The Contributions of Health 2.0
The Internet has made choosing and buying products so much easier now. Even without leaving the comfort of one’s home, one can find the products, goods and services they need or want online. A visit to Amazon.com, for example, could help you find that book that you have long been looking for, and you can order it in hardbound, paperback, or as an electronic book for your kindles or some other e-book reader. If you do all these researches and purchase online for products, goods and services, why not do the same for your health?
A fairly recent development in Internet Web sites has been touted as Health 2.0, a movement that aims to bring health care services to the Web. Basically, it brings patients, doctors, health care providers and other health care parties together. This move has given people more leeway on how to choose their heath care provider and make better and informed decisions on their health.
Not only that, Health 2.0 sites not only empower the consumer to gain access to information that enables them to decide and choose their own providers, it also allows them to compare and contrast providers and rate their services. In the old days, one goes to a clinic not knowing how good the doctor is, while others rely on the recommendations of friends and family. In effect, people had very limited sources of information. This has been remedied by Health 2.0 sites that have featured ratings, recommendations and reviews on doctors, dentists, hospitals, service providers and anybody involved in health care. So you as a consumer can get honest reviews from the online community before availing of the service.
Not only that, you can literally shop around for a doctor in your area. Health 2.0 sites give you a dossier of doctors in your area, complete with the range of fees and charges, ratings from other users, and other information on the health care professional like where he or she graduated, his or her professional affiliations, years of practice, specializations, and convictions or malpractice suits, if any.
What all these bring are patients who are more empowered to decide, and who have more information regarding their providers.
The benefits of Health 2.0 sites do not end there… With the explosion of Health 2.0 sites, comes the rise of communities that provide information on the different diseases and conditions, even symptoms and treatment. Now people can go online and ask questions – even embarrassing ones – related to their sickness. They can find treatments that they might not have thought about, or find ones they can do at home like herbal medicines or home treatments. For some, what they gain is the support of the community that understands them. Case in point is a cancer community online that serves as a support group for people afflicted with cancer, and as an information source for new treatments and research on cancer.
Admittedly, Health 2.0 is still a relatively new area on the Internet. It still needs fine tuning and there is a lot of misinformation that is going around these sites, which is why, like everything else on the Internet, one would need to take these health advices with a grain of salt. However, it is also one of the most promising and fastest growing areas too. Soon, it will be possible to have your medical records safely stored online, making it easier and cheaper for you to get an online diagnosis or to have different doctors giving their opinions on you.
For now, Health 2.0 sites have achieved their number 1 goal and that is to provide information for patients to make informed decisions about their health. Everything else is just icing on the cake, making the online experience a little richer and better.
