by Tony Chen

We've been talking about how hospitals and social media mix (and don't mix) for a while now. A while ago I wrote a little on whether hospitals should blog and more recently, I provided some examples of how hospitals are utilizing these new technologies today.

Health 2.0 as a topic is about to hit mainstream. Do you know how I know that? Simple - the California HealthCare Foundation just did a 28-page report (PDF) on it. While I'm sorta joking, give them some credit for tackling these emerging issues in healthcare. Case in point: they published a very influential and compelling report on retail clinics back in June 2006, when these clinics number in the dozens, not hundreds (almost thousands now!).

We all know that the trend of web 2.0 is hitting all industries, so it is inevitable healthcare will be impacted as well. I think the real innovation will come when consumer-savvy folks put their heads together with web-savvy folks and medical experts. We will see new types of patient communities, new collaborations between industries, and in general, the lowering of walls between traditional silos. We'll see more healthcare organizations investing in some sort of presence within online networks as more eyeballs (especially the viral type) seem to be glued there. And we'll see personal health records thrown into the mix as well, making it easy for consumers to manage it (instead of feeling like it's managing us).

How else do you think this'll all shake out?