TECHNOLOGY FOR CHANGE

Can the Internet Lead to Smarter Health Care?

Stephen Wellman | Date: 08-13-09 | Comments

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.

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.