Global health 2.0

I don’t want to jump on any bandwagons just yet, since plenty of what I’ve seen in health 2.0 so far is bluster. Sure, there are some interesting ideas, but whether they actually help in the provision of care remains to be proven. I am a big fan of disclosure, however, and I am becoming a big fan of social networking. The latter has helped me reconnect with several people I’d lost touch with.

On that note, here are a couple of interesting links I picked up recently:

A hospital rating site in Ireland called RateMyHospital.ie seems to be attracting a lot of activity. As of this writing, the counter indicates that 9,896 surveys have been completed. I’m not sure when the site started, but we’re talking about a country with just 4.2 million people.

RateMyHospital is part of a privately run site called IrishHealth.com, which looks to have all the trappings of a WebMD or Revolution Health, from consumer health information to personal health records. I don’t know the PHR usage rate, but let’s assume it’s low.

As Facebook continues to explode in popularity, so does the number of groups related to health IT. The latest one I’ve come across is the IMIA group. So far, it only has 23 members, including a high school student from Egypt and a healthy contingent from Argentina.