Medicine 2.0

The rise of technology has changed how people take control of their health, enabling individuals to choose to live healthier lives and make better treatment decisions. With this said, the Internet has emerged as the channel used by individuals for actively seeking or passively receiving health information.

Mobile health (mHealth) facilitates linking patient-generated data with electronic health records with clinical decision support systems. mHealth can transform health care, but to realize this potential it is important to identify the relevant stakeholders and how they might be affected. Such stakeholders include primary stakeholders, such as patients, families and caregivers, clinicians, health care facilities, researchers, payors and purchasers, employers, and miscellaneous secondary stakeholders, such as vendors, suppliers, distributors, and consultants, policy makers and legislators. The breadth and depth of the mHealth market make it possible for mHealth to have a considerable effect on people’s health. However, many concerns exist, including privacy, data security, funding, and the lack of case studies demonstrating efficacy and cost-effectiveness. Many American and European initiatives to address these concerns are afoot.

Internet is used for a variety of health related purposes. Use differs and has differential effects on health according to socioeconomic status.

The World Wide Web has changed research habits, and these changes were further expanded when “Web 2.0” became popular in 2005. Bibliometrics is a helpful tool used for describing patterns of publication, for interpreting progression over time, and the geographical distribution of research in a given field. Few studies employing bibliometrics, however, have been carried out on the correlative nature of scientific literature and Web 2.0.

Mobile apps for people with diabetes offer great potential to support therapy management, increase therapy adherence, and reduce the probability of the occurrence of accompanying and secondary diseases. However, they are rarely used by elderly patients due to a lack of acceptance.

Traditionally, some teenagers and young adults with diabetes have not engaged well at diabetes appointments, giving rise to concerns about long-term health risks. We considered that apps might help this group of patients to improve preparation for, and therefore engagement at their appointments. Although there are already many apps for young people with type 1 diabetes (YPD), we thought that by supporting YPD themselves to develop apps, the resulting products would have greater “authenticity” and relevance.

Health information technology, which is sometimes referred to as informaticization of medicine, is changing the extent to which patients become competent producers of their own health by enabling them access to health information anytime and anywhere.

Access to technologically mediated information and services under the umbrella of mental and physical health has become increasingly available to clients via Internet modalities, according to a recent study. In May 2010, video counseling was added to the counseling services offered through the Employee and Family Assistance Program at Shepell·fgi as a pilot project with a full operational launch in September 2011.

Until recently, the Western biomedical paradigm has been effective in delivering health care, however this model is not positioned to tackle complex societal challenges or solve the current problems facing health care and delivery. The future of medicine requires a shift to a patient-centric model and in so doing the Internet has a significant role to play. The disciplines of Health Web Science and Medicine 2.0 are pivotal to this approach. This viewpoint paper argues that these disciplines, together with the field of design, can tackle these challenges. Drawing together ideas from design practice and research, complexity theory, and participatory action research we depict design as an approach that is fundamentally social and linked to concepts of person-centered care. We discuss the role of design, specifically co-design, in understanding the social, psychological, and behavioral dimensions of illness and the implications for the design of future care towards transforming the patient experience. This paper builds on the presentations and subsequent interdisciplinary dialogue that developed from the panel session "Transforming Patient Experience: Health Web Science Meets Web 2.0" at the 2013 Medicine 2.0 conference in London.

Twitter is a social network where users read, send, and share snippets of text (“tweets”). Tweets can be disseminated through multiple means; on desktop computers, laptops, and mobile devices, over ethernet, Wi-Fi or cellular networks. This redundancy positions Twitter as a useful tool for disseminating information to the public during emergencies or disasters. Previous research on dissemination of information using Twitter has mostly investigated the characteristics of tweets that are most effective in raising consumer awareness about a new product or event. In particular, they describe characteristics that increase the chance the messages will be shared ("retweeted") by users. In comparison, little has been published on how information from municipal or state government agencies spreads on Twitter during emergency situations. Retweeting these messages is a way to enhance public awareness of potentially important instructions from public officials in a disaster.

Public universities in Saudi Arabia today are making substantial investments in e-learning as part of their educational system, especially in the implementation of learning management systems (LMS). To our knowledge, this is the first study conducted in Saudi Arabia exploring medical students’ experience with an LMS, particularly as part of a medical informatics course.

There is an increasing social isolation among the elderly today. This will be an even larger issue in the future with growing numbers of elderly and less resources, for example, in terms of economy and staff. Loneliness and social isolation can, however, be addressed in several ways using different interactive eHealth services.