Syndicom

After the successful health 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week, there have been several different “where to next?” discussions across the blogosphere. Accompanying these discussions are articles such as the one in Newsweek recently on web 2.0 and the coming of health 2.0, emphasizing “health as a social concept” and therefore, its commitment to sharing, participation, community and support. For many of us participating in the health arena these commitments would seem fundamental, but to see their reinstatement in contemporary times reminds us of just how far our current healthcare management systems have turned us away from them, and as a result for many physicians and providers, away from their primary motivation for being involved in the health of others.

Transparency and openness seem to be the sticking points for many. These two values reveal themselves in discussions of the privacy of health records and who should own them. They are also revealed in media reports of physician involvement in pharmaceutical trials such as Vioxx and the recent report that physicians prescribe placebos 50% of the time. Then there is the perceived discrimination of health insurance companies should anything that could raise your health care costs be diagnosed and reported. It seems that in a rush for control or market/cost dominance, we have lost sight of the purpose of health care. There are many in the health2.0 realm who would argue that this situation and the obstacles to transparency and openness currently existing within the system have provided the fertile soil for the growth of health 2.0 ventures such as the patient and physician communities of Patientslikeme, Weare.Us and Sermo, as well as online provider searches and evaluators such as HelloHealth, Locateadoc and Healthgrades. But somewhere, there is a need for more Organized Wisdom. There is a need for participatory medicine. Web 2.0 has provided the participatory technology for it. Now we just need the people.

According to the Wall Street Journal, physicians and hospitals “have long been quick to adopt breakthrough technology in medical devices, procedures and treatments,” but “far less attention has focused on innovations in networking and communications” in part because of “concerns about breaches in security and patient privacy and because health care until recently was a service always performed locally and in person.” However, it seems this is about to change as powerful IT networks across the globe will make it possible for doctors around the world to practice a variation of telemedicine as they provide care to people in remote or underserved locales. More importantly, this distribution of health care will result in shifting workloads and cost reductions. The Journal discusses the example of teleradiology where X-rays are taken at one location and then transmitted to doctors at another site, claiming that this activity, as well as others similar to it, appears ripe for expansion.

But the move to sharing, participation, community and support will not stop there.

The Journal also anticipates a continuing migration of medical knowledge to web sites edited by specialists in their field as doctors and scientists across the globe contribute material. Knowledge borne of clinical studies will be found by automated search tools as well as the online community of medical practice converges around online textbooks, medical journals, wikis and RSS feeds. While humans will continue to monitor, edit and police content as they do for wikipedia, for example, the push for search tools which will seek, filter and deliver our desired content will increase. The idea is not just to increase and distribute more widely medical knowledge, but also to deliver it in a focused, at your fingertips kind of way, so it is specific, up to date and reliable for the case on which you are working.  As Robert Kolodner from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology stated in the closing session of the Health 2.0 conference, “We have the tools and are beginning to learn how to use them, but we need to continue to have a ‘network of networks’ where knowledge is shared.”

Bring on the people. Good things happen when we connect!

With thanks to LoveCats2006, gwurky and dsevilla for their impressive art!

Kirsten Broadfoot

Tags: clinical studies, communities, content, distributed healthcare, health, health 2.0, healthgrades, hellohealth, locateadoc, medical knowledge, networks, openness, organized wisdom, participation, Patientslikeme, RSS, sermo, teleradiology, transparency, Weare.Us, web 2.0, wikipedia, wikis

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Blog.