Expert Views
Healthcare on Web 2.0
Compared to ‘Web 1.0’, the traditional, mostly read-only Web we all know, Web 2.0 is the read-write Web par excellence. In Web 1.0, users follow links to content, while in Web 2.0 they can also rate, comment, annotate, edit, create, mix and share content.
Web 2.0 has thus been described as the ‘people-centric social Web’, facilitating social networking, collaboration and a level of participation beyond that associated with traditional online methods of learning and information delivery.
Within healthcare, Web 2.0 technologies have led to a flood of new applications and services, with the potential to revolutionise the entire spectrum of health and medicine. Just look at the areas that are already touched by Web 2.0: consumer-led preventive medicine, public health, health education, home care, telemedicine, biomedical research, clinical care…to name but a few.
Web 2.0 healthcare applications
Web 2.0 enables resources to be shared with others, such as photos on Flickr. Actually Flickr enables a lot more than just photos to be uploaded, such as this medical study. Virtual medical/health libraries, access to remote librarians, and other medical and health-related educational applications through such worlds are other definite possibilities.
Ratings are a feature of Web 2.0, be it users’ ratings of content, services or other users. Ratings reflect the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ and their experience regarding the rated subject or item. An outstanding medical application is Patient Opinion, which enables patients to share their experiences of healthcare, and by doing so help other patients – and, it is claimed, even to improve the UK’s National Health System.
Web 2.0 enables mapping, and consequently can lead to numerous applications within healthcare. For example, HEALTHmap is a mapping service that overlays health-related news links from multiple sources on maps sourced from Google Maps.
Many readers of this e-newsletter may already be familiar with – and users of – another Web 2.0 application called Sermo. It is described as an online community where physicians can exchange the latest medical insights with each other and improve patient outcomes – 24/7. It’s a bit like a high-level chat room for physicians.
Among the very latest Web 2.0 applications are three-dimensional virtual worlds such as Second Life. If you still need convincing about the value of such a virtual world for the very real issues faced in healthcare, you might like to check out these health-related educational examples of Web 2.0 in action. Or watch this Second Life heart murmur simulation video.
Work still needs to be done
Web 2.0 offers great potential to creative medical and health educators. However, a word of warning: many of the associated possibilities still need to be fully identified, explored in various settings and scenarios, and carefully researched and evaluated to document best practices and pitfalls to avoid, before they can be used in daily teaching and learning activities.
Maged N. Kamel Boulos is Senior (Principal) Lecturer in Health Informatics at the University of Plymouth, UK. He previously worked as Lecturer in Health Informatics at the University of Bath, UK, where he was instrumental in developing the online MSc. programme in Healthcare Informatics. As well as his medical degree and Master in Dermatology, he holds a Master in Medical Informatics from the University of London, and a PhD in Measurement and Information in Medicine from City University, London. He is well published on the topics of Web 2.0, social software, 3D virtual worlds, the Semantic Web and geographic information systems in healthcare.