Janice M Johnson

Personal Health Records (PHR) were the “next big thing” when I worked on a major health insurer a decade ago. Needless to say, reality took a bit longer to catch up to the promise.

I hear you on the concern about health data being stored online. It’s certainly uncomfortable in some aspects. That said, PII (personally identifiable information) brings with it a host of regulation and severe penalties for violation. Working with many health systems, I can tell you confidently that most will not let anyone come anywhere near their operational data.

The idea here was to democratize your health. Improving the UX by minimizing time on site is part of it, but the bigger idea was that it should empower you to seek better care as its easier to transfer a file “between” patient portals than transferring a physical file between offices.

Has anyone had experience moving their records between providers? Having a hospital access their primary’s records more easily?

Please do not share too much personal details. Mainly curious to hear of digitizing data has improved your experience.

I loved reading you post Janice. I am a big person for virtual appointments and health portals. I think in todays day in age with the world being full of technology, I don’t think that this is ever going away. I really think that is all depends on how you look at technology and how you approach it. You could love the idea of patient portals or you could hate it and I it is all preference and the way you approach it.

This is a very relevant topic – I also touched on this in my last post. Retailers are definitely having to make the digital plunge if they haven’t already! Weirdly, I also listed some facts about Walmart in my post. Did you know they topped $10 billion in ecommerce action alone for the first time ever just by the second quarter of this year? I think many people overlook Walmart as being a digital maven but they are really making moves, from being a player in the Tik Tok acquisition, to adjusting their business model and going head to head with Amazon.

There will definitely be a behavioral shift once “a new normal” comes around. It will be interesting to see if contactless buying behaviors stay the same or decrease, and if so, by how much?

Thanks for posting this Janice! You bring up a good point about the pandemic that I haven’t thought about – the lasting effects on brick and mortar shops. It has been almost 8 months now that we’ve been living with COVID-19. The lifestyle changes that seemed so drastic back in March have become habitual. In my opinion, some of the new habits we have are going to last. For example, I can see myself wearing masks in public and being a little extra with the hand sanitizer for the rest of my life. However, as a lover of small businesses/cute mom and pop shops, I really hope that people eventually go back to in-person retail. While some stores have been able to adjust to this new touchless/digital world, some won’t be able to survive unless people come back into the store in person. I guess we shall see what happens – especially as COVID cases rise and threatens to shut things back down again.

As the big companies continue to compete with each other they start looking more and more alike. Walmart is getting more digital and Amazon is getting more real world. Do you think there will come a day when one buys the other to dominate both worlds? Or are they too big for either one to make a move on the other?

As a person who loves to shop in person, this pandemic has really changed things for me and many others. As I’ve gotten used to shopping online these past couple of months, I do see the benefit and often wished more local businesses moved to e-commerce. Post-covid, I do agree with you that online shopping will likely to continue to increase as we have become accustomed to it. As more and more businesses move to e-commerce, it will be interesting to see what other products and services they will use to stay relevant and profitable.