Health 2.0
What is Health 2.0?
Internet and Web 2.0 technology capabilities have been transforming health practices and applications over the last several years. Information technologies like web 2.0 and social networking are changing health care practices. Social networking in health care enable patient and health experts participation, learn from others, encourage collaboration, facilitate collective intelligence, foster communities of practice.
Health 2.0 Definition
Medicine 2.0 and Health 2.0 are similar concepts.
Eysenbach defined Medicine 2.0 as: "Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are Web-based services for health care consumers, caregivers, patients, health professionals, and biomedical researchers, that use Web 2.0 technologies and/or semantic web and virtual-reality tools, to enable and facilitate specifically social networking, participation, apomediation, collaboration, and openness within and between these user groups".(1)
Another definition is from Hughes. “Medicine 2.0 is the use of a specific set of Web tools (blogs, Podcasts, tagging, search, wikis, etc) by actors in health care including doctors, patients, and scientists, using principles of open source and generation of content by users, and the power of networks in order to personalize health care, collaborate, and promote health education.”(2)
Health 2.0 and Health Applications intersection
The proliferation of generic web 2.0 and social networks, such as Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as health-specific tools targeting health professionals and the public, is creating new, opportunities for health 2.0 tools to be integrated in traditional health applications. Clinfowoki is an example of health 2.0 wiki application in health informatics. Patientslikeme.com is an example of patient community.
Conclusion With advances in web 2.0 and social networking, applications for health 2.0 will increase and expand. There are few challenges that require further research including privacy, validation of health information based on medical scientific evidence.
References
- 1. Eysenbach G. Medicine 2.0: social networking, collaboration, participation, apomediation, and openness. J Med Internet Res 2008;10(3.
- 2. Hughes B, Joshi I, Wareham J. Health 2.0 and Medicine 2.0: tensions and controversies in the field. J Med Internet Res 2008;10(3).
See Also
Submitted by Paul Aneja
