Of course, many of those statistics are not even collected, let alone published. But we can start with what exists, and by doing this create demand for the rest. In the US, people are already rating their own doctors at sites such as RateMDs.com and vitals.com; third-party doctor and hospital ratings are available at HealthGrades.com.
Civil-society groups don’t often run hospitals directly, but they can make their performance more transparent. So there are plans afoot to develop and distribute tools to analyze information, discover correlations (data mining) and display the results as graphs and charts.
But, again, health really begins at home, so the real victory — and one where such civil-society cooperation may have a more immediate impact — is to give people better data about themselves and what they should be doing for their health.
That includes everything from nutritional information and baby care to records of each person’s health and treatments, and it starts with using new media to reach people where they live with content that’s relevant.
In the Soviet Union, they used to call this “sanitary propaganda,” but it was widely disregarded. One Russian friend told me: “Whenever we would read an article about the health dangers of butter, we would immediately run out and buy as much butter as we could find, because we knew it meant there would be a butter shortage.”
Today, that type of information is called “healthy lifestyle promotion.” We are also working on a project along these lines, reaching out to target populations with two-way new media such as the Internet and mobile phones, rather than harangues in newspapers and TV. Imagine a program where pregnant women could sign up by cellphone for weekly reminders and updates, and to answer questions such as: “Is the baby kicking?” If not, she could be referred to a local clinic.
When I made those same points in a wrap-up to the Civil Society Summit as a whole, I was interrupted by none other than US President Barack Obama, who was in Moscow for his summit with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev but also took the time to listen to our gathering of civil-society organizations.
Obama apologized for arriving late, and added: “That’s why we have civil society. You just can’t rely on politicians!”
Esther Dyson is chairman of EDventure Holdings and an active investor in a variety of start-ups around the world.
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