Bridging the Rural-Urban Healthcare Divide

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Online communities are helping patients find and share information and connect with each other at unprecedented levels. But can they also create social value by helping to bridge the disparities between rural and urban health care?

WHITE 2016: Health Care Poised for Big Data ‘Arms Race’

Information technology belongs in health care, but humans need time to figure out the best ways to work with machines like IBM’s Watson, participants said Oct. 21-22 at the 2016 Workshop on Health IT and Economics (WHITE) in Washington, D.C. Integration will require input from diverse players across the health care ecosystem, said keynote speaker Anil Jain, Explorys and IBM Watson Health senior vice president and chief medical officer. “Progress will be incremental,” he said. “We have a lot of smart people engaging with think tanks and other organizations.”

Experts at UMD Work to Harness Big Data for Your Health

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is working to harness fast-accumulating personal health data from the likes of Twitter, Facebook and wearable devices. But more than 90 percent of analysts’ efforts to capitalize on that data falls below the targeted efficiency level for the FDA’s Office of Surveillance and Biometrics in its Center for Device and Radiological Health, said Isaac Chang, who directs post-market surveillance for that office. “We have observations of signals and patterns,” he said. “But they’re one-off maps.”

UMD-FDA Workshop on Mobile Health and Social Media Analytics for Product Safety

UMD Smith Researchers to Join Experts to Address Harnessing mHealth, Social Media Data for Medical-Product Safety The Food and Drug Administration is looking to get, and stay, on the same page with producers and users of medical wearables. The FDA mission to regulate medical devices to protect consumers is challenged by the mobile health field continuously innovating new products.  

No 'Heckler's Veto' in Online Ratings of Doctors

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Doctors have many concerns about online crowdsourced ratings, which are intended to make patients better-informed consumers of health care, but this is a big one: They worry that complainers will be the most outspoken contributors to rating sites, skewing scores and resulting in a kind of heckler's veto.

Doctor-Satisfaction Ratings Not Meshing with Outcomes

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- People who check online patient reviews to zero in on doctors to cure or effectively treat their conditions need to take the information they find with a grain of salt, according to new research from the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.

eBay Tips the Scales

Research by Siva Viswanathan and Goudong “Gordon” Gao A buyer venting through a recent eBay forum about a shipping delay contemplated posting an online review criticizing the seller for “laziness and lack of professionalism.” One thing holding the buyer back was fear of a retaliatory review from the merchant that would “tank my rating” as a future seller. 

Smith Students Create Health Apps; Google Glass Stands Out

During the second half of the spring 2014 semester, graduate students in the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business developed mobile health applications. Their mission targeted challenges to patient-consumers posed by diabetes, elder care, urgent-care logistics, obesity and treatment selection. 

The Value of IT in Health Care and How to Implement it

Research by Ritu Agarwal and Gordon Gao

Coronavirus and Misinformation

Contagious diseases can spread quickly, and misinformation can too. Here's how to find information from trustworthy sources during a public health crisis.

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