Health 2.0: From Concept to Reality

17 May Health 2.0: From Concept to Reality

Conceptualize (kən-sĕp’chū-ə-līz’) v.

1. The mental process of considering, developing, or forming ideas, thoughts, or notions
2. The ability to interpret new ideas from specific instances or occurrences in a conceptual way

I have thoroughly enjoyed my foray into the new world of healthcare consumerism as part our changing healthcare landscape. I began down the Health 2.0 path initially from the personal health record perspective. Having spent 5 years of my life creating the Open Source Enterprise Health Records market, and seeing the incredible impact on an organization through the implementation of this technology, I became interested in seeing if we could have the same affect at the individual level with a personal health record. This naturally took led me to an evaluation of the growing consumerism movement, along with the emerging technology and tools of consumer empowerment.

As part of that research, I began experiment myself with wiki’s, blogging, healthcare communities, social networking, and reading everything I could on the subject. My own blog proved to be a great way to connect with likeminded individuals who were interested and engaged in these topics. This led me to meet and discuss with several CEO’s of technology organizations regarding their own healthcare strategy, healthcare concerns as employers, and their own corporate strategy for engaging in the national healthcare debate. This led me to more reading, including Michael Porter’s excellent book Redefining Healthcare, which in my mind still presents the best case on HOW we can change our healthcare system by focusing on value based competition on results. After reading this book, I began to thread together a tapestry of ideas which began to aggregate around my own notions of Health 2.0.

Some preliminary chatter regarding some of the themes of Health 2.0 began emerging late last fall with Business 2.0 publication called “Patient Knows Best“. That sparked some lively debate on several blogs and honed some of my ideas regarding this emerging movement. Having been fortunate to have identified the open source healthcare wave, I could feel that there was something very real and tangible about Health 2.0. I personally use writing and presentations as my mental forcing function on new concepts and I began writing extensively about Health 2.0 in January. I began by attempting to define the term, sought to identify some of the representative companies, and to provide further support for the concept, themes, and representations that symbolize the movement. I publicly presented these ideas in a keynote address at the SCALE conference in early February. Other public commentary about the concept began to surface simultaneously.

This led to further conversations with Matthew at HIMSS, followup meetings in San Francisco, and the eventual and natural evolution to creating a conference to bring all the players to the table. Turns out that Matthew and I had near similar ideas about the conference, and by mutual agreement determined that he, along with the highly capable Indu Sabaiya of Etudes Scientific, would spearhead the effort to bring the conference into being. They have done a splendid job of organizing the conference and are to be congratulated for helping turn Health 2.0 from an interesting niche idea to a national conversation. I really look forward to participating in the conference and interacting with some of the innovative thought leaders reshaping American healthcare.

One of my favorite things in life is to begin with a conceptual vision and turn it into a tangible reality. As far as the vision for the Health 2.0 is concerned, I want to be the first to welcome you to the new healthcare reality.