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Health 2.0, web-based apps and services for the healthcare sector, is a nascent but potentially huge market for web 2.0. As of now, many of these apps have an emphasis on communication, information sharing and community. These are relatively easy things to address using Web tools. However we're starting to see health 2.0 apps try to tackle the enormous inefficiencies in the healthcare system - check out our description of Carol.com below. Also, in the longer term, we will see the Web being used in medical diagnosis and practice.

Google today announced a pilot program (read: closed beta) of their health records application. The program will be conducted at Cleveland Clinic hospital in Cleveland, Ohio and will include under 10,000 patients. The pilot program will run six to eight weeks with the eventual goal to roll the program out to a broader user base if the test is a success. While there are certainly upsides to having medical records stored in a single, patient-accessible location, there are also serious privacy concerns.

Our 9th daily Comments Competition winner is Falafulu Fisi, for his comment on our post Web 2.0 Meets Medicine. Falafulu told us that the "current state of the art in medicine 2.0 of today is the automated online CDSS (Clinical Decision Support Systems)", which he says is starting to do diagnosis via the Web. Congratulations Falafulu, you've won a $30 Amazon voucher, courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Amazon WishList Widget. Here is Falafulu's full comment:

Bertalan Meskó from the excellent ScienceRoll blog has uploaded a presentation he gave recently at the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference. The presentation, embedded below, is a great overview of how the Web is being utilized in the medical profession.

I was particularly interested in the story of Dr Jay Parkinson, a Web-savvy doctor. He has an impressive website, where he describes himself as "a new kind of physician".

miVitals is a new Australian startup that has an ambitious goal: to enable individuals to manage their personal health data via a web application. miVitals describes itself as "a secure online storage system for health and lifestyle records". The company says that "most people have about 5 professionals involved in their health management: GP, dentist, optician, specialist, pharmacist." So miVitals aims to be a central repository of a person's health data - and in future to enable them to share relevant pieces with health professionals and family.

Wellsphere is a perfect website for those of us who have trouble keeping our New Year's Resolutions. At Wellsphere, the goal is to build online communities where people encourage each other to "get active, eat better, and unwind." As we all know, that's easier said than done. The way Wellsphere works is that it connects members with local health and wellness resources, classes, and activities that match their goals, while fostering a supportive community environment where members motivate each other to stay on track. 

Last Monday I found out from my doctor that I have Diabetes (probably Type 1; I need more tests to confirm), which basically means high blood sugar. It was quite a surprise, as I have no family history of diabetes and it is relatively uncommon to get Type 1 diabetes in your 30's. However, I soon discovered that diabetes affects more than 240 million people worldwide. So it is something a lot of people have. Indeed, chances are you know of someone with it or you may even have it yourself. Because it is so widespread, there is a lot of web data, social networking options and even web apps that cater to people with diabetes.

In this post, I'm somewhat selfishly going to review the diabetes sites and apps I found across the Web. But this post also serves, I hope, as an introduction to the more general topic of 'Health 2.0' - a.k.a. healthcare that uses the Internet. Over the weekend, Frank Gruber posted an excellent round-up of health 2.0 resources on the Web. Frank pointed out that the big sites, like Web MD and HealthLine, are the resources most used. But there are a lot of newer sites and apps that offer a more modern, Web 2.0 approach. He also noted that both Microsoft and Google are making moves in health 2.0. For example see our story earlier this year on Microsoft acquiring MedStory.

Defining Health 2.0

As with Web 2.0, there is a lot of debate about the meaning of the term 'health 2.0'. According to the Health 2.0 conference blog, their definition "is currently focusing on user-generated aspects of Web2.0 within health care but not directly interacting with the mainstream health care system." This means things like search, communities, and tools. As yet Health 2.0 user-generated content has not been connnected to the wider health care system - which, according to the Health 2.0 conference organizers, hasn't even adopted Web 1.0 yet!

Search

The first thing you might do if you discover you have diabetes, is do some Web searches on it. In my case my doctor and specialist had already explained the basics of the condition to me: it is fairly easily managed, via testing your blood a few times a day and injecting insulin maybe a couple of times a day (it varies by person). Also you must drastically cut your sugar intake in food and drink, and exercise moderately. There is no cure at this point for diabetes, so this routine must be followed indefinitely. So I was told all that, but still I was curious to find out everything I could... so, to the Web search engines I went!