• “we gotta stay positive”

  From HelloHealth. No promises of perfection, fancy tests, or excessive procedures. It says, “we’ll listen.”

  I think it’s too bad that the MTA shut it down (MTA Bursts Thought-Bubble Subway Poster Campaign). People have a lot to say about their health - this shows that they aren’t being listened to. Why don’t we shut down ad campaigns for unecessary medical tests and procedures? Just something to think about.

• Hello Health-Concierge Care for All | Nexthealth - Hello Health is coming. This is a tweet by tweet review of Jay Parkinson, MD's demo.

• Top Health 2.0 Web Apps - ReadWriteWeb - Nice compendium of a few sites to check out

• Pew Internet : Participatory Medicine - The latest data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project about participation on the Internet. Participatory medicine may become a more common idea thanks to the Web2 revolution.

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?

• Getting a Second Life—in an online health community: Consumer Reports Health Blog -

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?

• BarCamp wiki / HealthCampMd - June 14, I can't go, but I like the transparency of the setup, down to the finances, of this Health 2.0 get together

• Bioethics Forum - Google Health: Organizing Your Medical Information - Comment on this blog about a method to display drug/device ads to physicians reviewing a patient's medical record. Is this sort of thing different than a physician reviewing a medical record while writing with a branded pen on branded paper that sits in their office in front of their computer, next to their drug sample cabinet (if they allow these things in their practice). Shouldn’t the conversation be about being an unbranded doctor instead of Google’s implementation?

May 10th through May 13th:

• Be Well Mobile, Patient Engagement Software that works - cell phone platform for disease management
• Medical Advances—Through Your iPhone? - Portable applications in health care that the iPhone could enable.
• Scientific Misconduct Blog: LSD and the corruption of medicine (Part III): Naming names - A chilling account of experimentation on US citizens without consent
• Texting may help teens remember meds - CNN.com - Cell phones as a tool in medication adherence.
• The Open Secret of Success: Financial Page: The New Yorker - One of the best summaries of what Toyota does well that I've seen.
• ITIF: Explaining International Broadband Leadership - Summary of broadband access in the US and other countries
• Ruthsarian Layouts - Some helpful CSS layouts for blog design