Crowd Sourcing in Healthcare Industry

Recently, an informatics and healthcare research foundation called The  Regenstruef Institute affiliated with the Indiana University School of Medicine did a project together. They crowdsourcing from patients across the country to contribute their ideas to make healthcare a better quality. 
                           From this crowdsourcing activity, a huge number of patients focused on how to prevent disease rather than treatment of disease. They provide many valuable ideas and ways to improve obesity and cardiovascular disease. Some people focused on communication, education, and relationships in healthcare. 

In a recent survey, a customer said that the thing that bugs them most is going to a doctor with unclear information about a condition and treatment. A computer application developed based on this case. This App can translate what will happens during a doctor visiting into a print summary for patient to take home. It gives patient a clear idea about the details of their doctor appointment. 

This activity not only to identify problems that patients case about, but also give public a chance to engage in healthcare industry and science. Dr. Mike Weiner, director of the Institute's Center for Health Services Research says, "We're just one more example of the notion of crowdsourcing to identify some important agendas that may play a useful role in science. " Also, they plan to use more crowdsourcing in healthcare industry in the future. 

Idea Bounty - The Best Ideas Get Paid

While its hard to come up with new ideas, its even harder to find them. Idea Bounty provides clients and creatives alike a source to buy and sell their creative Crowd Sourcing ideas. Through their innovative and interactive site, companies can put up a bounty, offering a lump sum of money to reward the creative with the best idea to fit their needs. Companies include big names such as Red Bull, and BMW, along with smaller more localized businesses. Anyone looking to get that next best idea can get their start through Idea Bounty.

Get smarter ideas for less than what it would cost your research team. The latest Bounty has been put up by Hansa Pilsener, South Africa's 2nd largest beer brand. They are looking for a "Big Fresh" activation idea that will get consumers engaged with their brand and product. Coming up with an idea to serve their needs, you could walk away with $2000.

Just from browsing this site, Bounties seem to range anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to an astounding amount of $20,000. This one given by Disaronno, has been Idea Bounty's highest post to date.

Yes this site does require members to sign up in order to see what their options are, however it is well worth it to get the chance to explore this site. Whether you are a business looking to gather ideas, an entrepreneur looking to step out into the business world, or an internet browser interested in anything and everything, check it out for yourself and claim your bounty!

What do you think of crowdsourcing?

In this blog we talk a lot about crowd sourcing, and what it is. But,

What do you think of crowd sourcing? 

Is it effective? 

Can we trust the information? 

Take for instance TripAdvisor, the largest travel community in the world - with more than 32 million members, and over 100 million reviews. Do you trust the information you´re being given and have you considered that people have different assumptions of things? 

Does "The wisdom of the crowd" the world a better place? Is this a way to provide new opportunities to contribute, share and let one's voice be heard? Is it so that the new markets opening up provide opportunities for creativity, innovation and new ideas? Or should we listen to critics who say that this is just another way for the big global companies to leverage the crowd, giving them free access to the new information so that you get the most "customized" advertising and cheapest possible labor? Developments in this field are constantly changing, and you can probably see that both directions in evidence. But there is a tendency for increasing commercialization of the various services, so we'll just hope that community spirit will survive and that creativity will find new ways and new innovative ways to apply the principles of crowdsourcing on.

Just How Successful is Crowd Sourcing?

Although there are many positives and negatives in regard to crowd sourcing, what businesses and individuals might be most interested in is finding out is just how successful this idea is.

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of crowd sourcing is stated as "to utilize (labor, information, etc.) contributed by the general public to (a project), often via the Internet and without compensation." In some cases,  People rely on information from individuals that perhaps they have never even met before (such as Yahoo Answers), but in other cases, such as Facebook, people seek to either get an opinion or gain more knowledge from friends they may know very well. In instances such as asking questions just to hear opinions from others, success is not an issue. However, in many cases a wrong answer can make all the difference. For example, one form of crowd sourcing, known as crowd voting, occurs when websites gather views and opinions from individuals on a certain topic. Iowa Electronic Market, a prediction market that gathers crowds' views on politics, relies on factual information from their participants so that the Market can guarantee accuracy by forcing participants to buy and sell contracts based on the political options. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

Another example of when success really counts in a business is seen in companies that acquire ideas and possible commercial ads from individuals with artistic abilities or knowledge. This occurred when L'Oreal chose a five minute ad segment sent in by an individual which cost them $1,000 to run as opposed to brainstorming the idea themselves and paying $164,200. In this case, L'Oreal was extremely successful in they way chose to carry out their ad-focused campaign strategy. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-09-24/crowdsourcing

Criticism of Crowdsourcing.

We have been talking about crowdsourcing and the benefits, but not so much about the downsides and critique it has gotten..

One criticism of crowdsourcing is that only those with access to the right tools are able to contribute. Differences in access to technology means that some groups are favored, while others, who do not have access, or who do not master the digital technologies are excluded from participation. The same could apply to countries that have limited access to the Internet. One can then run the risk that "The power of the crowd" is only the voice of a few and that there is no real innovation, just a repetition of the ideologies of those already in power.

Another downside of crowdsourcing is that there may be a skewed power relations, where large companies, groups with money and power, can utilize smaller groups to do "slave labor" for themselves. Utilized social media users - in this case crowdsourcing webpages and platforms - in that they are "forced" to use the various portals and services, either because they have been "cheated" to store personal information social networking sites to be able to use the service, or because they are forced to do seemingly pointless micro tasks to earn money. The utilization applies to both implicitly contribute to crowdsourcing through the use of social media and search services, and those who are actively contributing to Wikipedia or a micro job site.

Want to Build a Crowdsourcing Application?

Crowdsourcing is a popular tool to get ideas, inspiration and feedbacks from other people.  More and more business owner want to develop a crowdsourcing application to benefit their business. The question is HOW? Let's follow Simon Willison's presentation "Building Crowdsourcing Applications"to get some tips. 

Tips for Building a Crowdsourcing Application:

• Consider usability, visual design and copy-right of your application. 
• To be Flexible-Users may not share the same goal with you. They may use the application in many different ways.  
• Encouragement-Something like medals and points will motivate users to do almost everything. 
• Don’t be afraid- Even flawed systems can produce a fascinating result. 
• Consider hard about the questions you ask.
• Let users have a minimal barrier to entry-Such as a simple registration process. 
• Do not forget to consider ethics, legal liability accuracy issues.

Click here to Listen to the Audio of Willison's presentation.  

Crowd Sourcing by the World's Best Brands

For those looking at big name Crowd Sourcing Initiatives that have happened in the past, look towards Crowd Sourcing by the World's Best Brands. This site has a unique timeline created by Yannig Roth, PhD student at Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and Research Fellow at eYeka that shows how the world's most valuable brands use crowd sourcing. It is a great reference to gather and display information about many of the world's top brands and what contests they have offered in the past. Not only is it a blog database, but an opportunity in itself by allowing viewers to email Roth with new Crowd Sourcing Opportunities that haven't been added yet.

Spanning back to 2005, this database contains hundreds of contests proposed to the public for entry where you can look into more detail about the contests, what it entails and who won the competition.  Looking at the timeline as a whole Crowd Sourcing was not a prevalent medium to connect with the public from 2005 until the end of 2008. Once 2009 hit, the timeline becomes denser including more contests and a variety of more big brand names. Just to scratch the surface, some of the big names include: Google, Dell, Pepsi, Kia, American Express along with dozens more. Viewing the data from 2013 thus far, it is easy to see that this will be a great year of Crowd Sourcing opportunities. Some of the most recent marks on the timeline include opportunities that either are about to start or are open for submissions so this can also be used as a resource to find big name initiatives.