SIXTH ANNUAL INFORMATION THERAPY CONFERENCE
OCTOBER 8-10, 2007, PARK CITY, UTAH
Ix Inside: Embedding Information Therapy in Health Care
For the slides, bios and agenda for the Sixth Annual Ix Conference, click here.
Target and Tailor and Engage, Oh My!
The 2007 Ix Conference Summary
Overview
There aren't many health care conferences where you can jingle to Schoolhouse Rock and contemplate its impact on your medial prefrontal cortex in the same session.
Looking back to the first information therapy (Ix®) conference in 2002, it's amazing how far Ix has advanced. In 48 hours, we learned that the state of the science behind targeting and tailoring of health information has grown dramatically. Equally important, innovators have now demonstrated successful strategies for engaging-even entertaining-people to activate them as partners in their care management.
Session Nuggets
David Kibbe opened up our eyes by framing the potential impact of a variety of disruptive innovations on the US health care delivery system.
University of Michigan communications researcher Vic Strecher along with Hollywood screenwriter Monte Montgomery entertained (but also educated) the audience by introducing us to the horror picture, "The Appointment" (see http://www.healthmedia.com/index.htm).
Emmi Solutions' Michelle Sobel taught us how we can draw from both film and the video gaming industry to make health messages "sticky." She offered three tips to make the messages stick: 1) Make it visual; 2) Make it simple; and 3) Make it personal.
Healthwise's Molly Mettler encouraged people to embrace the aging challenge that generational demographics present by finding innovative strategies for arming baby boomers with the information and tools to be partners in active care management.
Jim Prochaska, the father of the transtheoretical model (stages of change behavior model), presented a compelling argument for highly tailored communications to effect positive behavior change, drawing from decades of federal government-sponsored research.
Resolution Health's Earl Steinberg made it clear that the next generation of data analytics-some of which are already here-will allow us to target the prescription of health content much more precisely.
Kaiser Permanente's David Sobel-like any good primary care physician-diagnosed and treated the Ix implementation disorders that stand between the efforts of well-intentioned health professionals and consumers getting the care they need.
Linda Harris from the US Department of Health & Human Services, encouraged the audience members to propose an Ix objective for the Healthy People 2020 goals.
Veenu Aulakh (California HealthCare Foundation) and Rachel Block (United Hospital Fund) described the important role that Ix plays in the advancement of their philanthropic organizations' goals to improve health care by personalizing health information technology.
Renaissance Health's Rushika Fernandopulle presented a new model for the primary care medical home that places Ix at the center of its core processes and proposed new payment models for making this vision a reality.
Craig Stoltz (former editor of the Washington Post health section) told us what we could learn from health journalists but also what the limitations of blunt information dissemination are.
Paul Wallace (Kaiser Permanente and Chair, IxCenter Board of Directors) and Joshua Seidman (President, IxCenter) looked back five years and gazed five years into the future to find an world where Ix plays a critical role in "crossing the quality chasm" by providing tools that meet the principles and recommendations laid out by the Institute of Medicine in 2001.
In a post-conference workshop, Health 2.0 leaders Matthew Holt and Indu Subaiya contemplated the impact of personalized search, better presentation of integrated data, intelligent tools for delivering content, and communities that capture accumulated knowledge. Three Health 2.0 companies (Revolution Health, Organized Wisdom and Daily Strength) offered their views on how these disruptive innovations will transform the nature of health care.
A diverse cross-section of Ix implementation sessions further dissected how Ix has been successfully integrated into the clinical workflow. These ranged from employers to community hospitals, from health plans to academic medical centers, from integrated delivery systems to cancer and cardiac centers of excellence. They're using decision aids, personal health records, after-visit summaries, personalized interactive informed consent/choice tools, patient activation tools, and chronic care management programs.
In Ix demo sessions, Silverlink, Health Dialog, Healthways, Resolution Health, Healthwise, Eliza Corporation, NorthPoint Domain (IC Sciences), and CareNav Solutions showcased new tools, technologies and services for delivering targeted and tailored content to consumers.
For other takes on the 6th annual Ix conference, visit:
The Health Care Blog: http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/
Organized Wisdom Blog: http://wisdom.blogs.com/
Join us in Washington D.C., for next year's exciting Ix Conference: June 12-13, 2008
