Yesterday was the landmark Health 2.0 conference (user-generated Healthcare) held in San Francisco. The event was hosted by Matthew Holt and Indu Subalya, MD. Originally envisioned as about a hundred folks getting together for a day to push the movement forward, this event turned into the “must attend” event for about 500 high energy thinkers and doers.
A few observations – the event felt like déjà vu with a twist. The room was packed. There were a few speakers from the “big guys” (Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and WebMD) and a lot of entrepreneurs strutting their stuff.
One big difference was that in almost every case the panelists showing off their cool new user-interactive tools were not using ppt as in the past, but showing demos of real live products. Granted it was clear the presenters had pre-loaded pages and knew what results they would get (who wouldn’t?), they were none-the-less showing us what was actually available, not just a dream in process.
One exception to that was one of my favorites and the most e-Patient presentation of the day was – Sophia’s Garden. Founded by Karen Herzog and her husband (who’s name isn’t in the program, but it was clear that this is a joint effort), Sophia’s Garden uses a Second Life-like environment for parents and other patients to interact with everything from care providers to test results to expert health information. It’s very cool and VERY e-Patient. Sophia’s Garden is still in development so I won’t put a URL here.
BTW – Matthew Holt confessed that the secret to his Blog success was that he Blogged in his pajamas. I’m hoping that strategy will work for me. Note, no photo included with this post.
More info on Health 2.0 Conference.
I “met” Karen last year after I hosted a NetSquared discussion on online patient communities. The Sophia’s Garden story is simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting. I’m so glad to see Karen and Richard moving forward with their vision.
I would love to hear more about the Health 2.0 conference. I regret not making the trip and I hope there is soon an East Coast equivalent. However, since I’ve been spending a lot of time reading survey responses from ACOR listserve members and keeping up with my own community listserves, I have to give a shout-out to these good old Web 1.0 meeting places.
For example, a member of DC Urban Moms (one of my listserves) recently posted a heart-tugging plea for advice about her 3-year-old. Another mom wrote back a lovely, detailed response about her own struggle with her son’s behavior (and eventual diagnosis with sensory integration issues). Here’s how she closed her post: “I think one of the more serious consequences of the loss of neighbors and the closeness of neighborhoods is the perspective of being able to talk to lots of other parents. Then again, maybe we trade off real nosy neighbors for wonderful virtual neighbors whose experiences are more similar.”
This will be a familiar sentiment to a lot of people who have found a virtual neighborhood online, whether it’s on a listserve, a blog, or Second Life. I don’t know that we can put a 1.0 or a 2.0 on it, but I know it’s making a difference in people’s lives.
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