Shahid Shah is reporting that HIMSS is getting interested in Web 2.0 technologies. It will be fascinating to see how far this interest goes. Real-life Health IT is generally so far behind the innovation curve as to be near-ludicrous at times, and HIMSS would do us all a favor by becoming an exemplar in this realm.
The Nursing Informatics 2006 conference in Seoul, Korea this year was the first medical informatics conference I've seen to start leveraging Web 2.0 technologies. Their conference blog was a great example of how these technologies can be used to further face-to-face interaction as well as keeping remote would-be attendees in the loop real-time. I reported on NI2006 back in mid-June when the conference was going on (Back to the future...). It came to my attention because they used one of my scenario planning posts on the future of health information technology (Resident Physician 2010) as material for one of their panel presentation sessions.
There are many synergies that occur naturally and easily in the use of Web 2.0 technologies, and this was a great example (not my post, necessarily, but their choosing to reference it). Blog posts are often about news and opinion, but many also serve as part of the organizational memory of our field. Steve Beller's Wellness Wiki shows how a different Web 2.0 technology can serve in this role as well.
Caveat regarding the value of my opinions: I am in research informatics, so HIMSS is outside my normal scope. Worse, I live in academia (read: there are no funds), so if I want to go I have to spring for it out of my own (also under-funded) pocket. Maybe I can get AMIA interested in blogging...?
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