We’re often asked what the definition of Health 2.0 is. Actually there are several. Defining Health2.0 is also a user-generated phenomenon. You can choose your own definition. Scott Shreeve has one here. Jos Bakker from Philips disagrees and uses another more limited one—his is largely based on the O’Reilly definition of Web 2.0. Ingenix CEO Andy Slavitt has a third. David Kibbe from AAFP has recently been talking about it too, and Cleveland Clinic’s John Sharp gave a good talk on it in 2007. Most recently Ted Eytan has been creating a definition including discussion of “participatory medicine”.
Our definition is currently focusing on user-generated aspects of Web2.0 within health care but not directly interacting with the mainstream health care system. That means, a) search, b) communities, c) tools for individual and group consumer use. But clearly there are blurring boundaries between all these, and the question of connecting Health 2.0 user-generated content to the wider health care system—which hasn’t exactly adopted Web 1.0 with a flourish—is coming into closer focus as more clinicians and organizations start to use these technologies to communicate with consumers.
There is huge room for debate about whether we’re talking about limited use of tools and technologies or a wider movement to change the whole healthcare system—or perhaps if it’s just all buzzwords with no substance.
There are more definitions on the Health 2.0 wiki, and the California Health Care Foundation recently released a report on The Wisdom of Patients: Social Media in Healthcare by our friend and consigliere Jane Sarasohn-Kahn that is quite informative.
Defining Health 2.0
We’re often asked what the definition of Health 2.0 is. Actually there are several. Defining Health2.0 is also a user-generated phenomenon. You can choose your own definition. Scott Shreeve has one here. Jos Bakker from Philips disagrees and uses another more limited one—his is largely based on the O’Reilly definition of Web 2.0. Ingenix CEO Andy Slavitt has a third. David Kibbe from AAFP has recently been talking about it too, and Cleveland Clinic’s John Sharp gave a good talk on it in 2007. Most recently Ted Eytan has been creating a definition including discussion of “participatory medicine”.
Our definition is currently focusing on user-generated aspects of Web2.0 within health care but not directly interacting with the mainstream health care system. That means, a) search, b) communities, c) tools for individual and group consumer use. But clearly there are blurring boundaries between all these, and the question of connecting Health 2.0 user-generated content to the wider health care system—which hasn’t exactly adopted Web 1.0 with a flourish—is coming into closer focus as more clinicians and organizations start to use these technologies to communicate with consumers.
There is huge room for debate about whether we’re talking about limited use of tools and technologies or a wider movement to change the whole healthcare system—or perhaps if it’s just all buzzwords with no substance.
There are more definitions on the Health 2.0 wiki, and the California Health Care Foundation recently released a report on The Wisdom of Patients: Social Media in Healthcare by our friend and consigliere Jane Sarasohn-Kahn that is quite informative.