A Whole Lot of Health 2.0 Companies

Some quick observations from the Health 2.0 conference in San Diego. 1) These panels are chock full of flashy startups. There's a profusion of companies at seemingly every step of the health care system. Reminds me very much of a a decade ago, the first dot-com boom. Each one seems to offer a promising tool, helping patients find a physician, say, or helping a patient narrow in on a more precise range of information for their illness. All useful tools.

But there's a great deal of overlap, and a great ambiguity of service (quick: what would a company called Carol promise to you? How about Xoova?). That's exciting, in that there's a profusion of services and innovation. But for a patient, it's likely confusing, and carries a risk: What to do if you spend months building a profile in a website, and then that company disappears (gets acquired, runs out of funding, changes business models, etc)? And for an investor? Eesh, what a crap shoot...