6 Best Free Web 2.0 Healthcare Tools
Introduction
The Healthcare Buzz
First, start with the givens. Everyone wants to get information quickly. Everyone wants to cut through bureaucracy. Everyone wants to get more for less, or at least get adequate coverage. Politicians campaigning for 2008 are certainly aware of these desires, as are theater-goers who turned out for Michael Moore's Sicko this year,with its $24.5 million U.S. box office take (as of Oct. 9). Promoted by President Bush and the GOP, "consumer-driven healthcare" is the buzz phrase du jour. More responsibility has shifted to the consumer to sort out the kind and quantity of health coverage the consumer needs. Last but not least, this given: everyone loves tools.
The best online tools help people get information quickly and conveniently. A prevalent example is the abundance of BMI calculators one can find doing a quick Google search. BMI calculators are the hammers of online tools: everyone's got one, more than 1.5 million sites. However, Web 2.0 tools-tools that go beyond simple math-stand out the most.
Web 2.0 and Health 2.0
In addition to "Web 2.0," some people are starting to use the phrase "Health 2.0." What does "Health 2.0" mean? The phrase is essentially a take-off on "Web 2.0," applying those elements as they relate to health websites. What is "Web 2.0?" Internet experts disagree on one precise meaning, but for the purposes of this article, it means that the tools in reference or the websites to which they belong exhibit the following characteristics1:
- Provide applications directly through a browser
- Encourage user-controlled data
- Lets user participation add value to the application as it is used
- Exhibits a rich, interactive, user-friendly interface
- Allows social networking through forums, communities, and shared content
Having established a working definition of "Web 2.0," the only remaining question is, "How were the best sites chosen?" For context, consider that if you're watching how slim you are, it's easy to enter your height and weight into a BMI calculator. But take the level of engagement up a notch, and more than half of all online consumers have never heard of the next realm of tools: Internet-based personal health monitoring services.
Internet-Based Personal Health Monitoring (PHM) Services
Consider these recent findings from Forrester Research, courtesy of iHealthBeat.org:
DATA POINTS
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Combine this general ignorance of PHM services with a recent Harris Poll that pegged the number of adults who "sometimes or frequently go to the Web for health information" at 52%, then the conclusion is simple. A majority of people go to the Internet for health information, but another majority of online consumers know nothing about PHM services. At this intersection lies tremendous opportunity for health-info-seekers to discover the rapidly-growing offerings of health-monitoring tools.
Most-Used Online Healthcare Tools
A 2nd layer of context for the "Best 6" list stems from another recent survey by Forrester Research published in iHealthBeat, which demonstrates that commercially insured Internet healthcare tool users were most likely to have used physician or facility finders (41%), followed by health plan selection tools (23%) and health risk assessments (19%).
Why Make This List?
The aim of this "best" list is not to showcase the 6 most prominent doctor finders, for which there are already hundreds of results in Google. Indeed, the two most popular categories have been deliberately avoided precisely because of their popularity: 64% of tool users are already taking advantage of the 2 most popular tools, so this short list might better serve the relatively undiscovered tools by shining a worthy spotlight on the remaining 46% of tools that are less known, in addition to that unrepresented category not even discovered by users in the survey.
Naturally, this list should generate argument. The research for this list, although thorough, is by no means the last word. Cries of, "Why isn't my tool or site on this list?" will be welcomed. The more dialog created about Web 2.0 healthcare tools, the more people will find all the great tools out there.
In the Web 2.0 context, the most impressive healthcare tools meld easy access to information with the ability to allow users to share and add their own input to online organization systems. Don't know where to start? Let us proceed to the 6 Best Free Web 2.0 Healthcare Tools.
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