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Before everyone gets carried away by the thoughts of the healthcare uses of blogs, podcasts and wikis, those who are deeply involved in trying to use technology to improve the way patients are treated -- and, after all, isn't that what this technology revolution is aimed at? -- say people should think first about how all of this wonderful Web 2.0 stuff is going to be delivered.
Eric Dishman, who heads Intel's Proactive Health Strategic Research Project, believes it's a misdirected effort to put this technology out there without first thinking about the interfaces that will be needed.
One of the supposed strengths of Web 2.0 is its ability to improve the way people access and share information. You can create mashups that pull information in from a number of sources and present it in a unified way, so people don't have to go hunting for it in that oh-so Web 1.0 way.
That's all well and good except, as several people point out in an upcoming Web 2.0 story in GHIT, that means there'll be a mix of all standards of information out there on the Web -- well-researched and accurate information as well as garbage -- that will live together on the same Web 2.0 screen.
If you are looking for a recipe to boil an egg that's not too bad, since the most damage you'll have is a hard-boiled oeuf rather than a soft one. It's a little different if you're diabetic. How do you tell the good information from the crappy kind?
There needs to be some kind of Web 2.0 trust infrastructure in place before Web 2.0 technologies could safely be delivered to the patient, Dishman feels, as well as a way for them to easily and clearly see what level of trust they should place in the information they are looking at, such as some kind of dashboard.
"Most consumers and doctors like multiple points of view they can consider, but just how do you depict that kind of information?" he said. "That's a major interface problem in itself."
There's also a need to make the user interface less intensive and task driven, said Doug McClure, corporate manager for technology at the Center for Connected Health, because the general user of healthcare information doesn't have a lot of time to sit down in front of a screen and scroll through reams of information.
That means, he said, changing the nature of the data stream from where it has to be looked up on the Web to where it's something that's integrated into the everyday environment. That could be the toughest part of Web 2.0 in healthcare.
By Brian Robinson, GHIT Contributing Writer
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