WebMD CEO Wayne Gattinella on health information
Does control stay with the consumer?
The consumer is in control of it. The goal is an easy way for your physician to access your record with your permission or, in the case of an emergency, in the hospital with your permission. That information has been built for you, sitting in WebMD's secure sites, and can be accessed or downloaded securely at the time that you need it.
What is your biggest challenge in developing personal healthcare records?
The challenge is in the secure channels that provide the access points. In general, healthcare has been a little bit of a cottage industry. Doctors haven't typically been electronically wired where information can be easily transported back and forth. Physicians were used to and comfortable with the file-folder approach to health history. Of course, it's only got one doctor's view of your health. The challenge is to get the behavior changed, where the practitioner is comfortable electronically downloading this view of your health history and sharing it back out. It's starting to happen. It's happening with newer-generation docs who are coming out of med school literally learning on their laptops, not from books. They're perfectly comfortable with Web-enabled and Web-based information technology. The change is going to in large part happen because the consumer is going to pull it through. Now you're going to be more in control of that care and have higher expectations because you're going to be paying for a bigger chunk of it. So you're going to demand or expect more from the physician you choose. And perhaps if they are not able or willing to give you that interactive health record, you might go somewhere else. The patient and consumer will have a tremendous impact.
Do you have personal health records for your own employees?
Yes. We built a pilot several years ago using the WebMD employee base.
How is WebMD continuing to be a leader in the dot-com world?
The new word on the Web today is engagement. It used to be visitors. Now no one really cares how many visitors you've got if they're not doing a lot once they get to your site. The real question is, once they're there, what are they doing? What are they engaging in? How much time are they spending inside of that information? It's important because involvement is a proxy for satisfaction. The more involved I am, presumably the more satisfied I am with the experience I'm getting. It's a measure of people's likelihood of coming back again. And from a business standpoint, that's really what we sell. WebMD is far more powerful than putting your promotional dollars in a magazine or television or radio because of that involvement factor. There's no greater category that people get involved in than healthcare, if given the right set of tools and information. If we can get people who are seeking information about a particular condition or topic, get them more deeply involved, and then at the same time present some promotional information disclosed as advertising around it, there's no better time to have your message presented to that particular person, because they're going to be most apt and open to learning about your product information at that time.
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