Over the past couple of days some of the brightest entrepreneurs gathered in Boston for the Health 2.0 Spring Fling, a conference unlike any other. Health 2.0 brings together health technology developers, venture capitalists, corporate executives, and incubators, in a unique deal-making/partnering forum. The purpose is to advance technology by fostering connections that result in products focused on meeting some of the hugest challenges that health care faces today, among them: communication, information sharing, community, big data management, useful and powerful, mobile applications and personal health information.
The Health 2.0 conference represents the creative genius of Matthew Holt, a health care researcher and strategist and Indu Subaiya, and MD MBA, who started these forums in 2007 and have expanded them around the world, much to the benefit of all of the health care stakeholders.
Wikipedia defines healthcare 2.0 as the use of a specific set of web tools: e.g. blogs, podcasts, tagging, search, wikis among stakeholders in health care, using the principles of open source in generation of content. and based on a philosophy of unfettered use of computing source code including redistribution and access to products’ design and implementation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_2.0
This is closely related to Web 2.0, a loosely defined intersection of web application features that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
The question is why should patients and health care consumers care about a gathering that would appear to be for the techies? The answer is because Health 2.0 above and beyond other gatherings is at the grass-roots of the most important product developments that are taking place in health care today. The result will be the roll out of technology and devices that will make a significant difference in cost of care and patient outcomes.
