UsableMarkets

A friend recently attended a Health 2.0 seminar, and afterwards asked my thoughts about the movement (my term). I responded:

I haven’t followed Health 2.0 as closely as some other topics, but Health 2.0 seems to be mainly centered around the application of social networking techniques (for patients with similar illnesses), and vertical search (like healthia, organized wisdom, etc.). these are good and important (and the easiest things to do in this healthcare environment!), but aren’t very interesting to me since they don’t do a lot to make the health care system more efficient and transparent. We do get better educated patients (about their illnesses), but not necessarily better informed health care consumers.

That said, there are definitely some people trying interesting things.

Athena Health provides management software for doctors offices, and is trying to build (and leverage) their network of customers (doctors) by aiding them in negotiations with insurance companies. Here, the benefit of the network is built into the product.

Sermo is a physician community, where doctors report patient’s reactions to drugs (and other things), and validate the observations of others. You get paid for making insights that then get validated by others (the more validation, the more you get paid). It’s sometimes called a prediction market for doctors. This is very interesting, and successful.

Pricing transparency is an ongoing story that no one has yet really cracked. Some companies are trying – like Vimo and OutOfPocket.com – but no has yet been successful at this yet.

And physician rating systems are generating a lot of activity, but as yet no real success stories. Vitals is good. Zagat is getting into it out west, partnering with Wellpoint. And Revolution Health (Steve Case’s new company) has potential.

If you combine this with what’s going on in American society re: healthcare, it’s a pretty fascinating movement (Health 2.0). But so far, not many chickens have hatched.

In turn, he responded:

I think the reason that so many people are interested in “Web 2.0″ as it applies to the healthcare industry is twofold (at least!).

First, the healthcare profession has historically been very opaque, especially toward its consumers, i.e., patients and those responsible for patients. Web 2.0 provides an opportunity to make things much more transparent. Blogs, wikis, social networks, advanced search tools, and other 2.0 technologies allow consumers to get informed, make comparisons, and shop around in ways that were impossible under the old system.

Second, healthcare is a hot topic, plain and simple. On an individual level, medical and other health-related issues will become critical to nearly everyone at some point in their lives, especially with an aging boomer population and longer life spans overall. On a societal level, healthcare is becoming increasingly politicized (witness our current elecitons). In addition, it is apparent that there is a shifting of healthcare responsibility back to individuals and away from employers. However, legacy systems have not yet adapted in ways that allow consumers to make informed, smart decisions, or to take better control of their healthcare needs.

I think it is interesting that those involved in the healthcare industry — insurers, providers, pharmaceutical companies, etc. — are not playing a larger role in the “2.0-ification” of healthcare.
Obvious reasons include the legal and practical restrictions they face when it comes to being more transparent, as well as the inherent inertia of large corporations and organizations.

As it lags, however, the healthcare industry may risk losing credibility. People are increasingly looking to a variety of alternative online resources — many non-professional in nature, most quite 2.0 in character — as credible sources for healthcare information. Some statistics, for example, indicate that people feel the Internet is a more reliable source for healthcare information than their own physicians or insurers.

Regardless of what the healthcare industry does to become more “2.0,” one thing is clear: consumers want transparency, and they will go wherever they need to find it. It is time for the healthcare industry to acknowledge what consumers are doing online, and to become more accountable, accessible, flexible, and transparent both offline and online.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

~alex