#HCMN HealthCamp Minnesota Kicks in to Gear

Bright and early on Saturday October 24th HealthCampMinnesota kicks off. A massive Thank You has to go to Albert Maruggi (@albertmaruggi) for organizing the event. This will be a slightly different HealthCamp Event. It will follow a similar model that was used at HealthCampNash earlier this year.

Albert has arranged a fascinating set of speakers to lead a series of panels. The objective is to stimulate discussion around HealthCare Delivery, Payments and Medical Devices. So much is up in the air as Washington debates Health Care Reform that these three themes will no doubt intersect during the camp.

One of the leading lights in Health Care Social Media - Lee Aase (@leeAase) is kicking off HealthCampMN. I am thrilled to finally meet Lee. You can follow the Twitter feed for the event using CoverItLive - embedded below - or catch the #hcmn search stream.

If you are planning to be at HealthCampMn you can contribute to the day by registering on the Wiki and updating it with your ideas and contributions. Post links to your blogs, photos and video streams. The Wiki can be reached via a bit.ly short url: http://bit.ly/hcmn_w.

Now, just because there are a series of panels arranged for this HealthCamp don't think you can just sit back passively. We want you to join in. Test the panel, ask the tough questions. Ask a question even if it seems like a dumb one. We all have different perspectives and the value of HealthCamp is in bringing those perspectives and experiences together, sharing and learning together. HealthCampMn is very much "on the record" - Take photos, capture video, blog and tweet about it. Use the #hcmn hashtag when you post content to Flickr, YouTube and elsewhere.

If there are issues that you haven't seen addressed then stay after lunch and we can create discussion groups on the fly - in true HealthCamp style.

HealthCamp is your day. Dive in. Get engaged. You are a participant and not just an attendee. Most of all - have fun. We want you to come away energized.

If you can't be there then check out the Intro to HealthCampMn on YouTube.

Finally don't forget. If you want to run a HealthCamp there are resources available at http://healthca.mp to help you do that. Or drop a comment here. I am always happy to instigate a new Healthcamp that will spread the word about Participatory Medicine.

HealthCampToronto and Medicine2.0 are here!

Today is HealthCampToronto (Wednesday September 16th) followed by Medicine2.0 on the 17th and 18th.@rdjfraser

This is another sold-out HealthCamp event. Congratulations have to go to Carlos Rizo and Rob Fraser (@carlosrizo and @rdjfraser) for organizing a great event. IBM is the major sponsor for this event. Thanks go to them for hosting HealthCampToronto at their offices at 120 Bloor St, Toronto.

I know that a number of prolific tweeps will be at both events including Jen McCabe, ePatientDave and David Hale. If you can't make the event be sure to follow the tweet stream. The hashtag for the event is #HCTO.

Twitter is not providing search to terms over a week old so in order to preserve the hive mind of the event we are using CoverItLive. I am including the feed in this blog as well as on the HealthCampToronto CoverItLiveFeed page. You can also follow the #HCTO rss feed indirectly via my public Google Reader Repeater page. I have setup a bit.ly link to make it easier to find: http://bit.ly/ekivemark_Repeater

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HealthCampToronto and Medicine2.0

This time next week (September 18th) I hope to be presenting about HealthCamp's at Medicine2.0 in Toronto. This is the start of a busy HealthCamp season. The only fly in the ointment is the British Embassy. Yes, I am waiting on my new passport.

Hopefully it will arrive in time so that I can head up not just for Medicine2.0 but also for HealthCampToronto on September 16th that is being organized by @carlosrizo and @rdjfraser.

You will be able to follow some of the discussions from HealthCampToronto by tuning in to the #HCTO hashtag on Twitter. Remember though that Twitter now only has a short term memory. If you want to get at that history after the event you will need to take the RSS feed and archive it. I use Google Reader for that. To help preserve the #HCTO hive mind I am rebroadcasting the RSS feed via one of my public Google Reader pages.

Toronto is shaping up to be another great HealthCamp event. If you are arriving in Toronto early for Medicine2.0 you can't afford to miss the vibrant un-conference where you get to design the agenda. It is a truly user-defined conference.

If you can't make Toronto, I hope you can make it to HealthCampSFBay that takes place on October 5th - the day before the Health 2.0 conference.

Health Care Reform and Health 2.0

Last night I attended the Health 2.0 Meet up in Silver spring, MD. It was a great event organized by David Blackburn of Aquilent. There was a sizeable crowd - the organizers had to turn down last minute requests to attend.

It was great to see David Hale talking about the evolution of PillBox at the National Institutes of Health. After seeing PillBox at HealthCampDc last year it has matured nicely.

Marie-Michelle Strah gave a fascinating talk about the use of Tele-Health by the US Armed Forces in the Mental Health field.

I had also been asked to present. My presentation can be found on Slideshare:

Its About Health Participation

View more presentations from Mark Scrimshire.

HealthCamp - Spreading the word - a call to Healthcamp Organizers

It has been a while since I last blogged. A lot has been happening, including a successful HealthCampMd event on the 19th June at Stevenson University.

I had intended to blog earlier but my Mac needed resuscitation at the local Apple Hospital. Thankfully, he had a health plan (The good 'ol Apple Protection Plan) and after a successful transplant (a new logic board) he has speedily returned home and back in to the fray.

After being cajoled by Jen McCabe (@jensmccabe) I submitted a proposal for a session to Medicine 2.0 which is being held later this year,in Toronto on September 17-18th. My session is about "how to run a successful HealthCamp."

Since I am planning to be in Toronto for the conference I am also working with Carlos Rizo (@carlosrizo) to run HealthCampToronto on Wednesday September 16th. Other HealthCamp events are in the works in New York and San Francisco Bay in September and October.

I have had requests from many parts of the country to run Healthcamps. In response to that demand I am planning an online Organizer Conference. If you are interested in running a HealthCamp event in your area please get in touch. You can leave a comment on this blog or drop me a message on Twitter (@ekivemark).

The online conference will have a limited number of slots and there will be a nominal participant charge in order to cover webinar and associated costs. As with past HealthCamp events, any surplus from the event goes towards the fledgling HealthCa.mp Foundation, a public charity I am organizing to promote HealthCamps around the country and around the world. Those funds are used to promote HealthCamp and help kick start other HealthCamp events.

Social Media and Health Care Reform - Come discuss it at HealthcampMd

Last night I joined in the weekly TwitCon on Health Care Social Media. To try to keep track of the discussion I posted a CoverItLive session on my blog that followed the hashtag for the weekly Sunday 9pm session: #hcsm

It was a very lively session with two renowned health care lawyers on Twitter: @danielg280 and my fellow HealthCampBoston organizer David Harlow aka @healthblawg.

There were a number of people contributing to the session (@edbennet, @meredithgould and @shrinkraproy) who are also planning to attend HealthCampMd that happens this Friday June 19th in Owings Mills, MD. Tickets are still available for the event, so if you want to continue the conversation that took place on #hcsm you can do it in person at HealthCampMd.

HealthCampMd is all set to be an exciting event. It takes place on the same day as HealhCampUK, which is being supported by the UK's National Health Service. We are hoping to provide a link up to the camp in the UK. It also marks the anniversary of the HealthCamp movement that started at HealthCampMd in 2008.

You can follow the emerging conversation around HealthCampMd by checking out the #hcmd09 hashtag on search.twitter.com.

People ask me what is on the agenda for HealthCampMd. The answer is that I don't really know. I do know that Claudio Luis Vera (aka @modulist) is coming in from Miami and wants to present on Open Source. He may also be persuaded to talk about the importance of design. The rest of the un-conference topics are going to be suggested and presented by the participants themselves. That is what makes these camps such high energy events. You don't have to be an expert to lead a session. Some of the best HealthCamp sessions I have been involved in are those where someone who did not consider themselves an expert led a session and asked questions of the participants.

A number of suggestions have been posted on the event's workspace using Google Moderator. You can check out and vote on the suggestions. You can even add topics of your own for others to vote on. check out the suggestions here: http://www.socialtext.net/md09/index.cgi?topics_for_discussion_at_healthcampmd

A great suggestion was put forward by David Hale at NIH (aka @lostonroute66). He suggested we schedule some lightning talks. These are 3 minute talks (without powerpoint slides) on a topic you are passionate about. To see some of the subjects people want to present on check out the lightning talk page. If you don't feel you have a topic you want to put forward for a full session at HealthCampMd why don't you "test the water" with a quick 3 minute talk. These have been a very informative and fun part of a number of events I have attended.

If you are thinking about HealthCampMd - don't just think about it - Join in! Tickets are still available. The un-conference takes place at the Rockland Center on the Owings Mills Campus of Stevenson University. The campus is just minutes from Junction 4 of I-795 which is off the western side of the Baltimore I-695 Beltway. You can also get to Owings Mills by Metro from Baltimore. The event kicks off at 8:30am on Friday June 19th and the ticket covers the cost of food and drinks for the day.

What do you need to bring? Yourself! The rest is really optional: your laptop (if you want to present or take notes), A camera, A power strip might come in handy too. Mac users should bring their connector (DVI-VGA, Mini-Displayport-VGA etc.) to be able to hook up to the VGA connector on the projectors. We will have free wifi available.

The organizing team is looking forward to meeting you at the event.

Why you need to be at HealthCamp

HealthCamp is the venue for a vitally important conversation about the future of health care, both in this country and around the world.

Numerous studies indicate that an educated, informed and involved health care consumer is a vital part of the delivery of effective, quality health care. Without the patient there is no health care. This is why participatory health care is the future and how that is achieved is a core issue being addressed by the participants at HealthCamp. This is a conversation that is important to each and everyone of us.

Get involved come to the next HealthCampMd on Friday June 19th in Owings Mills, Maryland or London England.

HealthCampMd is taking shape. Come and join in

We are a month from HealthCampMd. But it is a busy month ahead before we get to HealthCampMd on Friday June 19th.

HealthCamp is becoming an international movement. One event I can't get to happens next week. That is HealthCamp Azerbaijan which takes place in Baku, Azerbaijan on May 23-24th.

One event I am planning on attending is HealthCampNash which happens in two weeks time, on May 30th. I am looking forward to my first trip to Nashville. This should be another great HealthCamp event. It will be a chance to meet up again with some of the amazing innovators I met at HealthCampBoston, the Health2.0 Accelerator and the Health 2.0 Conference in Boston (Including Chris Parks and the folks at Change:Healthcare).

People are already signing up for HealthCampMd which is taking place on the Owings Mills campus at Stevenson University.

We are planning to make Friday June 19th a very special day in the HealthCamp Calendar. Three HealthCamps are in fact taking place that day:

• HealthCampMd
• HealthCampSanDiego and
• HealthCampUK.

If our plans work out we hope to be broadcasting video from each event and arranging a three-way link up between them.

This is going to be a great way to celebrate the first anniversary of this amazing HealthCamp movement. It is inspiring to see how far HealthCamps have progressed in one short year. It is also fitting that HealthCamp celebrates the first anniversary at Stevenson University. HealthCampMd took place in June 2008 at Stevenson University. It was the first public event to take place there for the former Villa Julie College as it transitioned to a full university. Since then events have been growing as the word spreads. HealthCampPhila in March 2009 saw over 100 people sign up for an event hosted by Jefferson University. HealthCampBoston built on this inertia and had nearly 150 people attend an event hosted and sponsored by Microsoft at their New England Research and Development center.

HealthCamp UK 2009 is gaining a lot of coverage by being part of the UK Department of Health's NHS Innovation Expo, "a unique opportunity to catch up with the best in healthcare innovation from the public, private, voluntary, academic and scientific communities".

The HealthCampSanDiego event is gaining a lot of attention since it was featured on BlogTalk Radio.

If you are a developer and want to know how you can get involved in the HealthCamp movement then please come along to the HealthCampMd event in Owings Mills. I am planning to hold a session to plan the evolution of a central HealthCamp network site. Progress is already being made on that front. SocialText have offered their platform as a home for HealthCamp and the http://healthca.mp domain already points there. The social tools in the latest version of SocialText's platform offer a great base on which to build the on-line healthcamp community. My sincerest thanks go out to Ross Mayfield, Eugene Lee and the SocialText team for their generosity in supporting the HealthCamp movement.

If you want to get involved in HealthCamp then go to http://healthca.mp and register. Join the HealthCamp workspaces. You can help us create a great resource that supports future HealthCamps.

I am also working on some ideas to further enable the HealthCamp movement. I hope to announce some of those plans at HealthCampMd. The June events are a springboard to even greater things happening later in the year. Plans are afoot for events in New York, San Francisco and Toronto.

If you are planning to go to the next Health 2.0 Conference or Health 2.0 Accelerator in October, 2009 in San Francisco then you will also want to plan on attending HealthCampSFBay which is being hosted by Kaiser Permanente in their world renowned innovation center in Oakland, CA on Monday October 5th.

HealthCampBoston and SocialPharmer happen today (4/21)

HealthCampBoston with SocialPharmer takes place today at Microsoft's New England Research and Development Center, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA.

As a pre-cursor to Health 2.0 that happens later this week in Boston, this event has attracted a large group of participants.

You can follow the action using the Twitter Hashtags of #HCBos and #SocPharm.

We are thankful to our sponsors and Friends of HealthCamp that have made this event possible.

You can check out the HealthCamp Schedule using your iPhone or smartphone using Carl Lusby's brilliant Scheduling app. The URL is s.healthcampboston.org.

There should be plenty of people tweeting today. Check out the event feeds on CoverItLive below:

Don't give up on the Personal Health Record

In just a few days HealthCampBoston takes place (Tuesday April 21, 2009). This is happening in conjunction with SocialPharmer at the New England Research and Development campus of Microsoft. This is set to be a massive event and a great pre-cursor to Health 2.0 Meets Ix on April 22-23.

Over one hundred people have signed up for the HealthCampBoston-SocialPharmer event.

In the prelude to this e-Patient Dave's experience in importing his medical claims records to Google Health got picked up by the Boston Globe. This has sparked a fascinating debate. You need to read Dave's post.

At the recent Web 2.0 Expo I had time to sit with Jay Parkinson MD and he also ended up commenting on e-Patient Dave's experience. Jay penned a powerful analysis in the Business Insider of what Dave had written about. John Grohol at e-patients.net described Jay's assessment as "Hitting one out of the park". However, I don't share Jay's conclusion.

Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault are still in the early stages of their evolution. I don't think it is time to give up on the idea. Indeed I think it just serves to confirm that we have to put the patient at the centre of the system and not bet on the Health Care Industry successfully building Electronic Medical Records and Health Information Exchanges in order to efficiently move garbage data about as around the industry outside of our purview.

If we can't trust claims information let's at least focus in on the information we can believe.

How about the medications we are taking, which could be pulled from our prescription records. This is an area where accurate data might actually save our life by avoiding damaging drug interactions.

The moves that the Continua Alliance is taking and Microsoft's device standards for HealthVault are a push in the right direction. I believe consumer accessible telemedicine devices are the next consumer wave. The data these devices collect belongs in our Personal Health Records where we can choose who we want to share that information with.

So Google, Microsoft and Dossia - Don't get dispirited. There will be bumps in the road. Let's tackle the simple stuff first and get value from collecting and sharing basic vital sign, prescription information and family history data that could prove of value to the medical community.

Keeping an open data approach to PHR's will provide the basic for a flourishing ecosystem that will be able to increasingly make sense of the complex data that will eventually feed from EMRs inside the health care industry.

If anything e-Patient Dave and Jay Parkinson's commentary just serves to underline the enormous benefits that are there to be grasped if we put the PHR and the consumer - us - at the center of the Health Care puzzle. The consumer/patient is the one common denominator. Patient Self-Management is not knew and it yields real, positive results. It is just that up to now we, the patients, have been working in the dark with snippets of information of uncertain value.

Rising medical costs are going to drive active consumer engagement and this is going to lead to more patient self-management not less. To my mind this means that the EMRs and Health Information Exchanges that are being planned in order to grab a piece of stimulus cash will be handling an ever smaller part of the patient management puzzle. Outside of chronic disease management, an increasing proportion of health management information is going to be managed outside of these EMR platforms. If the industry doesn't recognize the potential value of the un-tethered PHR then they will be faced with the prospect of operating with less and less of a full picture about the patient. That potentially leads us down a path of practicing more, not less, defensive medicine which will continue to drive medical spending higher.

The patient is at the center of this puzzle.

We are the common denominator.

To the Health Care Industry - Get over it! Give us, the consumers/patients, the tools to help us help ourselves. After all we are the ones that spend 100% of the time living with our diseases and ailments.

Join the discussion in Boston

If you are in the Boston area on Tuesday and are interested in this topic - come along to HealthCampBoston. you can grab a ticket by clicking the link below.

If you can't make it then check out this blog. We will be running CoverItLive to track the action from the day's events. If you are on Twitter, or other social networking sites then follow the #HCBos tag to keep tuned in.

Web 2.0 Expo - Day Two

Tim O'Reilly preached to the attending masses at Web 2.0 Expo yesterday. The message in a tweet size bite was: The web is growing up. The next wave is the combining of sensor data.

This view fits with my own thinking around Health Care. There is a massive opportunity for us to change Health Care with an imminent wave of commodity health monitoring devices. A taste of this was given to us by Apple at their iPhone OS 3.0 launch. Health monitoring devices can be connected to the iPhone and from their data can be distributed and combined. The logical storage point for this wave of health data is our Personal Health Record.

This was one of the themes at the packed HealthCamp - A Call to Action Birds of a Feather session that took place last night (April 1st).

Today, Thursday April 2nd, looks set to be another jam packed day. The Web2Open un-conference track is once agin proving to be the place to be. A place where the most engaging conversations are taking place. I was lucky enough yesterday to take part in Jay Parkinson's talk about his work with HelloHealth. That session then blended in to a discussion I had tabled as part of HealthCampSf: "Personal Health Records - The centre of innovation in Health Care?"

Those conversations continued at the Birds of a Feather Session last night. It was great to meet a crowd of people who are passionate about Health Care. The discussions confirmed that the challenges we face are complex and wide ranging. They also demonstrate that there are many sources of good ideas that can contribute to solving these challenges.

The key notes were led off by Douglas Rushkoff, Author of "Get Back in the Box""

"Your most enthusiastic customer is a fledgling employee"

Local Currencies can be created through earned value rather than lent value.

Nokia: Anssi Vanjoki - The Next Transformation:

In the 1990's A paradigm change occurred: a phone number refers to a person - not a location.

The same is now happening on the Web: Everything refers to a person and context.

The mobile phone is morphing in to a mobile computer. Nokia has 1.3B of a 4B handset market.

Nokia bought NavTech for $8B. It is the bases of a database that gives every object coordinates.

Ellen Miller - Sunlight Foundation:

Focused on Government and providing visibility for citizens.

Open Government data Principles

To be useful data must be consumable.

Kevin Lynch - Adobe

Demonstrating Flash Catalyst (beta) You can import an illustration and convert the drawing in to an application by defining components.

Impressive Flash Catalyst beta demo.

Will Wright - Creator of Spore.

100M user generated assets in the game.

New group of game players want something more personal. It becomes a tool of self expression.

Spore has an API that allows the game players and/or developers to access the database of content and build new applications. Spore is a platform with data as the valuable core.

DRM created a backlash. There is a patch to remove DRM from the game.

Will Wright points out that on the web we are the centre of our social web.

This comment got me thinking about Health Care. The Health Care Industry is still so set back in outdated views. The industry doesn't put the consumer/patient at the center. We think out members/consumer/patients as populations and groups. We don't view from their perspective. With the complexity of Health Care we will not solve the challenges until we do really put the consumer - as an individual - at the very centre of the view of Health Care.

The Wii represents the best of NON-immersive gaming. Most of the entertainment is happening off the screen in the social group around you.

The Spore and Sims platforms are increasingly being driven by the players. The initial game is there to spark a core community. Then you listen to the community and evolve the platform to meet their needs and wants.

Gaming as re-education tool? Young kids in gaming experiment and build hypothesis. This makes them general problem solvers. Play and Story Telling both are educational tools.

Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.

The issue is motiviation. Motivate and then get out of the way.

HealthCampPhiladelphia (#HCPHL) - that's a wrap!

Yesterday saw the first HealthCampPhiladelphia take place. This is the largest HealthCamp event held so far and took place thanks to a great local organizing team led by Mary Ann Geier.

The others on the team included: Kelani, Gloria Bell, Mark Magliocco, Whitney Hoffman, Phil Baumann Melissa Thiessen (who organized the Jefferson University facility) and Maumi Chatterton . A special thanks also has to go to Carl Lusby who provided and supported his fabulous Ruby on Rails based scheduling app. If you are planning to run a barcamp event you need to talk to Carl about his mobile schedule app.

People travelled in to the event from as far afield as Maryland, DC, Connecticut and New York. The event's hashtag (#HCPHL) hit the top twitter trending topics more than once during the day. People were following the Twitter feed from across the UK and Europe.

The level of interest and active participation in the event only serves to underline the importance of addressing and encouraging change in Health Care. The idea behind HealthCamp is that the healthcare system is broken and we need to rebuild it, together, on a participatory model that leverages the best the social networking, open standards and Internet and mobile technologies have to offer.

I was encouraged by the discussions that took place at the end of HealthCampPhiladelphia. Requests were made for a HealthCampNewYork and for a follow-up event in Philadelphia that will involve more medical practitioners. Those from the medical community that were at this event seemed committed to spreading the word to their colleagues.

Health Care is a complex beast. Making change is not simple. But change is something we have to do. Because it is such a complex environment it is imperative that we look for ideas, inspiration and solutions by casting a wide net. This is the purpose of HealthCamp. It is a venue for conversation that can spark solutions. It is my desire to see all parts of the health care industry represented, together with entrepreneurs, developers and consumers and patients. This is not a place to come and just complain about the current situation. Come and make suggestions on how to make it better. It is out of these discussions between Doctors, nurses, developers and consumers that new and innovative solutions can come.

If you are interested in getting involved in the HealthCamp movement then please drop me a note. The best way to reach me is either by commenting on this blog or sending me a message on twitter (@ekivemark). We have an evolving HealthCamp wiki on Wetpaint that you are welcome to join. (http://healthcamp.wetpaint.com)

If you are in San Francisco this week come to the Web2Open Un-conference at the Web 2.0 Expo and get involved with an impromptu HealthCampSf. There is also a Birds of a Feather HealthCamp session as part of the event on Wednesday April 1st at 7pm. You can get a free ticket to the Web 2Open sessions by checking out the special discount code on the Web2Open page.

On Tuesday April 21st in Boston HealthCampBoston and SocialPharmerBoston are hosting a joint Camp event. It takes place at Microsoft's R&D facility in Cambridge, MA. If you were planning to attend Health 2.0 then come a day earlier and get involved in HealthCampBoston. Tickets for this event go on sale this week. Check out http://healthcampboston.eventbrite.com. I am looking forward to the event because it will be an opportunity to extend the HealthCamp message in to the Pharma sector at a very opportune time. The Pharma sector is actively experimenting with Social Media and trying to understand how Social Networks will shape their market and community outreach plans. From a HealthCare perspective any plans to transform HealthCare have to involve Pharma.   

Finally, if you are interested in getting involved in HealthCampMd 2009 please let me know. If you have a base in New York and can help provide a location for HealthCampNY please get in touch.

In signing off: To everyone who came to HealthCampPhiladelphia. The event was a great success because of your active participation. Thank You!

HealthCampPhiladelphia (#HCPHL) is live

This morning the volunteers are amassing and participants are starting to arrive. Follow the action here, via CoverItLive or on search.twitter.com using the hashtag #HCPHL

This is the HealthCampPhiladelphia CoverItLive RSS Feed:http://rss.coveritlive.com/rss.php?altcast_code=8d547fcfae

HealthCamps in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boston

It has been a busy week. In a little over 24 hours I will be attending HealthCampPhila. All the tickets for the event on Saturday 28th March have been sold. The local organizers have done a fantastic job to prepare for this event. I will be doing my best to Twitter at the event. I will set up another Coveritlive widget on this blog.

To get a flavor of the HealthCampPhiladelphia event check out this introductory video:

After HealthCampPhila I am heading to San Francisco for Web 2.0 Expo. I am hosting a Birds of a Feather HealthCampSf Session on Wednesday April 1st in the evening (7pm). If you are at the Web 2.0 Expo and are interested in the transformation of Health Care then come along to this event. I will also be taking part in the Web2Open Un-conference track at Web 2.0 Expo and intend to lead one or more HealthCampSf sessions there. I am also looking forward to catching Jay Parkinson, MD of Hello Health who is hosting an Un-conference session on "Health 2.0 - New Delivery Models". That takes place on Wednesday April 1st at 9:40am.

This week also saw the plans for HealthCampBoston drop in to place. This will be a joint event with Social-Pharma. The event takes place on Tuesday April 21st at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Campus in Cambridge, MA. This is the day before Health 2.0 that takes place in Boston.

To get tickets for HealthCampBoston goto eventbrite (http://HealthCampBoston.eventbrite.com). My sincere thanks go to @cerro, @healthblawg and @shwen for helping to get the Boston event off the ground.

In other HealthCamp News I heard that HealthCampSeattle is entering the planning stage and the organizing team (thanks to @2healthguru) is making progress on HealthCampSanDiego for some time in June 2009. I also need to check up on HealthCampNash. The date for the Nashville event looks like Saturday May 30th.

When I get a chance to catch my breath I need to start planning for HealthCampMd to take place in Baltimore in May. Are there any Marylanders interested in helping to organize this event? If so please get in touch. Drop me a message on Twitter (@ekivemark).

If you are in Philadelphia on Saturday or San Francisco next week come and say hello!

HealthCamp Season

A couple of weeks ago HealthCampDc was held at the CareFirst offices in Washington DC. A great crowd turned up and actively participated throughout the day. This event is kicking off a great season of HealthCamps. People all over the world are starting up HealthCamps. Watch out for them in Canada, the UK and across the USA.

New HealthCamps are in the planning phase for HealthCampSanDiego and HealthCampToronto.

The biggest HealthCamp event is taking place in Philadelphia. HealthCampPhila happens on Saturday March 28th. There are a few sponsor and participant places left but the event is headed for a sell-out with over 100 people planning to attend. You can check for tickets on eventbrite at http://healthcampphila.eventbrite.com.

The following week I am hoping to attend the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. If I make it out there I plan to run some HealthCampSF sessions as part of the event. If you are attending the event then watch out for those events in the Web2Open Un-Conference and Birds of a Feather tracks.

Later on in April, I also hope to make it to Boston for the Health 2.0 conference. Planning is underway to run a HealthCamp Workshop on April 21st. If you are planning to get to Health 2.0 then come a day early and join in with HealthCampBoston! Planning for this event beings in earnest tomorrow. A conference call for people interested in organizing this event takes place on Monday March 16th at 4pm EST. If you are interested in joining in the call then please drop me a message on Twitter (@ekivemark) with the hashtag #HCBos09.

HealthCampSf will be somewhat an ad-hoc event but if you are planning to attend then drop me a message on twitter (@ekivemark) with the hashtag #HCSF09.

Health Camp Dc 2009 Intro

This is the introduction to HealthCampDc 2009. The Hashtag for the event is #HCDC09.

Health Camp Dc 2009 Intro

View more presentations from Mark Scrimshire. (tags: healthcare washington)

HealthCampDc kicks off at CareFirst in Washington DC

The event is finally here. Over 40 people have signed up to attend HealthCampDc at the CareFirst offices in Washington DC near Union Station.

The event will be going out live over the Internet. I expect a number of participants to be actively blogging and tweeting. We may even get video streams running.

To monitor the live conversation check out the CoverItLive widget here in this blog.

I am excited to be welcoming people to this event. Just looking over the roster of attendees tells me that we should have a lively discussion with experts from the community and all areas of the Health Care industry.

World Health Care Congress on Consumer Connectivity

An unexpected turn of events last week led to me being invited to participate in a session at the World Health Care Congress Leadership Summit on Consumer Connectivity. that is taking place in San Diego on February 23-24th. TriZetto is leading a session on "Powering Consumer Engagement through Integrated Health Care Management." This is going to be a crazy week because I am in the middle of preparing for HealthCampDc which is taking place in Washington DC on Friday February 27th.

The invitation to attend the Summit came about because CareFirst is a major customer of Trizetto. Their software powers enrollment and claims management for a significant portion of CareFirst's 3.3 million members. I was asked to represent CareFirst in their session.

The summit is going to be looking at social networks and other tools to fuel consumer engagement in the management of their health care. This has been a keen interest of mine and is behind the HealthCamp series of events I have been organizing.

Representing CareFirst at this event represents somewhat of a conundrum for me. My background in the evolution of Web 2.0 - what do we label the latest web technologies these days? has put me on the leading edge of web strategy at CareFirst. At this event I am representing CareFirst, but my views may not be those that are adopted across the company. However, they are at the core of my thinking when discussing and planning the evolution of the company's web strategy.

I think this leads me to presenting a talk, which I will post later on Slideshare, that outlines the high level CareFirst strategy but also blends in my personal views. My views on health care have evolved through discussions at various HealthCamp related events.

I feel it is more important to promote an approach to establishing participatory health care. After all that is the core idea behind HealthCamp - To promote the conversation around re-inventing Health Care using social networks, open standards and the latest Internet and Mobile technologies.

I hope I can encourage more people to establish HealthCamp events as a result of attending this event. A number of other Health 2.0 "Agitators" are going to be there. Scott Shreeve and Bob Cauffield are among some of the Twitter users that will be at the Summit. I am certain there will be plenty of others. Bob and I are aiming to discuss the planning of HealthCampWv. It looks like the hashtag for the event is emerging as #WHCC. so you can follow the event on search.twitter.com using that as a search term. If the tag changes I will put out a tweet that uses the old and the new hashtag.

If you are a fellow tweeter at the event then please come say hello or ping me @ekivemark. I will also be posting blogs from the event about interesting sessions.

Finally, if you are going to be in the Washington DC area on Friday February 27th sign up for HealthCampDc and join in this vitally important discussion on the re-invention of health care and the engagement of consumers and patients. Go to http://healthcampdc.eventbrite.com to sign up.

The Health Session at Social Media Club DC is a sell out

Tomorrow, Wednesday February 7th, IQ Solutions in Rockville is hosting a Social Media Club session. The topic is "Engaging the Health World Through Social Media." I have been asked to take part on the panel that is being moderated by Alexandra Rampy (@SocialButterfly). It is a real pleasure to be participating alongside Healthcare blogger, Dr. Val Jones (@DrVal), Christian Olsen and Joel Selzer of Ozmosis.

This should be a great panel, an interactive discussion, with not a PowerPoint in sight.

I have been invited because of my role as "chief troublemaker" and change agent in the HealthCamp movement. With HealthCampDc happening on Friday February 27th and HealthCampPhila taking place a month later on Saturday March 28th, this is a great opportunity to spread the word about these events.

I hope that anyone following the event is inspired to sign up for a HealthCamp event and join in the discussion about the future of Healthcare.

For those not familiar with HealthCamp, these are barcamp-style events focused around HealthCare. Healthcare is a complex industry with many different specialists engaged in the delivery of services.

Privacy issues create complexity and often stifles innovation and experimentation in the industry. Privacy is a double-edged sword. We have to trust that our privacy will be protected. At the same time, if we happen to be the victim of serious medical conditions that affect our quality of life then sites like PatientsLikeMe demonstrate that we are willing to sacrifice some of our privacy in order to improve our quality of life.

Privacy issues will come to the fore with Personal Health Records. Fears of our most personal information being accessible without our consent will have to be balanced against the risk of receiving incompatible treatments due to an ignorance of the full range of medications we are taking.

It always strikes me as ironic that when it comes to Health Records it is us, the health consumer, that are the only people in the health equation that typically does not have access to our records.

As I have discussed in an earlier post I believe Personal Health Records will be adopted by the senior members of the population. This will be driven by the quality of life issue. Our seniors will take advantage of Remote Tele Health monitoring equipment that will feed the Personal Health Record and allow vital signs to be remotely monitored.   

How does Social Media come in to play in the Health Arena?

I expect to see Social network tools being adopted amongst doctors and others with common interests. However, the real revolution has to come with the Personal Health Record.

We are the one common denominator in the health delivery equation. As such, we need to encourage systems to be developed that reflect this fact. If this is to happen then the Health Care industry needs to recognize and adopt some of the standards that are enabling information to be controlled by individuals. OpenID, OAuth and microformats are just three examples of standards that have much to offer in the Health Care arena.

I look forward to discussing these issues at the February Social Media Club DC meeting. If you come to the event please come and say hello!

HealthCampDc 2009 is a go

It has been a busy start to the year but I have finally dropped things in place to run the next HealthCampDc on Friday February 27th. Once again the event takes place at the DC offices of CareFirst. The address is 840 First St NE, Washington DC, 20002. The offices are close to Union Station so in the interests of being environmentally friendly (and less vehicular storage challenged) I urge you to consider using public transport.

There are a limited number of places available at this event and last year's event got some great feedback so sign up quickly and help to shape the agenda for the event. As a barcamp style event you will be an active participant in defining what is discussed at the sessions held that day.

If you haven't attended a HealthCamp or BarCamp you may be wondering what this is about. HealthCamp is about joining in a conversation and stimulating action that will transform HealthCare.

One of the enduring guides for HealthCamp comes from the Health 2.0 definition that TedEytan evolved with his readership on his blog.

Health 2.0 is participatory healthcare. Enabled by information, software, and community that we collect or create, we the patients can be effective partners in our own healthcare, and we the people can participate in reshaping the health system itself.

How do you sign up?

We have made it simpler this year. An eventbrite page has been setup. You can find it at http://healthcampdc.eventbrite.com/

CareFirst are the facilities sponsor for the event. The attendees at last year's event were very complimentary about the location and facilities. This year we will have an extra room available to give us more flexibility in hosting sessions.

The event is just a few weeks away so sign up quickly and spread the word!

I look forward to seeing you at HealthCampDc for some fascinating discussions about how we can transform HealthCare. It is a very timely event since the new President and his administration has HealthCare targeted as one of their top three agenda items.