Story of my book - Healthcare Social Media Management and Analytics,

Hey Readers,

Its 2 AM - Saturday Night & I am at it again. Most of my day time goes into work. I start my work at 5 AM in the morning & go till 4:30 PM in the evening (with a few 10 mins walks in-between).

I recently received this email from a fan in Michigan (don't want to disclose her name) - 

So, let me tell you the story behind this book... the story of my book Healthcare Social Media Management and Analytics goes long back... to the year 2000

2000 & Medical Tourism - 

It was 2000.. we just got internet at home and the first thing I saw was a video & the book from Prof. CK Prahalad about Outsourcing & Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits.. (apart from Neo-Riemannian Geometry - Math in Music, Swarm intelligence, Firoozbakht's conjecture, Andrica's conjecture on prime numbers.. possible programming of it in C++ and so many more things.. Internet...especially google.. was truly amazing in terms of knowledge distribution to some small 16 year old student sitting in Thane..).. 

At the same time my dad was creating a campaign for his bank to give loans to a lot of hospitals in Mumbai & promote a lot of different services including low cost treatment for travelers coming from US & UK. So, being a curious kid I was able to send few emails to Prof. CK Prahalad about how my dad gave loans to hospitals & how few foreigners come to these hospitals to get treated while enjoying the tourism in India and asked about the possibility of outsourcing of medical services and being a great guy that Prof. Prahalad was..he was very kind to a 16 year old kid (me) and replied to me with a few articles on Medical Tourism..That's the term I was looking for.. 

2009 & Michelle Obama Initiative Idea - 

Years went by.. I came for my education to the US.. did some fabulous things as a research scholar for college of pharmacy, NASA Mars mission center at U of A, fraud detection for Freddie Mac, Amazing projects for Merck & Sanofi.... And then came 2009.. I was at NIH working on multiple initiatives on data science, AI and healthcare, There was the Michelle Obama Initiative for which NIH asked everyone for new ideas. The idea I submitted through an email was - 

Population health, preventative health leveraging social media, search & digital data, med devices/IoT, lab results+genome (using AI, computer vision, NLP), and online patient communities for better clinical tracking, health risk scores, patient awareness campaign/education and tracking patient outcomes/journeys (through public-private partnerships) along with Prof. Prahalad's idea of Medical Tourism. 

My then CEO & boss met President Obama that time after submitting this idea. Call it having a bigger vision thanks to Dr. Prahalad's email exchanges in 2000 (Unfortunately Prof. Prahalad passed away in 2010 without me emailing him about this idea and its roots in his emails in the year 2000)..  

There was a lot of resistance to the idea since it was too big, too advanced for 2009 & of course too many people wanted credit for it..

2013 & the book on the weekends - 

I came back to India in 2011 and went through a lot of turmoil..wrote a lot of articles.. blogs & a few books along with my full time job..(a story for another day..) But, I kept thinking how that idea changed lot of things in healthcare including lot of startups using it -

1. Qure.ai 

2. Lumiata

3. Doximity

4. Definitive Health

5. A lot of tech & AI companies entered into Healthcare & Life sciences etc.. 

Since Social Media & Healthcare was the most important part of the idea, I started writing down stories about Indian Hospitals, Payers & Pharma companies using it.. Every weekend I used to sit in front of my laptop thinking one day these stories are going to change Healthcare, AI, Life Sciences, technology forever.. 

Hence came the book - Healthcare Social Media Management and Analytics - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25449696-healthcare-social-media-management-and-analytics which received decent response initially and some cool pharma companies & hospitals absolutely loved it.... but then started getting good response after 9 years of publishing (after Doximity IPO)... 

And then comes the fan email.. which is today.. :)