A few weeks back I attended my second HealthCamp – this one was in Philadelphia at a Jefferson University conference center. Just like my first HealthCamp, (in Washington D.C.) this was an energetic group – smart, quick and full of ideas.

I call these events “open-source” conferences. They follow the BarCamp model of user-generated sessions, and the Wikipedia definition is on-target:

“…open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The first BarCamps focused on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. The format has also been used for a variety of other topics, including public transit, health care, and political organizing.”

All the participants are engaged, and passionate about the possibilities Health 2.0 can make in healthcare. The energy level is high, and conversations run a network speeds.

I especially like how the agenda is set. Topics are offered, interest-levels are determined, the days schedule is determined by the group.

My highlights from this conference include:

Evolving Role of Consumerism in Health Care by Richard Toner, Project Manager at the Jefferson School of Population Health.  – A solid review of patient-centric sites like Patients Like Me, 23 and Me, and many others.

Experience That Matters: Co-Designing Improvements in Healthcare, by Yosaif August. His session looked at applying experience design techniques to the healthcare setting. This has been done in the UK for years, and now being looked at by major hospitals like the Mayo Clinic and the VA

Social Media – Don’t Be Scared! A Twitter Case Study of Polar Wisdom by the amazing Jen McCabe Gorman. Jen walked the group through her approach to  structured Social Media communications. She demonstrated that it’s possible to create processes and goals in this area – without compromising the interactions that make it work.

Here’s her presentation:

____________________

These sessions work because there are no walls between audience and presenter. In fact many times the session leader was more of a moderator, guiding the conversations that developed.

This conference, like the one in DC, was organized by a small group of people that most of my readers already know:  Mark Scrimshire, Mary Ann Geier with help from Phil Baumann and many others. The next camp is in Boston on April 21, and the list of attendees cuts across all areas of Healthcare.

Mark is also working on the second HealthCampMD (Maryland), Ill keep you posted as details are worked out.