Here are 4 must read articles that explore the subject from a number of angles, attitudes and perspectives:

Social networking impact on patients, doctors, and non-profits
Dr. David Nash outlines effective uses of social media and the differences between mainstream sites like Facebook and healthcare focused sites such as PatientsLikeMe.

How social media can make physicians better doctors
Mike Hennessy, founder and editor of MD Net Guide explores the challenges, realities and possibilities of social media for Doctors.

Doctors who are not on Facebook, Twitter and blogs risk becoming irrelevant; my USA Today op-ed
Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA argues that patients need Doctors online to ensure that medical information is timely and accurate. If they don’t, the information vacuum will be filled but by who and at what risk?

Social media starts the patient dialogue with doctors and nurses
Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA explains that there is no need to apologies to your doctor or nurse for wanting to take an active role in your own well being.

John Sharp from the Cleveland Clinic was recently in Toronto to give a presentation on Social Media for Canadian Healthcare at the Toronto Academic Health Sciences Network Education Day for Healthcare Communicators .

While a good majority of the Social Media strategies that U.S. Hospitals are using are designed to attract and retain patients which is somewhat irrelevant in Canada, he does have some excellent ideas on how and what could be leveraged successfully here.

An example he explores on his blog is Social Media for Hospital Foundations.  Charged with fund raising for capital purchases, Social Media provides an excellent means of directly engaging with and staying connected with donors.

Even if not all the information translates directly to the Canadian market, it’s very interesing to see what the Cleveland Clinic is doing online. His complete presentation is embedded above and is very insightful and well organized. His blog is also a excellent source of information on the topic and he has made available additional presentations on slideshare.

Resources:
Go to the source,
John Sharpe’s Blog,
John Sharpe on slideshare.

For the visual thinkers out there who want to see the trends and view the ecosphere from a Marco level, there’s a new and interesting tool out there to assist now.

The Health Tweeder is a sort of tag cloud mash up that ingeniously presents the prevalence of topics graphically as Petri dishes.

Pixels & Pills is a collaborative effort between Palio and Zemoga. Two creative and complementary marketing firms that have been working together for over eight years. We specialize in the Pharmaceutical category and we want to lead the pack when it comes to bringing change to the Pharma space. We have won the Grand Global together and we have worked all nighters together. And together we pride ourselves in servicing our clients with world class solutions, regardless of the media (but technology really get’s us excited).

Resources:
Go to the source The Health Tweeder.
Read additional coverage on Science Roll and Med Gadget.

If you are unfamiliar with the project or would like more information on it, I would recommend you review the article in the July issue of PLoS Medicine. Basically, HealthMap is a Health 2,0 Mash Up that extracts, categorizes, filters and integrates a variety of Web-based data sources, including blogs, listservs, chatrooms, and online news reports.

“It’s a disease-mining system that uses the Internet to look for outbreaks going on around the world, bringing all this information together in one view,” explains John Brownstein, PhD, co-founder of HealthMap and an assistant professor at the Informatics Program (CHIP) at Children’s Hospital Boston.

The summary points of the article include:

• Valuable information about infectious diseases is found in Web-accessible information sources such as discussion forums, mailing lists, government Web sites, and news outlets.
• Web-based electronic information sources can play an important role in early event detection and support situational awareness by providing current, highly local information about outbreaks, even from areas relatively invisible to traditional global public health efforts.
• While these sources are potentially useful, information overload and difficulties in distinguishing “signal from noise” pose substantial barriers to fully utilizing this information.
• HealthMap is a freely accessible, automated real-time system that monitors, organizes, integrates, filters, visualizes, and disseminates online information about emerging diseases.
• The goal of HealthMap is to deliver real-time intelligence on a broad range of emerging infectious diseases for a diverse audience, from public health officials to international travelers.
• Ultimately, the use of news media and other nontraditional sources of surveillance data can facilitate early outbreak detection, increase public awareness of disease outbreaks prior to their formal recognition, and provide an integrated and contextualized view of global health information.

The article and the project are great examples of the potential and opportunities presented by open data sources and the article even points to this as both a challenge and an opportunity for the future.

You can find the full article a: PLoS Medicine

By far, the most recognizable Mashup in the world is Google Maps and it’s therefore not surprising that this is where we are seeing the first and most interesting work being done in the Health 2.0 space. A innovative and extremely well presented example of the potential for Mashups in Healthcare is Health Map.

HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health. This freely available Web site integrates outbreak data of varying reliability, ranging from news sources (such as Google News) to curated personal accounts (such as ProMED) to validated official alerts (such as World Health Organization). Through an automated text processing system, the data is aggregated by disease and displayed by location for user-friendly access to the original alert. HealthMap provides a jumping-off point for real-time information on emerging infectious diseases and has particular interest for public health officials and international travelers.

Check out the site at: Health Map

A new up-and-comer in the Health 2.0 consumer market is Health World Web. This is fast becoming a crowded space, however this site seems to be gaining momentum with a focus on user created content platforms and reviews of healthcare providers.

Users can create their own communities, blog, customize content and provide ratings, reviews and recommendations. With a current database of healthcare providers included 1.5 million entries, Health Word Web appears to be one of the most comprehensive such sites available on the web today.

References:

Health World Web

Science Roll
Health World Web: A Health 2.0 Platform

The whitepaper goes through the usual evolution of Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and the effects of this transition on the healthcare industry, however it also includes some very specific examples and commentary that sets it apart.

There are details regarding how innovative collaborations online are changing the way patients, providers, and researchers learn about such topics as chronic disease management as well as a discussion on how Health 2.0 is evolving as a platform, bringing people together to create practical real content and health care information.

Beyond the main content of the whitepaper, there is also a very extensive list of Health 2.0 online resources and a number of case studies in the appendixes that are worthwhile reviewing in their own right.

Find a copy of the whitepaper online at:

The Wisdom of Patients: Health Care Meets Online Social Media

This year Toronto will play host to the first Medicine 2.0 Congress. The conference is bring organized by Dr. Gunther Eysenbach, a Senior Scientist at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, Associate Professor at the Department of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, and a founding editor-in-chief and publisher of the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

What is Medicine 2.0?

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 as well as semantic web and virtual reality tools, to enable and facilitate specifically social networking, participation, apomediation, collaboration, and openness within and between these user groups.

Conference Resources:

Medicine 2.0 Conference Site

Gunther Eysenbach’s random research rants
Medicine 2.0 Congress Website launched (and: Definition of Medicine 2.0 / Health 2.0)

MaRS Blog
What is Medicine 2.0?

Early Bird Registration
150 early bird passes are on sale now for $1049. You can register online here.

Start-up Discount Rate
Health 2.0 entrepreneurs can apply for a reduced rate or scholarship on the start-up registration page.

Call For Speakers
There are also open slots available for speakers at the event. If this is of interest, there is an online application here.

If you want to check out some reviews of last year’s conference to help you decide if you want to attend, here are some good links:

Read Write Web
Health 2.0 Conference Review

Health Care Law Blog
Health 2.0: User-Generated Healthcare Conference 2007

The Healthcare Blog
HEALTH2.0: That was the Health2.0 that was

eHealth
Negative Take on Health 2.0 Conference Contrasts with Attendee Enthusiasm

The Doctor Weighs In
How Might Information Technology Actually Change Health Care?

The video features interactive displays integrated into almost every surface imaginable, unified communications that extend beyond the care team to the patient and creative uses of elegantly designed mobile devices that would make even Steve Jobs proud.