While attending the Institute for the Future's Health Horizons Fall Conference on Monday, one thing became eminently clear. The 21st century will be the era of brain, the last great scientific frontier. Due to societal shifts, environmental changes, and the fact that we are just living longer, we are poised to see a sharp rise in cases of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, autism, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The only thing worse than the increasing prevalence of brain disease is the sobering fact that few viable treatments currently exist.
Read More"The human body does enormously well healing itself," Keas founder, and ex-Google Health lead, Adam Bosworth told Health 2.0 conference-goers shortly after stepping on stage. On the heels of an article in the New York Times that touted the company's beta launch, Bosworth walked the crowd through the way we'll keep ourselves healthy in the future, using Keas' platform.
Read MoreThe most impressive tool for clinical decision-making presented at the Health 2.0 conference was a program that allowed docs to share medical images over the Internet, developed by MyPACS.net. Any DICOM image (e.g. CT scan, MRI, etc) can be uploaded and shared through their website. Say, for example, that a patient comes to the hospital with abdominal pains. After undergoing a CT scan, the radiologist determines that there is a mass located in the abdominal cavity, but is not quite sure what it is. Traditionally, the radiologist would either compare the patient’s CT to scans in the hospital archive, or spend hours searching through the limited information in medical journals. With MyPACS.net, doctors can upload and share hundreds or thousands of images, instantaneously. It’s like Facebook photos or Flickr for physicians.
Read MoreThe afternoon of Day 1 of the Health 2.0 Conference was highlighted by the session, "The Patient is In". First up, a video that documented the experiences of a group of people that recently started using patient health tools, such as online health journals that track diet or exercise, support sites for quitting smoking, or home blood test kits.
Read MoreThe morning session focused on clinician-patient interactions. Executives from Myca, VisionTree, AmericanWell, and ReachMyDoctor, presented their virtual doctors' office visit tools. All of the tools had similar features, such as online scheduling, and the choice of different types of offices visits, such as IM chat or video. Most integrated well with personal health records, so that during an office visit, the physician had access to the patient's medication refill history, or overdue routine preventive medical tests, such as blood-work, prostate screens, or mammograms.
Read MoreThe Health 2.0 conference kicked off this morning, amidst the booming call-to-action by the U.S. Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra during the Keynote Address.
Chopra assured the crowd that he was "deeply committed to the role entrepreneurs play (in the future of health care)". Yet, he wondered whether companies were using all of the resources currently available to them, when he asked "How many companies are using Small Business Innovation Research grants (SBIR) to bring their products to market?".
Read MoreAs a prelude to the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco, I went to Kaiser Permanente's HealthCamp today, located at their amazing Garfield Innovation Center. Being a scientist, I've attended my fair share of conferences over the past years, but none prepared me for what I experienced today at my first "un-conference". First, for those who don't know, an un-conference has no set agenda; the sessions are made up by the attendees the morning of the conference. This way, the topics covered throughout the day truly reflect the attendees' interests.
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