The Web has successfully revolutionized many
industries and sectors, from news gathering to book publishing to music
and movies to politics. Now health care seems poised to be just as
disrupted by the power of Web 2.0 as these other industries.
Esther Dyson this week in a column in the Financial Times wonders how long it will take the Internet to disrupt the tired, old U.S. health care industry:
The Internet is changing people’s expectations of
what they have a right to know and say: just as they expect to know
more about their politicians, they expect to know more about their own
health institutions – and to criticise them publicly. Websites let
people rate their own doctors and hospitals, even as public pressure
and occasionally public rules demand more and more transparency about
performance and outcomes.
With these resources, people are taking a more active
role in their own health. Instead of relying on the medical
establishment, they are searching for information on the Internet in
order to do for themselves what institutions cannot or do not.
One of the biggest changes Web 2.0, or is that Health
2.0, promises to bring to health care is ownership of patient data. In
the current health care industry, doctors, hospitals and insurance
carriers are the owners of patient data. In a Health 2.0 world,
patients themselves promise to be the true owners of their health data.
This is an observation that Dyson gets, but few inside the health care
industry -- or even large IT vendors such as Google or Microsoft -- seem
to grok.
Web-based health care also promises to empower
patients beyond just interacting with their electronic medical records.
Patients will also have greater access to medical knowledge and will
participate along with doctors and other caregivers in their own
diagnoses and treatment programs.
In addition to the Web, Health 2.0 also promises to
give patients and care givers mobile access to health data and
treatment options. This trend could break down the old barriers of
facility-based treatment, giving patients and care givers greater
flexibility where they meet and where patients receive treatment. The
iPhone Doctor is just one early example of how Health 2.0 could make the lives of both doctors and patients easier and more flexible.
This kind of open transparency promises far greater
health care reform than is currently being proposed in Washington, DC.
It promises to make U.S. citizens more equal participants in their own
medical treatments. It also promises to strip power from insurance
carriers, doctors and hospitals, something that will hopefully lead to
lower prices and greater competition.
