St. Cloud
ST CLOUD (public) NCI/COLT FHCRC LH
About St. Cloud Communications
Our mission:
To link with "communities of shared imagination and practice" to ensure that people are able:
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to find the highest quality health
information |
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and to make the decisions and to take the actions that will preserve and enhance their own or others' health and well-being. |
- deliver timely, insightful, and effective informational and relational resources to key contacts in the different sectors
- facilitate collaboration among dispersed cross-industry "communities of shared imagination" in pursuit of innovation, translation, diffusion, and social equity
Our methods:
We apply insights and perspectives from twenty years of experience to:
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connect thought leaders from different sectors who are committed to improving health and well-being through the promise of technology, |
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recognize the global interconnectedness and the promise of health and well-being for all people, and |
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provide a provocative, strategic, and cross-disciplinary view from 36,000 feet |
Together we build an understanding of how the resources and agendas of different societal sectors can translate into programs and policies that will influence the rapid evolution of interactive health communications, multimedia information technology, and infrastructure.
The societal sectors we bridge include: government, academic, non-profit, and commercial. The audiences we pay attention to include: the public, patients, families, practitioners, and the underserved. We learn from sector leaders in information technology (IT).
Also on our radar screen are bellwether industries which historically share health's imbalance of information power among stakeholders. These industries, such as personal law, finance, private aviation, retail, and entertainment, can help us to understand the emerging consumer and professional expectations in health and points of "strategic inflection".
We deliver professional expertise through our work as staff, consultants, and volunteers.
Our focus:
St. Cloud is engaged in a small number of highly focused relationships (paid or volunteer) with organizations such as the federal government's National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, MD), the eHealth Institute (Washington, D.C. and Seattle, WA), the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's Division of Public Health Sciences (Seattle, WA), the Future Health Technology Institute (Cambridge, MA), FiRe Conference (Future in Review conference in global economics and technology) Prorenata (supporting the US Air Force Academy's Center for Excellence in Medical Multimedia in Colorado Springs, CO), eLearning conference (supporting AACE, Asssociation for the Advancement of Computing in Education in Norfolk, VA), Department of Health and Human Services Healthy People 2010 Health Communication Work Group, Global Health Initiatives (Potomac, MD and Berkeley, CA), the University of Rochester's Center for Future Health (Rochester, NY), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, Washington, D.C.)
We serve on several boards, committees, and working groups in the health and technology arenas. Content areas include: international economics and emerging technology, cancer communications, usability, e-learning, genomics, bioinformatics, population and individual health, information quality, and access by underserved populations (addressing digital divide, social equity, and international development issues).
Our perspective:
We believe that the prospectus described in 2001 by the MIT Media Lab's Health Special Interest Group still presents a fairly reasonable view of how healthcare will unfold:
"Nanotechnology, biosensors, body networks and smart homes are combining to give consumers the tools to take control of their health and maintain their lifestyle. This emerging network of technologies can also help create a web of interpersonal relationships that reinforce healthy behaviors and medical compliance. The detailed, continuous and individual data from such a network is synergistic with advances in both human genome and conventional medical research, and offers the potential for creation of a data-rich, personalized, and preventative medical science."
Our thoughts on bellwether industries that provide a glimpse into emerging technologies and consumer adoptions that will be important for healthcare are discussed in the book chapter published in 2002: Our Wealth, Our Health – Bellwether Industries for Decision Tools and Symbiotic Stewardships.
We hope that increased global efforts to address root causes of terrorism will strengthen dialogue for the wise stewardship and sustainability of public health, and economic and natural resources, for our planet.
We feel that art and design disciplines, when used with technology, clarify the emotional and cognitive dimensions of self- and community-care. This informed caring is becoming a survival imperative.