John Sharp is an IT Manager for a major medical center in Northeast Ohio. Areas of expertise include: ehealth, personal health records, Web 2.0 technologies, social media and project management. He is active in the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society and the American Medical Informatics Association. The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author.
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How is Health 2.0 Different in Europe versus the US?
October 5, 2009
In planning for the Health 2.0 conference in Nijmegen, Netherlands, I am wonder what to expect approaches to Health 2.0. Here are a few differences I expect:
- Marketing – generally less important to EU hospitals with socialized medicine. US hospitals are interested in using social media to recruit new patients, while EU hospitals are more interested in connecting to patients in their district.
- A different attitude toward entrepreneurs. I expect a growing interest in startups in the Netherlands including in mobile health.
- Google and Google health – while there has been some opposition to Google Health in the UK, and opposition to some Google initiatives in the EU, what is the attitude toward Google Health as a platform for ehealth
- What is the current thinking of integrating eHealth and Health 2.0
- Health care Reform – not an issue in the Netherlands which is rated the best healthcare system in Europe versus the ongoing debate in the US as to whether health care is a basic human right.
I am looking forward to meeting my Dutch colleagues and others to find answers to these and new ideas.
