Wellness 2.0?

I noticed a post by Chris Messina mentioning a lack of health discussion in the geek ’sphere. It probably wasn’t meant to be a deep conversation starter, but it’s in my head too. Nobody’s saying there aren’t wellness blogs or that you can’t buy yoga dvd’s at Amazon - It’s a big Internet. What’s missing is the personal hook.

We’ve been working with enterprise level personal health assessments for a while now. Large organizations entangled in the rising costs of healthcare routinely plug our apps into their annual programming. The organization takes away aggregate data demonstrating areas of necessary improvement. Their members receive a personal health critique.

If you’re an individual or small group, though, these tools are typically unfamiliar - they don’t exist at the personal level. I posted earlier about Swellometer, an app working to make personal health assessement tools widely available and easy to use. It’s launching soon, and I hope it catches hold in the Web 2.0 space.

But, Swellometer barely scratches the surface. Regardless of what professionals in the field will tell you, the Internet has barely affected the healthcare industry at all to date. In the coming years, the consumer directed health care market will be dramatically impacted by the Internet. Individuals will gain direct and easy access to health assessment tools, health information tools, health savings account administration tools, and more. Personal health information will be portable. Other…good…things will happen.

So, why not start in the Web 2.0 space? We have enough social bookmarking apps and photo sharing sites. We have tagging and Internet radio. We have blogs and video blogs and pod casts and other blogs. We don’t have wellness.

I’d love to see a technorati for wellness; an Ajax health indicator dashboard; a preventative checkup and screening notifier built in to Google Calendar; a kick-ass eastern philosophy cognitive behavioral therapy and mind-body medicine blog with built in shopify store and weekly ask a ninja about your health video cast. Anything - just keep it in the 2.0 space.

Suffice it say, I’m surprised at the extent to which industry silos have been unaffected by Web 2.0. Education is starting to be touched. Nuvvo is a great implementation of a solid idea. LearnOutLoud is decent effort. Hopefully these tools will encourage others to join the space. Technology making technology better doesn’t impress me nearly as much as technology making education better. The same and more goes for healthcare.

Am I missing any apps in the other-industry rim? I get dazed by all the mash-ups and re-mash-ups sometimes.