Leverage Innovation

Web 3.0 is emerging, as a new generation of target handhelds are widely available. Now, there is wide distribution of a thin client (over 37 million Apple iPods, and iPhones) on handheld devices that are truly programmable and interactive, which are the target of a huge number of diverse personal applications services. Local researchers have jumped on the Web 3.0 wave, from IBM’s Almaden San Jose Center who just announced in late May at the AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) meeting in Orlando a service they call the Health-e-Assistant (HeA).  The HeA provides a user-friendly interface to personalized healthcare information that facilitates: 

- Discovery of financial, physical, reference and support social services

- Intelligent analysis and delivery of healthcare information based on personalized needs

- Automated acquisition of the social services to help the patient manage their medical condition 

The system searches continuously drug and disease databases to deliver key treatment information including: treatment options, prevention, symptoms, diagnosis, causes, clinical trials, and complications.  

The service uses a patient profile to collect individualized medical information to be used by the end user. The HeA is bringing together new collaborative web services we have discussed in previous blogs, combined with solid computing architecture and scalability for use by a large number of users.  We expect to see more of these types of personal assistant types of applications evolve for healthcare, as more major players see the opportunity in the market with a ubiquitous handheld client as the target.