Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

When my fellow panelist at last week’s Council for Entrepreneurial Development Tech 2007 conference in Research Triangle, Eric Auchard, Reuters, warned the audience, “don’t believe everything you read in the media,” I got a chuckle from the same audience when I pointed out, “but Eric, you ARE the media!”

Eric may be on to something, though, if big media player CMP Media’s Information Week report today direct from the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco is any indication!

Richard Martin, for Information Week, on the Google-Microsoft “race to bring the resources of the Internet to personalized health care”:

Microsoft has not publicly disclosed its plans for a health-related product, but is said to be working on an offering that combines software with an online component.

“We’re building a broad consumer health platform,” Steve Shihadeh, general manager of Microsoft’s health solutions group, told The New York Times in August.

BUT, what did MICROSOFT TELL THE WORLD on October 4, 2007, i.e, what did it “disclose” while LAUNCHING IT’S ‘HEALTH-RELATED PRODUCT,’ Microsoft HealthVault?

Hey, Richard, read all about it, here at Insider Chatter: HealthVault: Microsoft to Beat Google Medical Search Thanks to MOM!

What makes CMP (major) Media’s glaring reporting inadequacy all the more inexcusable is that the Web 2.0 Summit that CMP staffer Martin ought to be providing the definitive word on is actually PRODUCED BY CMP MEDIA, in conjunction with O’Reilly Media, AND SPONSORED BY MICROSOFT, to boot!

What’s more, Tim O’Reilly, himself, was most concerned this morning over the chutzpah of Michael Arrington to “scoop” him at his own conference, run (and the plot thickens) in partnership with O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summit partner, who is ALSO Arrington’s TechCrunch ad network vendor, John Battelle, aka Federated Media!

AND, on Tuesday, Web 2.0 O’Reilly mused out loud about the entire (non?) meaning of Arrington’s Web 2.0 TechCrunch!:

TechCrunch is the #1 site on the Techmeme leaderboard, yet most of what it covers will be forgotten not merely in years but in months, and have proven to be completely unimportant: the froth of me-too company creation around ideas and trends that as yet are quite immature and poorly understood. (Michael Arrington himself told me that most of the companies he’s covered since starting Techcrunch “have just faded away”.)

Web 2.0 coverage that TechCrunch dedicates itself to is “completely unimportant” in the words of the Web 2.0 meme creator himself, O’Reilly? AND, O’Reilly concurrs with Arrington that the hundreds of companies TechCrunch champions “just fade away”?

PLUS, Web 2.0 is but “immature froth” comprised of “me-too” companies that are “poorly misunderstood”, in the words of Tim Web 2.0 O’Reilly? HAS TIM BEEN READING INSIDER CHATTER???

BUT, isn’t the O’Reilly-Battelle Web 2.0 team supposed to make sure Web 2.0 IS understood???

If Web 2.0 O’Reilly is correct about Web 2.0 Arrington, though, why then did 100 startups pour their hearts, souls and (travel) money into the TechCrunch40 demo pit???

ANYWAY, Google’s medical push is now under the auspices of Marissa Mayer (the new and improved Google Health Architect?) and she is undoubtedly reminding her Googley troops (90 minutes a day) of that old Avis slogan: We’re number two so “WE TRY HARDER!”

YAY! And the Web 2.0 world turns, under the banners of CMP Media, O’Reilly Media, Federated Media, TechCrunch Network….

SEE: CED Tech 2007: 30 Cool Startups, But NO Facebook Apps

PLUS: BREAKING: Commtouch CEO on Spam MP3 Files Attack (Britney Spears NOT So Friendly) and Google Q3 Planetary Gains: Every Country AND The Cloud

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

HealthVault: On the heels of Google losing its touchy-feely, NBC ER drama worthy Google Health evangelist–Adam Bosworth–Microsoft picks up the tried and true “moms and babies” and “dying grandma” pulling of the heart strings slack in launching its attack on the multi trillion dollar medical services business.

In unveiling its new HealthVault software and services healthcare ecosystem play today, Microsoft showed “faces of women that want a health information system that puts them at the center with their families.”

Over 8 million people search for health information online daily, Peter Neupert, corporate vice president of the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft said.

BUT, ARE THEY REALLY ALL WOMEN? Microsoft unveiled its HealthVault to the world as if they are: “Remember its all about mom,” Neupert asserted.

Really? What about the twenty something professional, or the independent thriving senior, or, even MEN, married, single or otherwise! Does THEIR health not matter” Can men and single women NOT take care of themselves!

NO, it is all about the challenges faced by MOMs, at least in Microsoft’s positioning of its new high-powered, who needs Google Health push; Hey, when daughter “Debbie is playing at school,” MOM needs to be only a mouse click away to ensure access to Deb’s Personal Health Record, the Microsoft version!

True to form, the only visual on the Microsoft HealtVault portal homepage is a kissing and smiling “mom and child” pair!

Inconsistenly, though, in demoing actual use case scenarios, Microsoft showed an adult MALE patient taking control of his own health management with high-tech tools, and he managed quite well, WITHOUT MOM! Did Microsoft feel MOM was maybe not really up to the tech task?

Microsoft’s HealthVault is a three prong offering: 1) Private search experience, 2) Secure shared data repositry, 3) User connection Web portal.

For Neupert, HealthVault represents a “new and improved health delivery system” heralding a “broad democratization” of the U.S. medical sector. In other, usually Googley words, the “consumerization” of healthcare.

Microsoft’s “consumer-centric” pitch:

HEALTHVAULT ACCOUNT–The revolutionary and FREE way to collect, store, and share your health information with Web sites and doctors.

DIRECT INPUT: Enter your personal information, upload health documents, and create records for members of your family. It’s time to digitize the doctor’s office “clipboard”.

YOUR DOCTORS: Your whole healthcare provider team — from MDs to Chiropractors — are generating information about your health. You should have a copy of that information so that you can share it with all of them.

PRESCRIPTIONS: Medications need to be managed and renewed and, if your MD is e-prescribes, HealthVault can collect and store your medication history.

IMAGING & LAB RESULTS: Your images and lab results may also be a part of your health record, and HealthVault helps you keep copies of them inyour account.

HEALTH PLAN: Add the Personal Health Record information stored at your health plan to your HealthVault account.

WHO NEEDS GOOGLE HEALTH THEN? If it EVER launches!

Microsoft HealthVault is MORE than a high-powered Personal Health Record platform though:

PERSONAL HEALTH DEVICES: Connect a wide variety of HealthVault compatible devices from partners to your PC, and upload the data to your HealthVault account.

Microsoft has the resources, the technology, the partners and the will, to lead a PC-driven health revolution.

Will Redmond have the “MOMs” on its side, though?

ALSO: Mahalo Faces Vertical Human Search Attack: OrganizedWisdom Health and Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Who has the Women? 

PLUS: Y Combinator to Hackers: Dream SMALL and Code for Google on the Cheap

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Jason Calacanis may believe he can dictate the entire future of Web 3.0 in his own Mahalo vision for the Internet to acquiesce to. Steven Krein, however, believes that Calacanis’ Mahalo now is officially vulnerable vertically, thanks to Krein’s OrganizedWisdom. 

The OrganizedWisdom.com homepage is “inspired” by Google. Its touted WisdomCard “hand-edited, spam-free search results pages” look as if “inspired” by Mahalo, the self-described “human-powered search engine.”

Mahalao and OrganizedWisom also share Web 1.0 roots: Both are the products of entrepreneurs who made their Internet marks the first Web go around. Mahalo is a Calacanis production, OrganizedWisdom is led by Krein, the man behind Promotions.com in 1996.

Krein demoed his new OrganizedWisdom last evening at the NY Tech Meetup. While Calacanis is aiming to recruit humans to “write result pages” for “the top 20,000 search terms,” Krein has set a goal of driving the “curation” of 10,000 health focused WisdomCards over the next 12 months; At launch the service includes pages on “more than 100 of the most popular health topics.”

I asked Krein how he compensates OrganizedWisdom “guides” and keeps the “Cards” up to date: 1) $10-$15 per WisdomCard developed and 2) Staff editors monitor developed pages.

OrganizedWisdom obviously can not diss the Mahalo model, as they emulate it. Krein CAN claim superiority in his own health vertical, however, as he does loud and proud. For one big thing, there is an MD on board, Howard Krein, Chief Medical Officer. According to Dr. Krein:

No other search engine has physicians guiding every search result. Each and every WisdomCard is reviewed by at least one physician. 

A search for “necrotizing fasciitis” (aka flesh eating bacteria) on the two sites backs up OrganizedWisdom’s we trump Mahalo health search queries claim.

While Mahalo has not written a result page for flesh eating bacteria “yet,” OrganizedWisdom has organized top picks for “necrotizing fasciitis.”

Currently financed by founders and management, Krein said OrganizedWisodom will soon close a Series A round of venture funding.

Krein has not claimed to drive Web 3.0, as competitor Calacanis does, BUT he has made an OrganizedWisdom claim to own the health vertical in the human search battle, at the expense of Mahalao (be it Web version 1, 2 or 3!).

ALSO READ CEO INTERVIEW: Google Health at Risk: Healthline Medical Search Snags Power Partners, and Money

PLUS: HealthVault: Microsoft to Beat Google Medical Search Thanks to MOM!

ALSO:Mint CEO on Web 2.0 Nonsense AND Who Needs Wesabe: INTERVIEW and Y Combinator to Hackers: Dream SMALL and Code for Google on the Cheap

AND: Social Fireworks Alert: LinkedIn vs. ‘Loud Mouth McClure’?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN