I recently finished reading Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. I was looking for some help with a new project idea that required using Keynote to create a screencast type presentation for patient education. I got far more than I bargained for. This is the sort of book that changes the way that you look at things you thought you had a handle on before. This book is not really about Powerpoint or keynote… It is a high level exploration of the concepts of communicating ideas effectively. Highly recommended for anyone that needs to communicate in the multimedia world we live in today.

Randale

A cottage industry has sprung up around the debate on the future of health care in the United States. As we move into the bona fide presidential campaign season, it shows no signs of abating. I have just finished reading Health Care at Risk: A Critique of the Consumer-Driven Movement and found it extremely useful for understanding the evolution of health care funding around the world as well as the scope of the debate currently occurring in this country - “Single Payer” versus “Market Driven” paradigms. There are multiple practical and philosophical issues that have to be addressed to adequately grasp the debate itself, let alone to refine your thinking about which side you are on. This book clearly articulates both sides of the argument and the evidence for and against each side in an academic fashion while remaining accessible to all. If you want to get more - but clearly biased - background on the “Market Driven” side of the argument consider reading Who Killed Health Care?: America’s $2 Trillion Medical Problem - and the Consumer-Driven Cure by Regina Herzlinger (the queen of the Market Driven movement) and Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results the academic treatise from Michael E. Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg.

groundswell

“Winning in a world transformed by social technologies.”

I just finished this new book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, two VP analysts at Forrester Research. This is a very readable and very balanced look at the increasing impact of social media on business. There are several sections that address how healthcare institutions have tapped into the social media dynamic and increased customer satisfaction and - potentially - improved outcomes. There are several other books that I have read that cover this same terrain (Now Is Gone: A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs by Geoff Livingston; The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media
by Paul Gillin and Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business by Larry Weber.) and more on the way (Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky). Groundswell is much less a cheerleading book and much more of a business analysis of what is happening and what you can do with your organization to take advantage of the trends occurring as the social media world unfolds. Highly recommended if you want a sober, balanced look at the playing field.

Randale