FAQ: The Health 2.0 Conference
Q. 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 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. There’s plenty of press reports of the day up on the web.
Q. So what happened next in Health 2.0?
The Health 2.0 “movement” really caught on fire. We took 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 Health 2.0 media room. And the announcement of Healthvault from Microsoft in late 2007 and Google’s announcement of Google Health shows that at least two giants are very committed to the market. So we decided to do three things to help move the community along.
Q. Three? OK, what are were they?
First we committed to hold two conferences in 2008. We continued to showcase 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. Another sold out crowd of 350 came for two days of demos, discussion, and exploration. All the details are here and you can also see some of the great videos of patient and physician experience that we showed.
At the Fall event on October 22-23 over 1,000 people saw demos & presentations from across the Health 2.0 waterfront, centered again on User-Generated Healthcare. More details can be found here. There were several really innovative products introduced, an intensive design workshop run by IDEO, the announcement of a new movement around the end of life experience called Vimeo and icyou Health 2.0 Channels
Q. You said three things?
The conferences will always remain a focal point, but Health 2.0 is firmly online. In 2008 we added a now bursting at the seams Linkedin Health 2.0 Group to the vibrant Facebook group, and continued to showcase interesting developments on the Health2.0 Blog. This is group blog to which anyone in the Health2.0 Community is invited to contribute. To become a contributor, email matthew@health2con.com.
We also introduced the Health 2.0 Network, which is an active attendee list, social network, and messaging system for those at the conferences themselves. (Sorry but at the moment you have to be a current or past conference attendee to be on the network).
Q. What about the Health 2.0 Accelerator?
Back at the first Health 2.0 Conference Marty Tenenbaum suggested the creation of a technology consortium that would accelerate the development of Health 2.0 technologies and companies. After several meetings and discussions, a wiki was born followed by a first project involving DestinationRx & PHARMAsurveyor
Currently the accelerator is moving from being an informal wiki-based entity to a more formal organization, headed up by Julie Murchinson & Aaron Apodaca. You can get more details about it at the web site www.health2accelerator.org
Q. So what about conferences in 2009?
We just held our "Spring Fling" conference on April 22-23, 2009 at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston. We were thrilled to have this be our first joint meeting with our friends from the Center for Information Therapy, which was titled Health 2.0 Meets Ix. You can view past agendas and details on our website under the Past Conferences tab.
The next Health 2.0 conference will be held in San Francisco on October 6-7 at the Concourse Exhibition Center, located at 635 8th Street (at Brannan). Details on the agenda located here, with more details coming soon...
Check back on the Health 2.0 website to see current updates and changes. Hope to see you in the city by the bay soon!
Q. So the conference sounds good, how do I sign up?
Go to Health 2.0 Registration. The price of a regular admission ticket (includes both days) is $1499. For those who qualify for the Academic or Government rate, the price is $1249. We hope to see you in San Francisco soon!
Q. Can my company/organization sponsor or exhibit?
Absolutely! There are a variety of sponsorship opportunities to promote your organization at a Health 2.0 Conference and we also always have a buzzing exhibit hall. So far many companies have found this a great and relatively cost-effective way to get involved and introduce themselves to the healthcare community. If you’re interested please read over our options and fill out the application form. We will then get back to you shortly to confirm sponsorship or exhibition details.
If you have additional questions or concerns please send us an email at info@health2con.com and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
The conferences also attract members of the national and health care press and bloggers, including our multi-media friends at ICYou who have done such a fabulous job covering the four conferences so far.
Q. I/my friend/my CEO knows more about this than anyone on earth/has the coolest Health 2.0 site in history to demo and just has to be on a panel!
Indu and Matthew now spend most of their effort figuring out great companies with amazing technology and 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!
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”.
There’s also a policy/code of conduct for speakers and demoers. After some audience feedback, and to fit in with our internal organization, we’re going to be a little more rigid about enforcing it. Much, much more information about all of this is here.
Q. I’m speaking; Is it OK for me to bring a colleague or two?
Speakers & demoers 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 from their organization can of course sign up as a regular attendee. There are slightly different rules for sponsors. Email us if you have questions or want to discuss.
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 have had great success with letting students and others volunteers work at the conference—this is actually not an attempt for us to save money (because we give seats to them that could have gone to paying customers) but we feel it gives a great opportunity for people entering the community to see what Health 2.0 is about. To apply to volunteer, complete this form.
We also have a special rate for a very limited number of unfunded start-ups (and we mean unfunded, not those of you who are on Series C!). We invite one applicant per approved start up from a list that you need to join by email us at info@health2con.com.
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 was on our advisory board.
The HealthCare Unbound conference (at which Matthew was a panelist on PHRs) has featured a session on Health2.0 lead by David Kibbe, who’s on our advisory board too, and we've presented at several others including the Connected Health Summit (from Partners in Boston). We do have very friendly relationships with many other conferences and organizations all trying to help move that health care hairball forward.
And Matthew particularly has been out on the circuit talking about Health 2.0 for a while now, while Indu continues to work away with entrepreneurial Health 2.0 folks behind the scenes. Sometimes they even tell each other what they’re each up to (but not that often!).
And of course if you really want to stay in touch, here's the real time Twittter feed about all things Health 2.0Q. Our organization is interested in finding out more about Health 2.0/needs some consulting advice about strategy in this area.
In order to satisfy lots of requests, Matthew has teamed up with several of his most experienced colleagues in the consulting world (Brian Klepper, Michael Millenson & Jane Sarasohn-Kahn) to form Health 2.0 Advisors. We'll be issuing reports and offering strategy and educational help. Let him know what you’re thinking or needing by email.
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.
