COVER FEATURE
45NOVEMBER 2010Published by the IEEE Computer Society0018-9162/10/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
ronments, and engaging more directly in medical decision
making.
Tensions exist, however, in discussions of how to deploy
Health 2.0 technologies in ways that increase benefits
without jeopardizing gains made in the past century to
protect the population’s health and safety.4 Public health
officials have repeatedly expressed concerns that some
information—such as the personalized risk profiles offered
by genomic sequencing companies—may overwhelm or
even mislead individuals struggling to make life-and-death
decisions in the context of nascent or unsettled science.5
Meanwhile, medical professionals worry about the poor
quality of user-generated content on the unregulated Web,
epitomized by groups that advocate against immunization
as a “government conspiracy.”
The good news is that evidence from the psychologi-
cal and organizational sciences is beginning to inform
the debate.6 Computer scientists are beginning to work in
tandem with biomedical researchers, policy specialists,
and medical practitioners to create a blueprint for how to
use technology-mediated social participation (TMSP) to
usher in a new era in healthcare.
A STRATEGIC INVESTMENT IN HEALTH IT
What are the opportunities for investing in participative
health and healthcare technologies? And where do these
opportunities lie within a larger strategic health plan for
the US?
I n 2006, leaders of the UK’s National Health Service made a prescient observation: to extend citizens’ lives while preventing a budget meltdown, the government must foster a patient-led revolution in healthcare. “Patient and public involvement are at
the centre of the modernization of the NHS in England,”
they explained. “Creating a patient-led service means
enabling patients both as citizens and as consumers to
become actively engaged in shaping, planning, and moni-
toring the health services they use.”1
Across the Atlantic, leaders in the computing indus-
try observed that the fundamental changes inherent in
the Web 2.0 movement—changes that emphasize par-
ticipation, shared data, and collective intelligence2—might
enable a similar healthcare revolution in the US. Health
2.0, as some call it,3 would let Americans be more proac-
tive in relation to their own health and healthcare—even
to the point of assisting in the acceleration of biomedical
scientific discovery, lobbying for healthier laws and envi-
Computer scientists are working with bio-
medical researchers, policy specialists, and
medical practitioners to usher in a new era
in healthcare. A recently convened panel
of experts considered various research op-
portunities for technology-mediated social
participation in Health 2.0.
Bradford W. Hesse, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health
Derek Hansen, University of Maryland, College Park
Thomas Finholt and Sean Munson, University of Michigan
Wendy Kellogg and John C. Thomas, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
SOCIAL
PARTICIPATION
IN HEALTH 2.0