Today I had the opportunity to participate in Health 2.0 User Generated Healthcare Conference. The one-day conference in San Francisco was fabulously organized by Matthew Holt of The Healthcare Blog and Indu Subaiya of Etude Scientific.
Indu and Matthew managed to assemble a stellar collection of entrepreneurs, movers, shakers, and creators of the next generation of the eHealth field. A full house discussed search engines that learn from personal health records, social networks that support patients, and how the wisdom of crowds is transforming medical knowledge.
We all know that the current way we organize and manage healthcare is dysfunctional and unsustainable. How else could we find a way to spend $2 trillion per year and leave 45 million people uninsured? How else could we spend so much and still have such mediocre outcomes compared to the rest of the world?
There have been many promising ideas proven futile and many vain attempts at healthcare transformation. What is different this time around? Finally the ecosystems are in place, the tools of production are widely accessible and development costs are so low that citizens do not need to wait for the institutions to be the deciders.
We have entered a new phase of rapid innovation and experimentation that is producing a wave of brave new ideas, some of which will be disruptive to current ways of doing things and some of which will be revolutionary. Pay attention to the list below, because you will be seeing these people in headlines for years to come.