---
title: "Healthcare in Web 2.0"
date: 2005-05-05
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2005"
    url: "/tag/2005.md"
---

# Healthcare in Web 2.0

![Web 2.0 News](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315003642im_/http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/web20_news.gif)Web 2.0 is coming soon to consumer medical information services, [says Gordon Gould](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315003642/http://gould.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000770042071/). He reckons the most interesting apps won’t come from established Web medical players, like [WebMD](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315003642/http://webmd.com/), but rather from startups. Gordon thinks the established companies are too Web 1.0 – “monolithic, closed, and mostly just about info-retrieval”.

[WebMD’s mission](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315003642/http://www.webmd.com/corporate/index.html?z=1727_00000_0000_bd_05) seems to be to help “navigate the complexity of the healthcare system” and so it necessarily has a broad reach – from doctors to patients to providers. So perhaps Gordon is right and innovation will come from presumably more focused and agile Healthcare startups.

[Rajesh Jain from Emergic](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315003642/http://www.emergic.org/archives/2005/04/30/index.html#it_in_healthcare) has a similar post about IT in the Healthcare system. He quotes from an article in [The Economist](https://web.archive.org/web/20060315003642/http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3909439), which says the healthcare industry must get patient information “out of paper files and into electronic databases” and make it interoperable. But more than that, decision-making should be moved to the edges of the network (i.e. “by patients in consultation with their doctors”) and not centralised.

The Economist’s conclusion is similar to Gordon’s – the goal is ultimately “to enable individuals, at last, to have access to, and possession of, information about their own health.”

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/healthcare_in_w.php))*