Reporting Live from Health 2.0

I arrived at the Health 2.0 Conference bright and early this morning. At the urging of this very tech-savvy community, I joined Twitter and issued my first-ever Tweet. (For complete coverage of the conference, check out the 600 + following at #heatlh2con). Next, I popped into the Health2.0 Accelerator pre-conference meeting, where (among other things), we learned about how the Accelerator and Project HealthDesign will collaborate going forward. Afterwards, I spent some time fielding questions about the next round of Project HealthDesign at our expo booth. All before the conference officially kicked off at 1:30pm!

The first session initiated the debate over whether Health 2.0 and Information Therapy (Ix) are in tension or in synergy. We heard from Don Kemper, CEO of Healthwise, that Health 2.0 and Ix are the yin and the yang of translating data into information, information into knowledge, and knowledge in to behavior change. Matthew Holt, founder of Health 2.0, countered that a “shared understanding is not necessarily enough to support a marriage between Health 2.0 and Ix.” Given the candid format and the diversity of the crowd here, we can expect more “great debates” to follow.

Check back for reflections on tomorrow’s sessions, including “The Future Role of the Doctor,” and “User-Generated content vs. Expert: What’s the best approach to Knowledge Creation?”