Health 2.0 was an astonishing event, incredibly professional and full of the most innovative eHealth technologies all presented on quick-fire demo panels. The level of innovation in the US eHealth sector is incredible with such notable companies as Microsoft, Google, WebMD, American Well, Myca, ADAM all on display at Health 2.0
On the 2nd day it was Alensa’s turn to present our demo on the main stage as part of the “Health 2.0 Around the World” panel. So with much trepidation to be speaking for such a distringuished audience, we demo’d our pharmacy platform, HealthBlogs mobile phone based micropayment solution for premium content and as an added bonus, previewed the upcoming distributed ecommerce application for the first time.
We’re very grateful to James Mathews from Sage software for organizing this global panel which included the following distinguished speakers :
- Paul Meyer, CEO, Voxiva
- Thomas Liedtke, Head of Emerging Healthcare, ICW AG
- Marlene Winfield, SVP, Healthspace, NHS Connecting for Health
- Deb Levine, Executive Director, ISIS
- Doug Solomon, Chief Technology Officer, IDEO
- Brooke Partridge, CEO, Vital Wave Consulting
A number of important global eHealth trends were highlighted during this panel including mHealth (mobile phone based health solutions) being used as a leapfrog technology by developing nations. The UK’s NHS online system was also very interesting to hear about in that its a universal healthcare initiative to unify all eHealth services (EHR/PHR, telemedicine, ePrescribing, etc) under one system and it represents a stark contrast to the highly fragmented US eHealth environment. Our take on this subject is that setting standards is very important, as we’ve seen the lack of which has led to hundreds of different EHR systems in the US with huge inter-operability issues, but that such a government unified system should also provide good third party developer access and APIs to allow for future innovation by private companies.
Despite not being able to present in person, one of the most fascinating stories was presented in the introductory video (which we’ll try to obtain and post here) by Dr. Krishnan Ganapathy of the Apollo Telemedicine project in India which is using mobile phone technology to provide health solutions to rural villages, showing that even simple technologies can be used to great effect.
special note : thank you to everyone who gave us positive feedback after the presentation such as Marston, Andre, SJDavidson, Enda, Tim, Mark - it was very nice to connect with all of you.
