Medicine + Web 2.0 = “Anyone participates.”

That’s how About.com puts it. And I tend to agree. Version 1.0 was about the professionals. Version 2.0 is for everybody.

(Image: Web 2.0 and Medicine)

It’s about relationships.

In Medicine 2.0, all relationships are important.

Dr. Jay Parkinson reminded us that the number 1 reason relationships fail is poor communication. This is ever the case for medical relationships. Plural. Because we all know that it’s more than the doctor-patient relationship.

The picture below has it wrong: where are the other lines? The patient-patient and provider-provider relationships? The loved ones, the researchers, educators, insurance companies, pharma, the government?

No man is an island (not even Dr. House!), and shouldn’t be, especially when it comes to health.

Hence, Medicine 2.0 (n.) –

My working definition:

Medicine 2.0 harnesses the communicative possibilities of technology, the internet, social media, and above all, the hive mind, to create personalized, adaptive, and secure frameworks for delivering and receiving care, while nurturing and enhancing existing relationships.

I also like this definition from Walter Jessen of Highlight Health:

Medicine 2.0 is the science of maintaining and/or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis and treatment of patients utilizing web 2.0 internet-based services, including web-based community sites, blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, folksonomies (tagging) and Really Simple Syndication (RSS), to collaborate, exchange information and share knowledge.

In short: what if your doctor were a blogger? If your hospital had a wiki? Would you participate? (say yes!)

A few of my favourite examples:

• Hello Health in Brooklyn, NY – brainchild of Dr. Jay Parkinson and the wonderful Canadian company Myca:

• PatientsLikeMe helps patients like me (heh) with fibromyalgia and other incurable conditions to discuss and share information about treatments, symptoms, experiences:

• A hospital in Richmond, VA uses Twitter to organize transportation after a snowstorm! (via @nickdawson)

P.S. You should be excited.

More definitions and specific examples to come. For now, I hope you take with you the feeling that we are in entering a very exciting time for medicine and health care. Ten years ago, I learned about blogging for the first time. Five years ago, Facebook was just starting out. If web 2.0 is moving at such an enormous pace, its products every day being adopted and customized by more specialized niches and tribes, science and medicine will have no choice but to be affected, and we must be prepared for that…