure access to patient information to improve both care-giving and administration. "Smart card technology holds great promise for the healthcare industry," said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. "The Healthcare Council provides a forum where all the stakeholders can collaborate to educate the market on how the smart cards can be used and to work on issues inhibiting the industry." Dr. Paul Davis, Council co-chair and CEO of Uniliance Health, outlined the priorities for the Council. "There are numerous initiatives around the world using smart cards for a variety of secure healthcare app...

Between 1987 and 1996, there was a shocking 30% decline in the use of public healthcare facilities in both rural and urban areas. Over this decade, utilisation of private health services, especially in the hospital sector, increased substantially, out-of pocket spending on healthcare galloped, and indebtedness due to healthcare affected nearly half the users of healthcare facilities. A comparison of utilisation and health expenditure data across the 42nd (1987) and 52nd (1996) Rounds of the NSS showed up these alarming trends. As a consequence of the declining use of public healthcare facilities, the 52nd Round showed higher levels of untreated morbidity, especially amongst poorer groups. The 2002 National Health Policy unashamedly acknowledges that the public healthcare system is grossly short of its defined requirements, that functioning is far from satisfactory, that morbidity and mortality due to easily curable diseases continue to be unacceptably high, and resource allocations gen...

Less than 1% of our health budget is spent on mental health By Soumitra Pathare Mental health disorders account for nearly a sixth of all health-related disorders. Yet we have just 0.4 psychiatrists and 0.02 psychologists per 100,000 people, and 0.25 mental health beds per 10,000 population. If access to mental healthcare is to be improved, mental healthcare must be provided at the community and primary level Mental disorders are grossly underestimated by the community and health system in India and across the world. It is estimated that in 2000, mental disorders accounted for 12.3% of disability adjusted life years (DALY) and 31% of years lived with disability. Projections suggest that the health burden due to mental disorders will increase to 15% of DALY by 2020 (Murray and Lopez 1996). Thus mental disorders account for nearly a sixth of all health-related disability. Despite this, most countries devote 1% or less...