As I accepted my degree upon graduation from medical school, I dreamed first about the patients that I would meet and treat from that day forward. However, for the past +1 year, I left my patients and medical practice to start and grow the diabetes apps that I have created with Duet Health so as to reach patients that I will never talk to, know, or treat but that will benefit from these products.
Missing my patients, I have recently dared to ask: is it possible to be both a practicing doctor...
...and a mobile health entrepreneur defining new treatments and boundaries in medicine?
I have learned that dreams can come true if you are daring enough to dream them and then go after them. So...
I have recently accepted an amazing opportunity to both practice medicine at an amazing local Columbus Ohio private practice called COPEDS AND to continue my work with Duet Health as well as growing the EndoGoal Diabetes App (rewards program). At this practice, I am charged with adding new technologies to an already successful and patient-centered practice for children with diabetes and endocrine disorders. I am certainly living the dream...and very happy with my new marriage. :)
EndoGoal, my new diabetes app and new version of the EndoGoddess app, is ready for download on both iOS and Android platforms! Who is the app for? ANYONE with diabetes (kids, teens, adults) that is on insulin therapy. Given that 6 million Americans are on insulin therapy for diabetes, it's highly likely that we all know at least one person. Curious how it works? Check out the demo video here. We are looking for employers that would like to decrease their health insurance premiums and use the app program for their employees with diabetes. Please contact me if you or your company would like to know more! :)
As a pediatric endocrinologist and health behavior researcher, I am familiar with what works in diabetes, what doesn't work in diabetes, and what is needed. That is why I designed the EndoGoddess App and now the EndoGoal App, a turn key mobile software engagement program with new rewards and a virtual pet feature named Cooper. The app utilizes an award-winning mobile platform created by Columbus-based startup, Duet Health. A first of its kind solution, the EndoGoal App creates unique incentives for patients to track their glucoses.
Just like the EndoGoddess App, the EndoGoal App is a glucose journal with a points feature that leads to rewards.
The EndoGoal App now allows you to enter multiple numbers with comments as well although you only need to record 4 glucoses per day to receive rewards. The journal is easy to share by email with your doctor too.
One such reward includes the virtual pet feature. Everytime you record your glucoses with each meal, you get to feed Cooper too. He is along for your journey, you special diabetes dog.
In the coming weeks, the 'real' rewards will include being able to make real purchases on Amazon or real dollars in a health savings account if your employer signs up for the EndoGoal Wellness Program. The application provides an exceptional opportunity for employers to provide a valuable service to employees who have to deal with diabetes. If you are interested in learning more and having us discuss with your Wellness Programming, please send me an email (drjenshinedyer@gmail.com) or sign up on endogoal.com.
Download the EndoGoal App on your Apple products today! Android version to be available soon. Real rewards. Real results.
Crowdfunding is
certainly a trendy, hot topic right now. However, more important, it should never be forgotten that the wisdom of the
crowd can do great things. For example, thanks to introductions and
partnerships through crowdfunding platform MedStartr, I am now able to relaunch
my EndoGoddess Diabetes App Clinical Trial fundraiser for $5,000 rather than $25,000. The
incredible price drop is due to a partnership with the social clinical research
platform, Genomera.
Genomera is a
Silicon-Valley startup founded by Internet and health veterans, who have
created a platform that brings the crowd to research. Users, or potential
research participants, log in and find ongoing studies that they would like to
participate in. By filling out surveys and self-reported health data at various
intervals with small gift certificate incentives, recruitment and data collection can
transpire without the need for hiring nurse coordinators. Furthermore, the
platform allows for a wider geographical sampling of app users and a richer, more 'real-life' data set.
Please consider
supporting the EndoGoddess App crowdfunding clinical trial if this is a trend
that you would like to see as one option to reduce rising healthcare costs and to improve healthcare quality by the efficient study of mobile health options like the EndoGoddess App: http://www.medstartr.com/projects/19-endogoddess-diabetes-app-clinical-trial-fundraiser
The EndoGoddess recently won a gold medal this past weekend. Well, not exactly a gold medal, but rather a golden moment at last weekend's American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) Annual Meeting in Indianapolis. In a popular session on the power of social media for diabetes educators called "Power Your Practice In Our Socially Networked World' advocates Hope Warshaw, Manny Hernandez, David Edelman, and Amy Tenderich, the EndoGoddess App was mentioned as a great source for helping patients (and diabetes educators) navigate how to get involved in social media.
In the above app screenshot, upon opening the medical content button on the bottom toolbar, the 'Get Involved' tab gives instruction on how to participate in weekly twitter chats such as #dsma as well as listing several popular diabetes blogs and online communities. The session and the meeting are nicely summarized here with a few notable tweets as follows:
I am proud that the EndoGoddess App offers value to certified diabetes educators (CDEs) who can provide the app as resource to their patients which then opens the door to them and the healing that can come from connecting with those in the DOC (diabetes online community). Perhaps the 'nervousness' noted by diabetes educators (CDEs) about social media for diabetes will improve to empowerment!
I recently returned home from several fun-filled days at the Roche Diabetes Social Media Summit in Indianapolis. Roche pioneered the idea of an open exchange between pharma and patient advocates first in 2009. Roche is a company that knows the power of dialogue with customers and strives to make it happen with the now 4th Annual Roche Social Media Summit. While this effort obviously benefits Roche's bottom line, it also benefits patients in getting products that are needed and wanted in order to live a vibrant and 'vogue-filled' life with diabetes (as in the picture above).
Here are a few highlights:
We started out by sharing fellowship and fun with friends and other diabetes warriors like Kerri Sparling of the popular blog sixuntilme.com.
We were then inspired by Josh Bliell, spokesperson for the Indianapolis Colts, who shared his story of recovery from a double amputation while in combat in Iraq. His recover was difficult, but utimately he found the inspiration to take his first steps toward walking...and healing. "I met celebrities and politicians while hospitalized but it was another solider with the same injury that inspired me to take my first step". He concluded with a message that our voices as diabetes advocates are powerful for such healing.
We then toured Roche headquarters in Indianapolis where we saw the process involved in Accu-check glucose strip manufacturing and product testing. We also got to speak with Roche executives as to the future of diabetes technology and innovations. Some of the things that we got to see were proprietary so I cannot write about the specifics. However, it was clear from the discussion that data integration between devices is a common goal for the future shared by both advocates and pharma executives. As an app developer and technology entrepreneur focused on the initial steps to glucose meter and app data integration within the Endo App Products (stay tuned for new launch details in the coming months), I was happy to hear that we are all on the same page. This makes the goal of data integration which is VERY much needed now VERY much possible.
We then attended the Indianapolis Indians baseball game where the mascot (a bear I think) was very friendly! I am wearing one of my Camp Sweeney diabetes camp tshirts, easily one of the most influential experiences in my diabetes education. In fact, camp was my first exposure to the power and healing that comes from interacting with the diabetes community. I guess you can say that camp is the original offline version of the DOC (diabetes online community)! Tales of diabetes camp were discussed often throughout the event by both patient advocates and Roche employees.
While at the baseball game, we all got to experience a first with friend and diabetes advocate, Kelly Kunik, as noted in the above video: her first tasting of cotton candy! She blogged about how dispelling myths about diabetes by eating cotton candy and doing so with other advocates without having to worry about ignorance or judgement was a special experience in itself: http://diabetesaliciousness.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-cotton-candy-experience.html
On the last day, we got to meet Steve Richert. Steve was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 16 years old but never let it stop him from doing the things he loves, such as mountain climbing. Living Vertical is a fundraising project and documentary that he started earlier this year to raise awareness for living life with diabetes without boundaries. It is his dream to one day be a guide for those with diabetes that desires to climb mountains. "Climbing mountains is do-able for anyone, the limitations are only in your head, it can be done." He left us with the message that in mountain climbing and in diabetes, nothing is impossible.
In conclusion, while initially the summit inspired listening by a pharma company to patient advocates, I learned that pharma needs patient advocates to listen to their concerns too in order for us both to achieve our common goal of making life with diabetes easier. Roche executives we met agreed with patient advocates that the rate of technology progress is too slow in the United States as compared to Europe where products are released 4 years earlier due to less regulation hurdles. Pharma needs the patient voice and their concerns to not only circulate via social media but to also enter the communitcation channels used by the regulatory bodies that impede diabetes innovation while also maintaining safety. Suggestions for action to be done by advocates: FDA consumer comment submission, participation, attendance, and joining forces with diabetes advocacy organizations already working on technology advocacy. It was unanimous amongst the group that next year's summit be in Washington DC and related to furthering this 'advocacy and democracy' mission...translating the "D" in diabetes, the DOC, and DSMA to democracy for patients! Many thanks to Roche for being a partner with patients. :)
A complete list of the diabetes patient advocates in attendance at Roche Diabetes Social Media Summit 2012 with their twitter handles and blogs is as follows:
(*Disclaimer: Roche paid for my travel expenses to this event as a diabetes patient advocate for which I am very grateful. All opinions are my own. As I am not currently active in clinical practice at this time, there are no related practitioner policy violations.)
I am proud to bring you this Wednesday's edition of a week's review of topics over the past week in health care social media news.
After this past week's tragic Colorado movie massacre, a vibrant discussion of the role of social media in healthcare emergencies occurred on this past week's Sunday night #hcsm twitter chat with a link to the transcript here. A central question raised: what are emergency best practices for social media? Overall, it was unanimously agreed that social media is an excellent channel for communication during an emergency. It was also agreed that trusted sources should produce accurate information outputs in real-time that others should retweet. It was also discussed that texts from a trusted source are highly valuable during an emergency or crisis situation.
'The human spirit' is vital for good healing and good health, especially during tragedies. Social media can effectively connect communities and 'the human spirit' during tragedies as is beautifully illustrated here by a tribute from my city, Columbus, to Aurora noted in the above youtube video tribute. The Harmony Project of Columbus Ohio gathered 150 voices and countless volunteers in 24 hours to record the Beth Nielsen Chapman song "How We Love" to benefit the families of victims in Aurora, Colorado. All of the proceeds from the single, which can be downloaded at www.harmonyproject.com/howwelove, go to GivingFirst.org and are directed to families in Aurora. This labor of love demonstrates that we are all neighbors, that important tributes can come from our voices, and that in times like these, what is important is how we love.
Although the TextsFromHillaryClinton Blog is not new, I did find myself turning to it this past week despite no new posting: perhaps for some comic relief but also because following leaders such as Hillary Clinton during a national crisis just feels natural to me. As humor is often based on some degree of truth, perhaps we all naturally turn to our phones (particularly social media and SMS texting) during emergencies thereby pointing to the potential power and importance of social media during a crisis whether it's a national crisis, natural crisis, or health crisis
As political ads are a constant feature prior to the November election, especially in my state of Ohio, it is no surprise that democracy in healthcare has been a part of the #hcsm discussion landscape recently. In the past, patients have not been at the table to decide what new technologies and improvements should be funded…unless they happen to be a hospital executive, pharmaceutical executive, or health insurance executive. However, a new crowd-funding platform called MedStartr allows people patients that are using medical technology and those who love them to decide what new technologies they’d like to see further developed by voting with their donations: democratization of medical technology. This was a central theme notable in the first ever health care crowd-funding twitter chat on Monday night this week featuring the hashtag #HCCF moderated by MedStartr's co-founder, Alex Fair. (Shameless plug: a screenshot for my crowd-funding project for EndoGoddess is pictured above and a link here).
Despite a week that included a national tragedy and ongoing political battles, health care social media maintained a reflection of the tenacity, innovation, and passion of the human spirit...it's who we are and healing is in the air. :)
Upon the eve of each July, it has become my tradition to reflect on my career and look at my letter of acceptance into medical school framed above my desk (pictured above, my maiden name Jennifer Leigh Shine). As you may know from reading this blog, I am a dreamer. Then again, this whole career in medicine started as a dream.
In college, I was originally a journalism major with a dream of being a science correspondent on the Today Show that I watched religiously (and still do). However, my freshman year, as I began to miss the science classes that I so loved in high school, my dreams turned to the possibilities of a career in medicine. It was exciting to think about a career that combined science, communication, excitement, and helping people. I fearlessly and confidently pursued my premed course work with a hunger to fulfill my dream and to become a doctor. I never paid attention to the concerns of not getting into medical school that some of my other student colleagues expressed. I knew that I was going to succeed in becoming a doctor. That tenacity and confidence along with good grades, hospital volunteering, excellent MCAT scores, and a great essay did indeed allow me to enter medical school and become a doctor. As I reread my medical school essay each July eve, I ask myself: Have I satisfied that hunger that I had? Have I stayed true to my original dream? A portion of my original essay is as follows:
My achievements have shown me that I have what it takes to be a great physician but my heart tells me that I want to be a physician. While volunteering in the burn ICU, I changed dressings and cleaned wound infections. As I got to know the patients, I became fascinated and inspired by their determination, the loving support of their families and the medical staff, and the healing that I witnessed. I noticed first hand that every patient's world was important and their role in it was precious. The medical staff gave the patients the ultimate gift of a second chance to play that role and to have 'a moment in time when you're more than you thought you could be, when all of your dreams are heartbeat away'. I desire with all my heart to have the power as a physician to give this gift to the patients that I am lucky enough to meet.
As a medical school graduate and physician now 12 years later, I am a lot less cheesy and would never again quote a Whitney Houston song in an important essay, but I am happy to report that that young woman still lives inside of me. As a mobile health entrepreneur AND a physician, I am living the ultimate dream: creating a vision of good health using mobile phone tools that are a perfect fit into the precious and important lives of patients. I challenge you to ask yourself if you too are staying true to your dreams? :)
The innovative 'kickstarter' crowdfunding site for healthcare projects, MedStartr, will be launching on July 4th! This means that on July 4th, you can start making donations and receiving rewards in relation to the projects that interest you the most.
I am super excited to announce that work on the EndoGoddess Kids App will begin through the 10x accelator program on June 25th! 10x is a mentorship-driven investment program designed for energetic and game-changing entrepreneurs. 10x is partnering with Ohio’s New Entrepreneurs (ONE) Fund, an innovative business accelerator designed to attract and retain the best and brightest talent in Ohio. Teams such as the EndoGoddess Team are awarded $20,000 to bring a project to life over a 10-week period.
The EndoGoddess Team will be creating the new EndoGoddess Kids App built for young children with type 1 diabetes and their families. The app will include a new rewards and gaming feature similar in concept to the classic Tamagotchi virtual pet (pictured above). The virtual pet, which will need to be 'fed' by recording glucoses within the app, is expected to encourage engagement in daily diabetes glucose checking by the child based on appointment dynamic game mechanics theory.
The EndoGoddess Kids App virtual pet will include a reincarnation of my sweet golden retriever, Cooper Dyer, who passed away last year due to cancer. So, needless to say, the EndoGoddess Kids App is a labor of love for me. I will share details of the process and of course information about the launch toward the end of the summer. So excited!!
This blogtalk radio edition of mHealth Zone does a great job of discussing the current issues involved with crowdfunding in medicine. Hosts Ben and Corey chat with Steven Greene, Chairman of the Conversation, Sperlingreene PR and Communications, about how mHealth companies can position themselves to attract investors, the impact of crowdfunding, and the role of marketing, PR, and live events in mHealth. An additional panel discussion on crowd funding is featured with Mike Norman, Co-founder of Wefunder, Alex Fair, Founder and CEO of MedStartr, and Manoush Zomorodi, reporter.
At the recent Doctors 2.0 & You conference in Paris that I attended, I heard a great presentation by Dr. Bertalan Mesko (also known as @Berci on twitter) about the power of crowdsourcing in medicine. Dr. Mesko created Webicina which provides curated medical social media resources in over 80 medical topics in over 17 languages using expert crowdsourcing communities.
Crowdsourcing is increasingly becoming a popular technique to help solve complex problems by leveraging the power of individuals and teams, mostly outside of traditional networks. Crowdsourcing provides a unique opportunity to exchange and share data and information through collective intelligence and providing a diverse array of solutions from solvers with experience across a multitude of disciplines. Crowdsourcing can be used not only to help solve problems but also to capture intelligence (data and information) in novel ways through the use of various platforms.
Kickstarter puts crowdsourcing into action by providing an online platform for funding creative projects. However, kickstarter does not accept medical projects. Kickstarter for medical projects is to launch in several weeks (mid June): Medstartr. Medstartr facilitates gathering monetary resources from the general public and circumvents many traditional avenues of investment for projects. The term has been dubbed crowdfunding. Project owners choose a deadline and a target minimum of funds to raise. If the chosen target is not gathered by the deadline, no funds are collected (this is known as a provision point mechanism). Money pledged by donors is collected using a third party source such as Amazon Payments. The EndoGoddess App Kickstarter/Medstartr submission video explains the crowdfunding project as follows:
Crowdfunding provides opportunities for the patients and their loved ones to give small scale financing support to health-related technologies that they want to see within the healthcare system that they are experiencing. Who better to invest in the healthcare system than the people who are affected most by it? In other words, a system for the people by the people. Makes sense to me, let's do it! Here is the link to preview the EndoGoddess App crowdfunding project in kickstarter-format : http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/endogoddess/1045368863?token=3b8aa0f8.
Watch for the official launch of the EndoGoddess App crowfunding project on Medstartr in the coming weeks so you can donate! :)
I just returned from Doctors 2.0 & You held in beautiful Paris where I discussed development of the EndoGoddess App and using mobile health in e-health and medical practice, specifically for diabetes. Doctors 2.0 & You is an international meeting focused on doctors' and patients' challenges and opportunities in the health 2.0 space.
The event was organized by e-patient and e-health pioneer Denise Silber who, upon discussing the trends in e-health, asked the important question of 'what is the e-health quest?'
Beauty and pleasure are the quest in France. The French embrace beauty and pleasure in food, art, conversation, and vibrant debates as I observed while happily walking around Paris. E-health, what is its quest? In keeping with the French way of life, the quest as discussed at this year's Doctors 2.0 & You...
-Learning by connecting with communities. Whether the communities are just for doctors, just for patients, or for doctors AND patients (such as the diabetes online community with me pictured above with diabetes patient advocate/blogger Kerri Sparling at www.sixuntilme.com), science and healing and help come through conversation provided by e-health channels. Patients can learn from patients, doctors can learn from doctors, patients can learn from doctors, and doctors can learn from patients. A classic example presented was the evidence of science and healing that has been generated from the 'Patients Like Me' communities which was first started in 2004 for patients with ALS and their families. The beauty and pleasure noted from connecting within these communities is always a present undertone in any presentation I have ever heard about online communities, including the amazing ones at Doctors 2.0 & You.
-Learning by debating or facing challenges using new and economical ways. Just as the French seem to enjoy debates and challenges, challenges and solving problems are in the blood of entrepreneurs who were abundantly present at Doctors 2.0 & You. Entrepreneurs and e-health partnerships with telecommunication giants such as Orange have indeed taken on a large-scale global problem, counterfeit medications in Africa, with an elegant sms-based texting solution which was discussed. The beauty and power of such an economic and effective solution is hard to deny!
-Learning by having fun. In order to allow e-patients to have engaging consumer health information about pharma products for their empowerment, pharma company Boehringer Ingelheim has developed a facebook game called Syrum which can be played here. The objective of the game is to "save the world, one disease at a time, by harvesting compounds and then using them as trading cards to play against diseases. A player must first investigate molecular compounds at a research desk before putting them to the test in the laboratory, then conduct clinical trials and, if successful, advance a treatment to the market." The content engagement from the game is expected to lead to increased comprehension of consumer health information (currently undergoing beta testing now). Gaming is an innovative way that e-health can empower e-patients through fun and pleasure.
So, what is the e-health quest? It's about learning and living this life together (doctors, nurses, patients, entrepreneurs, industry, hospitals) with vibrant beauty and pleasure. C'est la vie! :)
