What is the future of digital healthcare? The choice of online doctor comes from the USA

Often the news in Europe comes from overseas and it seems that even in the digital health sector the USA is preparing to change our method of choosing the doctor , bringing online medical reviews to a prominent role .

In the United States there are some well-established companies that allow potential online patients to get in touch with specialized doctors every day, are you wondering how? Through specialist sites specifically dedicated to choosing the doctor online . Soon this news in the field of digital healthcare will also land in Europe.

More power to online doctor reviews with millennials

The online medical reviews are highly regarded by any user in search of a health professional. The data are clear: according to the Institute for Healthcare Policy 94% of internet users who visited a medical review site are satisfied . The '85% of patients can not relax if at least 10% of the reviews a doctor has no minimum one star .

In short, in a world that communicates through social networks and that increasingly surfs the web, as many as 1 in 3 patients entrust specific medical review sites.

With the times advancing, staying cut off from the world of online evaluations seems to be a real failure sentence for any professional. But how will this evolution of digital healthcare take place ? The United States shows us what Europe's closest future can be in this area.

News and specialist medical sites arrive from the USA

The reputation of a doctor in the USA is based above all on his online reviews in the various healthcare sites. You got it right, the United States has several portals where the various health professionals are filed and reviewed in order to make patient choice very agile. Here are what the main American portals for online doctor reviews are called and how they work :

1. Yelp

Yelp is a site born in 2004, which over time has turned into a real review site that collects millions of opinions including many related to doctors and health clinics. The reviews on this site are evaluated through an algorithm, which guarantees completeness and reliability.

2. Google My Business

Google My Business is a simple and free Google tool, widely used in the USA, which includes Google search and Google Maps. With this tool it is possible to verify your own activity and therefore allow users to review it. The user can leave from 1 to 5 stars and a caption in which he talks about his experience, while you can also insert photos of your medical activity.

3. Facebook for Business

Facebook for Business allows you to share videos, posts and photos from your medical clinic. There are as many as 1.31 billion active accounts on this social media and in the USA every business wins its slice of space on this platform. Your presence on Facebook is essential for interacting with patients and in the United States social networks are a real platform for communicating with the patient .

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4. WebMD

WebMD is a site with numerous medical information that houses a directory of doctors with a lot of name, specialization and position. The doctors are visible here both in alphabetical order and on a map, to facilitate the patient in finding the clinic. On WebMD doctors obtain a vote between 1-5, established with strict criteria dictated by the reviews.

5. Healthgrades

Healthgrades is a site visited by more than 30 million people per month, providing useful reviews on doctors, clinics and healthcare professionals. Also on this site we find an evaluation expressed from 1 to 5 stars based on different elements such as the courtesy of the staff, the waiting time, the time spent with the patient and much more.

6. RateMDs.com

RateMDs is a US site full of reviews on doctors, as it has over 2 million real opinions on health services in its database. On this site you can express your opinion on four categories: the staff, the availability, the punctuality and the knowledge of the doctor.

The first signs of change in digital healthcare in USA

Healthcare has increasingly turned towards the patient and in the coming years this change will be increasingly evident. This is a digital healthcare innovation that increasingly privileges the collection of online medical reviews, in order to provide a complete picture to the patient when choosing a health professional.

A reality that in USA has already started to appear due to the slowness of the public health system and the increasing participation of private doctors in the world of the web.

In USA 200 million searches per month are carried out on the web relating to the theme of health, a very important fact that must be exploited to guarantee a service addressed to all potential patients.

Precisely for this reason, several portals are also emerging aimed at encouraging reviews of online doctors and booking various health services directly on the web. 

Potential patients can, on these sites, choose a doctor based on his specialization, the location of the study and reviews. Here are some of the main websites that are introducing this healthcare innovation in our country:

Medicalbox.

The start-up Medicalbox was born in Italy from the idea of ​​two brothers from Parma. This site allows patients of registered doctors to make reservations, pay visits and write reviews on the service received. In short, an all-Italian reality that takes the example from the USA to bring doctors closer to the needs of the patients of the 2000s.

What is evaluated in online medical reviews

The reviews of online doctors in the USA have very clear parameters for evaluating the service offered by a healthcare facility. In particular, some of the fundamental reference values ​​required in health review sites to evaluate a doctor are:

·         The overall experience of the patient in the study

·         The availability of the doctor and staff

·         The environment inside the studio

·         Punctuality of the doctor and waiting times

·         Friendliness of the staff

·         Communication level

·         Effectiveness of treatment

·         Billing and administration

5 Indispensable Tools for the Modern Web Developer

Developing a website in the modern era involves, in addition to the obvious technical skills necessary for its realization, the choice of tools suitable for the objective. Fortunately we have a very large range of exceptional tools available, which allow us to design and produce a website even without the need to have advanced skills. Let's see 5 powerful tools useful for the purpose and immediately usable.

1) WordPress

WordPress is a giant in the field of content management systems (software that allows you to write, edit and publish dynamic content on the web). His notoriety is boundless, and is used by high profile brands such as CNN, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. Its customizable nature has allowed the development of countless plug-ins that have extended its potential. Developers all over the world use WordPress to create any type of site, from the showcase site to the blog, from portals to e-commerce.

2) MAMP or WAMP

When you are building a dynamic website, i.e. using a server side technology to generate static content, you have a suitable server environment. The same thing happens when you have to use a tool like WordPress locally (in production you can take advantage of the implicit tools offered by hosting). Environments such as MAMP and WAMP are ideal solutions for this purpose: they offer you a local PHP, SQL and Apache environment to develop any type of web application based on these technologies. While MAMP works with the Apple operating system, WampServer collaborates with the Microsoft operating system.

3) GIT

Git  is a version control system, a tool that allows you to keep track of the progress, changes and changes to the code of your project. Git is an indispensable tool for those who carry out intermediate-advanced projects. Not only does it allow you to store your data in a safe location, but it allows you to restore any previous version in case something goes wrong in the code. A fundamental tool if several people work on the project, since it allows you to create single and specific branches for each developer and merge them at the right time. There are many different solutions for this type of tool, but GIT is now the world standard.

4) Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code  is a free, open source editor available for Windows, Mac and Linux that allows you to generate source code useful for website design. VSC has excellent features. such as code debugging, a command line dedicated to GIT controls, automatic completion and above all many extensions that allow you to integrate the syntax and controls of your favorite programming language and its frameworks.

5) Bootstrap

Bootstrap  is a "front-end framework" that allows you to use the most advanced features of HTML and CSS and some Javascript controls useful to greatly lighten the hard work of a client-side developer. Producing cross-browser, modern and above all mobile-friendly / responsive templates (which dynamically adapt to the type of device viewing content) is the prerogative of a tool such as Bootstrap.

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Amazon Alexa for healthcare, but it will take some time before being used to call a doctor

Amazon Alexa for healthcare, but it will take some time before being used to call a doctor

If you want to make an appointment with a doctor or check the contraindications of a drug without picking up the phone, Amazon Alexa can help you.

The voice assistant is HIPAA compliant, which means that Amazon can work with hospitals and other health care providers that manage protective health data to share personal information about an echo.

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) expanded HIPAA standards in 2009. HIPAA and HITECH together establish a set of federal standards aimed at protecting the security and privacy of protected health information. These provisions are included in what are called "administrative simplification" rules. HIPAA and HITECH impose requirements related to the use and disclosure of protected health information, security measures to protect that information, individual rights and administrative responsibilities.

But what users still can't do is connect with a doctor or therapist through the device , and it may take a few years before they can do it. Currently, Amazon is working with applications on an invitation-only basis, and none of the top six developers connect patients with doctors.

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Developers focused on digital health have concerns about using home speakers such as Echo and Google Home for medical consultations, because privacy issues continue to emerge and there is a risk that sensitive health information will end up in the wrong hands . Bloomberg reported that thousands of employees listen to bits and pieces of conversations about Alexa to improve the product experience.

"It's complicated," said Robbie Cape , CEO of 98point6, a Seattle-based company that provides virtual medical advice via smartphone and the web. "To maintain user confidence, I can imagine that Amazon Alexa would need to confirm that they are talking to the right person, but also that there is no one else in the room listening to the conversation."

The popularity of voice search has exploded but we must focus on research

The Cape team, which includes former Amazon and Microsoft employees, has reflected on whether 98point6 technology should be available through voice assistants, but they are still not moving forward with any plans.

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Talkspace CEO Oren Frank also assessed how to integrate his virtual therapy app with voice technologies, including Alexa but said he is reluctant to trust it because it is critical that its users know that their personal information is locked securely.

"I give Amazon the benefit of the doubt but I also realize that they are new to providing health care services," said Frank. Still, Frank, echoing a sentiment shared by many in the healthcare sector, said that voice technology is "an extremely convenient mode of communication and that will take over in the near future".

For now, Amazon is focusing more on things like coaching and nutrition tools to help users find nearby health services. These are areas that involve less liability or abuse potential, legal experts told CNBC.

"It seems to me that they are doing it right," said David Schoolcraft , a Seattle attorney at Ogden Murphy Wallace, who specializes in information technology on privacy and healthcare. "Something like finding a place for urgent care or a follow-up is more generic and not likely to cause harm."

In the meantime, Amazon is working on technologies that could improve privacy in the future. For example, the company is developing better skills to identify specific voices within a family and is developing headsets that are integrated with Alexa , which would allow users to prevent other people around them from listening to the conversation.

"For Amazon, this will be a long-term process that requires ongoing monitoring and training and education," said Schoolcraft.

How to transmit your Web Designer value to the customer

PHP says goodbye to official support for version 5

This is very important news for all users of the popular version 5.x of the equally popular server-side programming language PHP : the gill 5 of the well-known language will not receive further official support starting from 2019 .

This means, very directly, that the developers who are using PHP 5 and the applications / websites made with PHP 5 will be open to all kinds of IT vulnerabilities, and have just over 10 weeks to upgrade to more versions. modern and stable.

Unfortunately, as emerges from a recent estimate, more or less 62% of the websites placed on the Internet are written and run with PHP version 5 , while 78.9% of the total websites are made with any version of PHP, as stated by an equally recent analysis of W3Techs. From 31 December 2018, the aforementioned sites will no longer be able to enjoy official security updates from their servers, opening the world of the Internet to a serious security issue.

 “this is a huge problem for the whole PHP ecosystem and for the internet in general. There is only one way to define the behavior of those who declare that it is not possible to detach from PHP 5: negligence. If hackers find a vulnerability in the outdated PHP engine after the new year, the security of millions of users will be at high risk. "

The PHP community had already been preparing for this event for some time. After version 5.6 became the most used PHP version in the world in April 2017, developers of the same PHP know that it would have been a catastrophe if they had stopped the security updates. Precisely for this reason, they extended the EOL to the end of 2018 (End Of Life date).

There have been many developers, official and otherwise, who have since advised PHP users to update their version to a more recent release, such as 7.x, but the planetary response has not been what was hoped for.

Many Content Management Systems (CMS) have also long since started to alert users of new minimum system requirements, focusing on updating their hosting systems. But in the circle made up of WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, only the latter has carried out an official step that set the minimum requirements to PHP 7. However, this maneuver will start from March 2019. 

The minimum Joomla requirements are stuck to the version 5.3 while those of WordPress in 5.2

Find Post for - PHP Web Development

What is remarketing and how is it done?

Remarketing (or retargeting) is a form of online advertising that can help you make your company known to users potentially interested in what you offer.

The term Remarketing (or Retargeting ) refers to a form of online advertising aimed at connecting with people who have previously interacted with your Brand. It is a particularly effective component in the advertising strategy of an activity because it allows you to focus advertising investments on an audience made up of people who are already familiar with the brand and who have already shown interest in purchasing products.

Let's now find out more about what remarketing is and how it works .

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What is Remarketing?

Remarketing is to reach users who have already viewed the company site or app with a personalized advertisement. Generally, only a very small part of the web traffic ends with a conversion already at the first visit and it is thanks to remarketing that companies manage to remain visible to those potential customers who, for any reason, have decided not to complete immediately a purchase.

Now that the meaning of remarketing is clearer, let's move on to analyze the more specific concept of dynamic remarketing , which refers to an even more targeted and effective action: it consists, in fact, in showing those who have already viewed the site or the app of an activity the advertisements containing the same products that were previously displayed, in order to facilitate the completion of the previously interrupted purchase action.

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How does remarketing work?

Online remarketing advertising campaigns rely on cookies to find their target audience. Everything starts from a code or pixel to be installed on the site, which traces the passage of users on the site itself. This code is imperceptible to visitors and does not affect the performance of the site in any way. In the presence of a new visitor, the code releases an anonymous cookie to the browser. This allows you to run personalized ads that will only be shown to people who have visited and left the site without completing the purchase at first.

How to do remarketing: tips and strategies

Remarketing campaigns can be carried out on the Google Display Network through the Google Ads tool, but they can also be activated on Facebook, in such a way as to show advertisements on the social network to those who have already visited your site. Now let's see some useful tips:

Find the right target segment . For example, it is possible to create advertisements intended for those who have viewed the product detail pages without purchasing them, for those who have inserted the items in the cart without completing the purchase (perhaps studying for them ad hoc discount codes) and also for those who has already purchased an item (promoting, for example, the purchase of an item related to it).

Optimize the landing page . This is the landing page where the user to whom the advertisement is intended must "land" and must be highly personalized, complete and intuitive.

Post-convert further remarketing . Although it is necessary to stop advertising for users for which the goal has already been achieved, it is certainly not necessary to lose sight of them. In fact, it is possible to create a different audience segment to reach with new ad hoc ads.

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What to publish on the company Facebook page

What kind of content should you share on your corporate Facebook page? Here are some rules to follow to be present at best on Facebook.

Having a corporate Facebook page is ideal for promoting a business as most of the customers are on the social network created by Mark Zuckerberg. Furthermore, it allows to make the company more "human", increase its visibility, amplify the message, make the assistance service more efficient and measure the return on investment (ROI). It is essential, however, to know what content to publish and how to organize it efficiently. Below, you'll find some tips for your Corporate Facebook page.

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What to publish on the company Facebook page

To the rescue of those who own a corporate Facebook page or intend to create one, but do not know what content to share on it, the same social network arrives. Facebook, in fact, has compiled a list of useful ideas regarding the posts to be published on a company page. Specifically, the recommendations are:

·         Present the current call to action button , highlighting with a specific post the new button set;

·         Organize competitions or distribute gifts , gimmicks very useful in obtaining "likes", comments and shares (but subject to some strict rules)

·         Share fan testimonials , in order to create more empathy

·         Announce the news of the company

·         Request feedback from the public , thus creating greater transparency and openness towards its audience

·         Ask the public to make a choice , to arouse the interest of customers and invite users to respond

·         Ask a question , stimulating users / customers to generate conversations on company posts;

·         Share industry news , to make it clear that the goal of the corporate facebook page is not only to promote and sell, but also to inform users

·         Celebrate holidays , joyful and light occasions to share popular interests with your audience;

·         Highlight the best posts , with the aim of reaching an even wider audience and getting in touch with other potential customers

·         Create or highlight an event , to grow the community that revolves around the company

·         Create a post with a job offer in case of new hires , to find aware and really interested candidates

·         Promote a group , to get more interactions and grow the community

·         Refer to the stories on the page , offering a look behind the scenes of the company

·         Share anecdotes , to make the company more "human" and generate empathy.

Corporate Facebook page: some tips

Once you have learned what to publish on the company Facebook page, it remains to understand how to best package the posts. It is essential, in this regard, to know your audience, in order to understand how to connect with it effectively.

Experimenting and analyzing the results of the various posts and user behavior through the data made available by the social network is the best way to understand who your clientele is made up of.

Then, specifically, the posts on the page should:

·         Contain high quality gifs, images or videos

·         Allow people to perform actions , capturing the attention and stimulating users' curiosity by inviting them, for example, to share articles, subscribe to the newsletter or provide an opinion on services

·         Be simple and orderly , with clean and coherent colors, recognizable images and short, striking texts.

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Best Email Marketing Platforms: Selection Guide

Best Email Marketing Platforms: Selection Guide

The guide that helps you find the best email marketing platform for your business and better manage the sending of emails to your customers.

Locate a platform for the ' Email Marketing that is able to meet the needs of all those who choose this tool to send your messages and attract new customers is a difficult task. In order to choose the best platform, a series of parameters must be taken into consideration. Among these, the following stand out:

·         Budget

·         Costs

·         Size of the database

·         Automation level

·         Integrations.

Let's now see, also in light of these parameters, a selection of the best platforms for Email Marketing .

MailChimp

MailChimp is a very popular Email Marketing platform, particularly suitable for freelancers and for those who manage medium-small Email Marketing projects.

The interface is very simple, the service (at least in its basic version) is free and offers a wide variety of integrations with other platforms, starting with Facebook and WordPress.

To lower the percentage of rejected emails and thus prevent its email delivery servers from being blacklisted, MailChimp requires users to double confirm their registration (on the website and via email) and this inevitably reduces the lists. This is the biggest disadvantage of MailChimp, to which we must add the need to pay for each additional feature to the basic service .

GetResponse

GetResponse is an Email Marketing platform that can be used by small and medium-sized enterprises and, more generally, by those who have just started a new business.

It is a particularly inexpensive and simple to use service , which offers various functions and integrations, as well as detailed statistics. The weak point is related to automation processes, not particularly developed.

ActiveCampaign

Small businesses and startups can opt for Active Campaign , an inexpensive Email Marketing platform, simple to use and with various specific functions for SMEs .

This platform has its own CRM system to manage leads and therefore automatically organize sales and marketing. Process automation is a point in favor of Active Campaign, which, on the contrary, presents reports that are not always easy to decipher.

SendInBlue

SendInBlue is an Email Marketing platform that offers a good compromise between the expense it requires and the simple to use and complete service in the functions it offers (like the more well-known Active Campaign).

SendInBlue is also available in the English version, has a well-developed CRM section and offers good automation, integration and segmentation possibilities, which represent the real competitive advantage compared to other platforms. The interface, however, may be more complicated than other services (such as MailChimp).

Aweber

Aweber is an Email Marketing platform suitable for those who work in the field of Web Marketing Agency and are looking for a reliable tool despite having a limited budget. Those who are beginners can benefit from its detailed and intuitive reports , while the more experienced can take advantage of the possibility of performing split-tests. In terms of costs, the expense required is slightly higher than in Get Response.