Health 2.0 is participatory healthcare. Enabled by information, software, and community that we collect or create, we the patients can be effective partners in our own healthcare, and we the people can participate in reshaping the health system itself.

Matthew Holt recognizes this as the latest definition out there. As I mentioned in my comments on previous posts about this , I started this process out of necessity. I needed to describe health 2.0 in a presentation to the Board of the California Healthcare Foundation. I did use the definition above, and what I was/am happiest about it is that it’s something I would not have come up with in my physician state of being (as patient focused as I am), and that it was finalized and approved by a patient.

We’re talking about a definition this time; isn’t this a metaphor for how any health system improvement should happen from now on?

Remember that I started the defining in anticipation of talk I am giving? That talk is happening next week, in collaboration with the California Healthcare Foundation, who are working to foster next generation ideas for health care.

Based on the comments I’ve read to date, here’s what I put together:

Health 2.0 is participatory health care. The combination of content and community enables the patient to be an active partner in their own health care and the citizen to be an equal partner in improving the health system.

Here’s a summary of the improvements suggested:

Dave: add “When patients meet Web 2.0″
Andre: add “Social Media”
Jen: “Content and Community” (commerce coming)
Deborah: “Strike transition, promote participation”
Lodewijk: “Not a transition; Health 2.0 defines the combination of health data and health information with (patient) experience through the use of ICT, enabling the citizen to become an active and responsible partner in his own health and care pathway”
Gilles: ” Add ‘and equal’, add ‘informed’”
Dave: “Lodewijk + is the combination of new Web tools, health information, and patient awareness, enabling the citizen”
Susannah (offline) : “Participatory medicine”
Matthew: “Good luck”

Here’s the original:

Health 2.0 is the transition to personal, participatory health care. Everyone is invited to see what is happening in their own care and in the health care system in general, to add their ideas, and to make it better every day.

Better? Easy to discuss in an elevator, or on your way to a walking meeting?

Over at one of my favorite blogs, e-patients.net, e-Patient Dave is starting a dicussion about what Health 2.0 “is;”: e-patients: Participate in defining “Health 2.0″

I started things off with a definition based on one created by The Economist, which I’ll repeat here:

Health 2.0 is the transition to personal, participatory health care. Everyone is invited to see what is happening in their own care and in the health care system in general, to add their ideas, and to make it better every day.

Feel free to suggest your improvements here, or there. I enjoy the idea that patients like Dave and readers of e-Patients will create improvements that can be incorporated.

If someone asked you, “What is Health 2.0?” Would you feel comfortable answering with the definition above? If not, how would you change it? Be sure if you would to tell a little bit about “why?” The story of how we get here is as important as the where we got to.

April 29th through May 4th:

• Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories - Interesting concept of storytelling using Web2.0
• As Doctors Get a Life, Strains Show - WSJ.com - I think this article, which portrays GenY physicians in a somewhat negative light for wanting balance, may miss out on what Jack Welch said, which is that this generation is looking to create true meaning, without wasting time or resources.
• Impact of Chronic Disease - Terrific site on understanding the impact of chronic disease in the U.S.
• Home Tweet Home: Energy-Savvy House Broadcasts on Twitter | Wired Science from Wired.com - More interesting uses for Twitter. I think there's great potential in health care for discovering how family/community are adhering to regimens or how they're feeling, e.g. chronic pain.
• Scott Shreeve, MD: Health 2.0: The Definition -

Health 2.0 is the transition to personal, participatory health care. Everyone is invited to see what is happening in their own care and in the health care system in general, to add their ideas, and to make it better every day.

When I went to medical school, a person’s ability to influence the health care system was linearly correlated with the length of their lab coat. Actually, in my medical school, medical students and attending physicians all wore the same length of lab coats, because I trained on the West Coast. I was exposed to the labcoat length protocol when I was a medical student and a new group of residents began training at our hospital. One of the residents was obviously from an East Coast medical school because she asked me permission to do something for a patient, and it took us both a few minutes to realize that she thought I was the “in charge” doctor because I wasn’t wearing a short lab coat. Neither of us wanted to relate in this way, and we transformed the relationship right there, in a beneficial way for our patients.

Flash forward to 2004, when my organization implemented an enterprise wide electronic medical record system for doctors, nurses, and staff. All of a sudden, we were on a common platform, and every member of the team had a contribution to make in each other’s learning of the new system. Once, when I was ordering an injectable medication, a nurse colleague came over to me and said, “here, let me show you how to do that, Ted.” Now, this new technology was creating an obvious platform for colleagues to teach each other, regardless of role. It was and is great.

In 2008, in organizations like ours where patients are regularly participating in the creation of their health record via secure e-mail and online health profiles, and participating in the creation of ideas and their health care stories inside and outside of our health care system, health care improvement is now more democratic than ever. When we combine that with management systems like LEAN (Toyota Management System) that support respect for our customers and our colleagues and use tools like visual systems and daily improvement methods, it is possible to see what the difference between Health 1.0 and Health 2.0 is. The technology has definitely stimulated this change by making it easier to participate, but the lasting intervention will be the participation of patients, their families, and every stakeholder (health care providers, businesses, philanthropies, non-profit associations, etc) in the improvement of our care system.

In 2006, The Economist referred to the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 as the transition from mass media to personal, participatory media. I think the same is true for Health 1.0 to Health 2.0.

I have spoken about the idea that physicians in my generation (Generation X) are a group that trained during an explosion of medical information. We are a group that is challenging the mental model of “omniscient physician” - we don’t want to hold all the answers for our patients because we’ll fail if we do. We want to learn something new from every patient, every colleague, and every industry, every day, so we can be good educators, too. Now we can, and we are.