health 20 from concept to reality

Health 2.0: From Concept to Reality

Conceptualize (k@n-sep'chu-@-liz') v.

1. The mental process of considering, developing, or forming ideas,

thoughts, or notions

2. The ability to interpret new ideas from specific instances or

occurrences in a conceptual way

I have thoroughly enjoyed my foray into the new world of healthcare

consumerism as part our changing healthcare landscape. I began down

the Health 2.0 path initially from the personal health record

perspective. Having spent 5 years of my life creating the Open Source

Enterprise Health Records market, and seeing the incredible impact on

an organization through the implementation of this technology, I

became interested in seeing if we could have the same affect at the

individual level with a personal health record. This naturally took

led me to an evaluation of the growing consumerism movement, along

with the emerging technology and tools of consumer empowerment.

As part of that research, I began experiment myself with wiki's,

blogging, healthcare communities, social networking, and reading

everything I could on the subject. My own blog proved to be a great

way to connect with likeminded individuals who were interested and

engaged in these topics. This led me to meet and discuss with several

CEO's of technology organizations regarding their own healthcare

strategy, healthcare concerns as employers, and their own corporate

strategy for engaging in the national healthcare debate. This led me

to more reading, including Michael Porter's excellent book Redefining

Healthcare, which in my mind still presents the best case on HOW we

can change our healthcare system by focusing on value based

competition on results. After reading this book, I began to thread

together a tapestry of ideas which began to aggregate around my own

notions of Health 2.0.

Some preliminary chatter regarding some of the themes of Health 2.0

began emerging late last fall with Business 2.0 publication called

"Patient Knows Best". That sparked some lively debate on several blogs

and honed some of my ideas regarding this emerging movement. Having

been fortunate to have identified the open source healthcare wave, I

could feel that there was something very real and tangible about

Health 2.0. I personally use writing and presentations as my mental

forcing function on new concepts and I began writing extensively about

Health 2.0 in January. I began by attempting to define the term,

sought to identify some of the representative companies, and to

provide further support for the concept, themes, and representations

that symbolize the movement. I publicly presented these ideas in a

keynote address at the SCALE conference in early February. Other

public commentary about the concept began to surface simultaneously.

This led to further conversations with Matthew at HIMSS, followup

meetings in San Francisco, and the eventual and natural evolution to

creating a conference to bring all the players to the table. Turns out

that Matthew and I had near similar ideas about the conference, and by

mutual agreement determined that he, along with the highly capable

Indu Sabaiya of Etudes Scientific, would spearhead the effort to bring

the conference into being. They have done a splendid job of organizing

the conference and are to be congratulated for helping turn Health 2.0

from an interesting niche idea to a national conversation. I really

look forward to participating in the conference and interacting with

some of the innovative thought leaders reshaping American healthcare.

One of my favorite things in life is to begin with a conceptual vision

and turn it into a tangible reality. As far as the vision for the

Health 2.0 is concerned, I want to be the first to welcome you to the

new healthcare reality.