Recent posts on Alensa official blog

We've moved our blog onto our own domain. Therefore we're not posting as often here on blogger anymore. Nonetheless we'll recap some of the more important links here as well.

The first piece of news was that we were invited to present at Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco last October. It was an amazing event with around 1000 people and with nearly every major company in ehealth represented. It was slightly nerve-wrecking standing on stage but very much fun meeting so many new people.

One of the more interesting finds at Health “Health Engagement Barometer Study” which found that medical blogs were becoming the most important sources of health information for consumers online.

Having made this incredible experience in the US, we soon came to look upon the European ehealth sector as far behind that of our counterparts across the pond. Especially the UK, with its tightly controlled NHS systems, seems ready for a major change in approach towards market liberalization.

Turning our attention more towards the developed world, we thought about how to provide internet connectivity to the most remote villages so that they too could one day benefit from the transformative power of ehealth.

In December, Diario Medico, a spanish health newspaper and blog network, contacted us to conduct one of the first interviews over twitter (twitterview) which was a lot of fun.

And last but not least, we just posted about the ethical issues that face pharmacists in relation to selling dietary supplements and natural health products. A very interesting debate which is sure to stay with us for a long time.

200 calories compared

Sally over at InDenialHealth stumbled upon this great post which shows what 200 calories worth of various foods look like. It's very interesting to see the comparisons.
Pic by : Officially a Mom

SeedCamp

We did a video pitch the other day for SeedCamp. Unfortunately the winner will be picked based on voting rather than on the quality of the pitch so if you think we had the best pitch please vote for it here.

Our pitch for SeedCamp

Fred Wilson, a principal of Union Square Ventures, reminded his blog readers today that the deadline for SeedCamp, a UK meet-up where European companies have the opportunity to pitch Venture Capital funds from all over the world, was fast approaching. In fact the deadline for the new video-pitch section was closing today so we quickly went and posted this short pitch.
If you were a VC, what would you think ?

The gridlock big pharma created for itself

For years the large innovator drug companies have been suing generics manufacturers over patent protection, attempting to block the early entry of generic medicines. Their argument has always centred around the claim that without a strong patent system there would be no incentive for them to continue to invest in ever-costlier new drug development.

It's therefore with great interest today that we read Michael Heller's article in Forbes Magazine in which he argues that not only do patents stifle generics competition & innovation, but that they are now actually harming the large pharma companies themselves. He bases his theory around these simple observations :

a) Biotechnology represents one of the most promising avenues for new drug developmet.

b) Since the US supreme court allowed for patents on living organisms in 1980 over 40'000 have been filed.

c) This staggering number of IP claims on the building blocks of life are making it impossible for researchers, be they academic or from big pharma, to conduct any meaningful work without bumping into a mine-field of these biotech patents.

He notes that some pharma companies have given up entirely on promising leads because they realized how difficult it would be to get the necessary patent licences.

So has big pharma now outwitted itself in its zealous quest for strict patent protection? In any case a very interesting take on another angle of this multi-faceted debate.

Shocker! : quarter of Americans are obese

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today in its Health Blog that over a quarter of all Americans are clinically obese. The quality of life and health cost implications of an ever increasing obesity rate are dramatic and unfortunately this trend is being seen all around the world, not just in the USA.

It seems that there must be a much more concerted effort towards education and coaching regarding healthy eating habits that produce real behavioural change. Too much educational material is read and then just forgotten.

Smaller portion sizes and regular exercise are of course the simplest ways to start a healthy weight program.

Finally it's becoming critical that a more focused effort is placed on examining school meal programs which have been a primary cause of child obesity in recent years.

Belgrade : Team meet-up comes to an end

Today is the last day of our programming team meet-up in Belgrade. It's the first time that the entire virtual team met up, after more than one year of working together. It was a really great experience and helped everyone to build a closer working relationship. It also helped us to set the development strategy for the next six months so Alensa Online users can look forward to a lot of excellent new features and improvements.


The team: (from left to right)
Alex, Radu, Milinko, Buda, Vuja & Milos