Health 2.0 conference fills up the ballroom at the SF Hilton
I just spent three days at Health 2.0 San Francisco earlier this week. Here’s some reflections:
- This year’s conference attracted 1,500 attendants, 50% more than in 2010. That’s a lot of growth. This is a reflection of two things; (1) great work by Matthew Holt, Indu Subaiya and the rest of the Health 2.0 team in growing their organization and (2) a big increase in the number of people interested in entering the field. Hard to say which one was more important, but it’s clear both played a big role. What was not clear is whether new business models will match all the enthusiasm. My take is that there will be some big winners (diabetes management?), but still very unclear who, when or how. The emphasis on shiny new things also makes it difficult to learn what’s already working.
What do 1,500 Health 2.0 conference badges look like? Like this
Health 2.0 means different things to different people. There seemed to be (at least) three distinct subgroups at the event: patient empowerment advocates, early-stage consumer-facing (B2C) entrepreneurs, and more established enterprise (B2B) companies. They all have using technology for health in common, but sometimes not much else, given differences in priorities and capabilities. This makes for great breadth at the price of not much depth.
A lot of companies are trying to build platforms, and they are going about this by announcing open APIs. Presumably this is to attract indie developers. As a hobbyist developer, I like the potential, but I would find it hard to tie myself to developing for a single platform with uncertain user-base and business models. It seems like a very fragmented market. The iOS and Android app stores work because they provide access to hundreds of millions of potential users, and there are easy-to-implement payment and advertising revenue sources. Lacking both of these, these platforms might struggle to attract indie developers that make up the bulk of the world’s apps. Maybe all the hackathons and app contests will help…maybe. It’s clear that managing developer relations is something that an ever increasing number of companies will have to become competent in, or outsource.
I played around with a Basis watch, which is launching soon and will measure heart-rate, temperature, motion, and your aura’s minute-by-minute interaction with the universal soul-stream (j/k). It wasn’t functional, but it did look sexy. Will I pay 200 bucks for it? Probably. Will it prevent me from becoming obese? I’d like to think I have a good handle on that already. I think it will be more of a nerd-cred device for me than a health device, but I could be wrong.
Related; an increasing number of apps and devices are generating personal fitness data…the success of apps like RunKeeper and devices like Fitbit is spurring a lot of new entrants. Is fitness data part of a medical record, and if so, does it need to be integrated and/or secured accordingly? Does the fact that I exercise regularly make me a better candidate for an employer who will be responsible for my health insurance? Or to a hot new brand seeking well-toned customers to best exemplify their target lifestyle? Or perhaps a dating site for the proven-fit? Interesting business and ethical questions here. I’m working on a related project at UCSD, stay tuned for more.
Buzz-words of the year: gamification, API, health data