Medicine 2.0

Medicine 2.0 is the annual open, international conference on Web 2.0 applications in health and medicine, also known as the World Congress on Social Networking and Web 2.0 Applications in Medicine, Health, Health Care, and Biomedical Research.
The congress is organized and co-sponsored by the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the International Medical Informatics Association, the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, CHIRAD, and a number of other sponsoring organizations.

This conference distinguishes itself from “Health 2.0” tradeshows by having an academic form and focus, with an open call for presentations, published proceedings and peer-reviewed abstracts (although there is also a non-peer reviewed practice and business track), and being the only conference in this field which has a global perspective and an international audience (last year there were participants from 18 countries).
An academic approach to the topic also means that we aim to look “beyond the health 2.0 hype”, trying to identify the evidence on what works and what doesn’t, and have open and honest discussions.

Medicine 2.0 ’08 and ’09 sold out with almost 200 participants each, and were praised to have an outstanding program, with internationally renowned speakers, a philosophy of “openess”, and a very conducive atmosphere for discussions and networking.

The University of Twente (UT), the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre (UMCN) and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) will host Medicine 2.0 Europe on November 29-30, 2010 in Maastricht, The Netherlands.

Medicine 2.0’10 will umbrealla REshape (Fall ed., UMCN) and the ‘Supporting health by technology’ (IIIrd ed) symposium series (Univ. of Twente, RIVM). Evidently, the focus is on the impact and significance of Web 2.0 on health, health care and research. This incredibly important, prospering and promising field of interest deserves an open and collaborative European forum.

Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are Web-based services for health care consumers, caregivers, patients, health professionals, and biomedical researchers, that use Web 2.0 technologies as well as semantic web and virtual reality tools, to enable and facilitate specifically social networking, participation, apomediation, collaboration, and openness within and between these user groups.