Health 2.0 Conference Recap - Episode 23
Meredith Abreu Ressi, Vice President of Research


Last week I had the great pleasure of attending the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco. One of the first questions you get when traveling to the Health 2.0 conference is, “What is Health 2.0”? which was the question of the day, both in and out of the conference. Whereas Web 2.0 refers to the user-generated nature of tools and content in today’s technologies, Health 2.0 refers to User-generated healthcare, which was the tagline of the conference – and aptly sums up the focus on how patient-centric programs, applications, and content are changing healthcare delivery.

There’s been much hype surrounding the concept of Health 2.0 – coupled with a certain degree of skepticism about how big a deal Health 2.0 really is. Well after seeing two solid days of demos, it is clear that yes, this is a pretty big deal.  In fact, a recent study by Manhattan Research actually shows that the number of “Health 2.0” consumers out there has actually doubled in the past year alone, to more than 60 million U.S. adults. And if we look simply at those consumers who are using “health 2.0” sites, such as health-related blogs, communities, support groups, ratings, and the like, we see that it’s not just the young kids using these newfangled technologies. Consumers who have conditions such as cancer, fibromyalgia, and depression are also avid users of these types of resources, as are caregivers to children and family members. If there was one point that was clear, both from our research and the conference – it’s that Health 2.0 is happening – and it’s changing the way things are done in the healthcare industry.

So what better way to kick off the conference with a riveting intro from Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody”, talking about how this patient centric movement is a building tsunami for the healthcare industry. The core of his presentation – and arguably the essence of the conference – is in the idea that we’ve previously looked at the healthcare “system” as a collective body of those who provide care. Therefore, he says, change within that system was incumbent upon those providers to initiate – or, not initiate, as the case may be. But, as Shirky points out, once we start to recognize that the patients are, in fact, part of that system – even the very core of that system – that’s where you start to see the real change that is already happening. Or, as he put it – that’s when things start to get really weird.

From there, the conference showcased a seemingly endless parade of demos for patient communities, disease management tools, personal health records, ratings aggregators, decision support tools, customized content, mobile content – and more. I’ll try to focus here on some of the highlights – besides seeing Matt Holt dressed in drag – but be sure to check out the conference website at health2con.com for additional information.

Patient and physician communities were a big area of focus for many conference-goers. Sites like PatientsLikeMe or Sermo are actually out there gathering data and insight from patients and physicians respectively about what works and what doesn’t for various treatment options. By all accounts, consumers and physicians are actually changing their treatment decisions as a result of the information they read in these online communities. But the question that arose again and again was whether that was a good thing, and establishing the relative value of these findings from online communities versus evidence based, randomized clinical trials. The response from the audience and presenters was that these clinical trials are conducted in highly selective and controlled situations that don’t necessarily mirror what happens in the real world. For instance, if someone with depression is screened out of a clinical trial, we never find out how a drug interacts with someone who is depressed. This is the type of real world knowledge that can be gleaned from the wisdom of the populations in these networks – and it’s proving invaluable to the lives of many patients.

Another popular topic of the conference was the personal health record. One panel featured heavyweights from Yahoo, Google, WebMD, Microsoft and Aetna demonstrating the tools they offer as consumer aggregators – many of them focusing on their Personal Health Record. In a recent study by Manhattan Research of over 8,000 U.S. adults, we saw a slight uptick in PHR adoption over the past year especially – but it is certainly still not the norm for most consumers.

Many experts feel this is a bit of a Beta/VHS – or more recently, BluRay/HD-DVD – challenge – why spend the effort to create a personal health record (especially since most of the data entry will be manual) – if another standard or format might come along down the line? Many of the presenters focused on the portability of data – that it could be recaptured by the consumer – but I think that misses a piece of the story.

What seems to be missing from the consumer’s perspective is a term that Peter Neupert from Microsoft coined, unless I misheard him, when he said that Microsoft Health Vault connected “automagically” with the Aetna data.  It’s really the “automagic” that’s missing from all of these applications. They’re patient driven, all right – they’re for the most part, driven entirely by the patient, rather than acting as a centralized hub for a data feed.

Currently, different PHRs each have different partnerships for data collection. So maybe Aetna can import data from my lab tests, but the Google health record one connects with Duane Reade and my husband’s insurance company. My family’s data is all over the place - and not that useful as a result.

What I always think of is a software like Mint or Wesabe, where you just type in your bank passwords so the site can aggregate the information from all of your bank accounts for analysis. And yes, people actually type their bank passwords into third party sites – if the value to the consumer is apparent, privacy isn’t as much of a hurdle as you might think in this day and age.

So, imagine a similar scenario in which a variety of centralized applications could pull information from your doctor, the lab, drugstore, hospital, insurance company. With standardized reporting formats and universal EHR, this would be possible. What does that look like and who will put it together? Well, that’s the “magic” part of the automagic. It’s still a big magical mystery.

But it’s not an impossible one to solve. After seeing all of these great platforms and tools to bring healthcare into the 21st century, A panel about “Health 2.0 around the world” really brought home just how far behind we are in the U.S. in so many ways. What I found most striking was a demonstration from Marlene Winfield of the National  Health Service in the UK, showing the HealthSpace site.

The next iteration of this site, which has not yet relaunched, will allow consumers to schedule appointments online, view lab results, order prescription refills, and keep their own personal record of additional supplements or vitamins they are taking, so their physician can remain apprised of their complete health picture. This site has the potential to be that holy grail that allows consumers to manage all aspects of their healthcare through one site.

Now, of course, with a nationalized healthcare system, it is much easier to have everything under one “roof” so to speak. But this was at least a great dream to keep in mind – that one day, we’d all have these great tools at our disposal – automagically.



If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for future podcasts, please email podcast@manhattanresearch.com.



| Share on Facebook | Del.icio.us | Digg this | Email This