FAQ: The Health 2.0 Conference
Connecting Consumers & Providers
Last UPDATE: 10.22.07
What is Health 2.0 and why are we running conferences about it?
The term Web 2.0 has been around since 2003. The O'Reilly organization both coined the term and created a definition that year, and then they went on to create the Web 2.0 Conference. Meanwhile over at The Health Care Blog and in his by now relatively long consulting career, Matthew Holt has been following technology in health care since the early 1990s. Some of his eHealth era reminisces were relatively poignant...
Indu Subaiya, a healthcare consultant and entrepreneur was similarly starting to follow Web 2.0 trends and their impact on health as she embarked on designing a prototype for a medical record-sharing website.
Towards the middle of 2006 several start-ups began targeting health care using Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, mash-ups, video, blogs communities, and user-generated data. And to be fair Wondir which has since been sucked into the Revolution Health vortex started a now seemingly defunct blog called Health 2.0 in late 2005. In early November 2006 Matthew did a podcast with 3 Health 2.0 companies on THCB, and the community was beginning to emerge. (From now on Matthew is switching to “I” & “me”)
Two events crystallized this. First an article in Business 2.0 (part of CNNMoney these days) which was the first "mainstream" mention of Health 2.0 outside the blogs, and the December 2006 Healthcamp "unconference” in which several of us got talking about the topic. (Here's a photo with Enoch Choi standing & talking and me apparently falling asleep on my hand at the far end of the table! And here's Health2.0 co-founder Indu Subaiya eating health food!).
Indu and I started kicking around the idea of a next steps on Health2.0 in January 2006 and after a few changes in people, partnerships and timing we created an advisory board, and talked about holding a conference. After discussions with a couple of original charter sponsors (thanks to Mike Haymaker at Cisco, and Daniel Palestrant at Sermo for taking the plunge) we committed to holding a conference on September 20, 2007 in San Francisco. That conference massively exceeded our expectations, with nearly 500 attendees, and a hundred more on a wait list. Here's the agenda for that day, and you'll be able to order the DVD shortly.Q. So what's next for Health 2.0?
The Health 2.0 'movement' has really caught on fire. We've taken several smaller 'versions' of the conference demo format to other conferences. There has been a rash of blog postings, presentations and interest in Health2.0, some of that captured at the Health2.0 media room. And the recent announcement of Healthvault shows that at least one giant is very committed to the market. So we've decided to do three things to help move the community along.
Q. Three? OK, what are they?
First we are committing to holding two conferences in 2008. They'll continue to show cutting edge innovation, and allow for maximum networking & collaboration. The 'Spring Fling' was a smaller scale event, themed around a particular concept.This year the concept was "Connecting Consumers & Providers" It was held on 3-4 March in San Diego. All the details are here.
The Fall event will cover the Health 2.0 waterfront, centered again on User-Generated Healthcare, from October 21-23. More details can be found here.
Q. Just conferences?
The conferences will remain a focal point, but secondly Health2.0 is going online. There's already a vibrant Facebook group, and there's also the new Health2.0 Blog. This is group blog to which anyone in the Health2.0 Community is invited to contribute. To become a contributor, email John@health2con.com. There's also the Health 2.0: User generated media site, which has some of the best demos and videos featuring Health 2.0 Technologies and participants. Other enhancements to the community & connectivity part of the site are coming soon.
Q. You said three things?
A. The third part is an effort that was announced by Marty Tennenbaum at the September 2007 conference. We want the community to create a commons which will oversee cooperative technology projects to overcome hurdles to Health2.0's wider adoption. More details are here. There'll be an announcement to interested parties shortly.
Q. So what is the goal of the conferences?
The goal of the conferences is to get leaders in Health2.0 to interact with each other, and to network them with "mainstream" players, technology people, finance people and anyone with an interest in the topic.
Q. How do I sign up?
Go to Health2.0 Registration. The cost is $1459 for regular attendees ($1049 for early birds!), and only $849 if you're academic, charity, Foundation or government (but no, working for a huge hospital organization that runs a teaching hospital doesn't count as "academic"
Q. Can my company/organization sponsor or exhibit?
Sure. There are a variety of sponsorship opportunities and we also are having a limited number of exhibitors--those tables will be in the reception and exhibit area, but the exhibitors will also be full attendees. If you're interested please sign up on this form, and we'll get back to you.
There'll also be some press and bloggers, and our multi-media friends at ICYou who did such a fabulous job covering the last conference will be there again. If you want to meet them, let us know. In addition our friend Fard Johnmar is setting up a video cast series on Digital Health with the folks at Scribe Media and is looking for sponsors. Email us and we'll pass you along to him.
Q. Where is it?
The conference is at the Marriott San Francisco near Union Square (click on the link to find out more).
Q. I'm speaking, exhibiting, blogging; Is it OK for me to bring a colleague or two?
Speakers come for free--after all we are making them work. Unfortunately if each speaker brought one friend, our economics would go south in a hurry. Anyone else can of course sign up as a regular attendee. Email us if you have questions or want to discuss.
Q. I/my friend/my CEO knows more about this than anyone on earth and just has to be on a panel
We have spent a lot of time and effort figuring out great panelists. But there is no way we can accommodate everyone. Instead, please keep telling us about interesting people, ideas and companies and we'll consider them for podcasts, interviews, and future participation in conferences. But please keep it gentle, or at least funny! You can sign up potential speakers here.
One note, we are not a pay-for-play conference. It may be hubris but we think that we know a fair bit about the space and hope that our choices provide some "value-add"
Q. I’d love to come but I’m working for an unfunded start-up and have already maxxed out my credit cards; I'm a student; my dog ate my checkbook; can you help?
We had great success last time around with letting students and others volunteer to work at the conference--this actually was not an attempt for us to save money (because we gave seats to them that could have gone to paying customers) but we felt that it gave a great opportunity to spread the ability to see what Health2.0 was about. We also did have a special rate for a limited number of unfunded start-ups. As space is very limited for the March meeting we're doing this by invite only this time around. For the Fall 2008 meeting we're hoping to be able to be much more flexible again.
Q. Are you the only people doing this?
Running this conference series exactly? Yes. Talking or presenting about Health2.0, err--no.
Here's a blog from a Hungarian medical student on Medicine2.0. Here's Uri Ginzberg's Medical 2.0 blog, and here's the Health2.0 wiki run by Johannes Ernst, who's on our advisory board.
Last summers HealthCare Unbound conference (at which Matthew was a panelist on PHRs) featured a session on Health2.0 lead by David Kibbe, who's involved with our spring fling. We also ran a session on Health2.0 at the Information Therapy conference in Park City, Utah and at the Partners Connected Health Conference in October 2007. And we're sure that some others in the conference business are thinking about the same thing too!
Q: I have come up with the most brilliant ever conceived of idea for a new Health 2.0 startup. If funded my idea will revolutionize healthcare/eradicate the national deficit/cure [disease name here.] Do you know somebody who can help find me funding?
Yes, we know some VCs. Email us about said idea and we'll see if we can help.
Q. Will you update this FAQ often?Just did on November 21!
