Plan to join us the evening of March 24th to hear a rapid-fire series of short presentations from seven Health 2.0 leaders. The presentations will be followed by a panel style Q&A session, moderated by Read Holman (HHS), that will facilitate and explore a range of topics. The presentations will highlight results associated with the innovative implementation and use of Web 2.0 based solutions in the healthcare market, at government agencies, and from a patient and user perspective.

Topics and speaker bios:

1) Empowering the Healthcare Consumer with Information: Can we Learn from Ecommerce and Financial Services?

Visa serves 28 million merchants and 16,000 financial institutions, supports nearly 2 billion payment cards, and will process over 50 billion payment card transactions in 2010. Amazingly, as consumers we have easy online access to every one of these transactions in a matter of days or even hours. The presentation will explore the key characteristics of the payment card system that can be leveraged in healthcare to give consumers easy, private, and near real-time access to every one of their health transactions as well.

Bob Blonchek is president of Razoron Health Innovations, a company founded in 2009 and focused on creating products for the connected healthcare market. Bob has founded or co-founded several technology companies, and is a creative and entrepreneurial executive with deep experience developing and executing new product and service strategies. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Greater Baltimore Technology Council and is active in the Baltimore Angels investment group. Bob received Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science from The Johns Hopkins University, and The Ohio State University, respectively. He is the author of Act Like an Owner: Building an Ownership Culture, published by John Wiley & Sons, and is a regular speaker and writer on technology, leadership, and entrepreneurial topics.

2) Grassroots Social Media at NIH

Balancing the mission of a government agency with the grassroots reach of social media, the NIH Research Radio podcast finds a happy medium. NIH podcast producer and press officer Joe Balintfy explains how the nation’s medical research agency communicates health messages to the general public by navigating content, process and technical questions. This presentation will share a quick how-to and key insights of a social media program with more than 100 episodes posted to date.

Joe Balintfy works in the News Media Branch of the Office of Communications and Public Liaison in the Office of the Director at the National Institutes of Health. He is currently responsible for NIH Radio News Service content, a bi-weekly audio podcast, and a video podcast called I on NIH. Between audio and video productions, Joe also assists with press and public calls as well as interview requests for experts at all the NIH’s 27 different institutes and centers. Joe is a former radio reporter and regularly presents on the social media experiences of his branch at NIH.

3) Leveraging Social Media Platforms For Event & Conference Coverage

Dr. Val Jones will explain how health conferences can achieve maximum reach through a structured blend of UStream, Twitter, BlogTalkRadio, Skype, and Blog coverage. The Better Health team is a pioneer in new media coverage and health communications, debuting their capabilities at their media center at HIMSS in Atlanta.

Better Health is a network of popular health bloggers, brought together by Dr. Val Jones, founder and CEO. Participating bloggers maintain their own individual blog sites, but offer a portion of their content to Better Health for syndication purposes. Better Health maintains a blog feed that is featured on participating blogger, partner, and supporter websites. Our network (including participating blog and partner sites) reaches approximately 10 million unique users per month and is growing.

Better Health’s mission is to support and promote healthcare professional bloggers, provide insightful and trustworthy health commentary, and help to inform health policy makers about the provider point of view on healthcare reform, science, research, and patient care.

4) Social Media at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality continues to expand its use of social media to connect with clinicians and consumers. For us, social media tools strengthen and personalize our existing connection with our stakeholders, making it easier for people to find the information they want and need to make health care decisions. We’ve also found that social media empowers people to share AHRQ information, leading to fasting implementation of our research. We are in our 5th year of podcasting and AHRQ has a growing portfolio of audio and video on our Healthcare 411 Web site (www.healthcare411.ahrq.gov) that we share with subscribers, health care organizations, and radio stations nationwide. Our brand new YouTube Channel “AHRQHealthTV” now helps us expand that connection. More than 800 people – mostly clinicians, health care organizations, and health reporters, also follow AHRQ News on Twitter, where we share media announcements and events.

Ellen Crown is a Health Communications Specialist with more than 12 years of government experience, ranging from military journalism to public affairs and marketing. She began her career as a Navy Journalist, assigned to stations in both Asia and Europe. Later as a civilian, she served as Writer-Editor for the Navy’s Surgeon General and, subsequently, as Deputy Public Affairs Officer of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Ellen joined HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in 2007 as a member of the Office of Communications and Knowledge Transfer. Her work includes coordinating the audio-visual efforts for the Agency, and developing new and innovative ways to connect with audiences through the use of social media.

5) PHR, Corporate Wellness and Mobile Hand Hygiene

Blaine Warkentine is an MD in technology, specifically mobile and health education software products and antimicrobials. More information can be found at www.innovationthrives.com

6) Complex Healthcare Systems: Managing Chaos through Collaborative Technologies

Marie-Michelle Strah, PhD is a Manager, Information Systems in the Health Services Group at General Dynamics Information Technology and currently supports JTF-CAPMED as a systems integrator. She has also provided portfolio management and SharePoint subject matter expertise for the Defense Centers of Excellence (Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury) and is a recent veteran. A passionate supporter of Government 2.0 and Health 2.0 citizen and patient engagement initiatives, Michelle can be followed on Twitter @cyberslate.

7) My Patients On Mobile: Leveraging text messaging for better health outcomes

Dr. Patricia Roy from Johns Hopkins will discuss how her patients are using mobile solutions and the opportunities for better communication and healthy outcomes today and in the future. Patricia will also discuss her current mobile project – helping diagnose woman at risk for Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD).

Patricia Roy, M.D. is an instructor working with the clinical trials at Johns Hopkins. She completed her bachelor's degree in Psychology at the George Mason University and her medical degree at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, where she was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and received a Janet M. Glasgow Achievement Award from the American Medical Women’s Association.

8) Moderator - Read Holman works at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) in the Web Communications & New Media Division. He’s a central linking point between studio productions, web content management, and new/social media activities. His work within the HHS Center for New Media allows him to help disseminate best practices in new/social media and break down government silos.

Event Logistics

Agenda
6:00 - 6:30 Registration and Networking
6:30 - 7:15 Presentation
7:15 - 7:30 Q&A
7:30 - Addl Networking

This meetup will be held in a private, back room at Jackie’s restaurant in downtown Silver Spring. This is a short walk from the Silver Spring metro on the red line and there is plenty of parking. As always, I want to make sure to give thanks to our sponsors, Aquilent and Palladian Partners. Because of their support, we have been able to continue putting on some really informative events, as well as, offer some great appetizers and beverages for all that attend the meetup.
You can follow us on twitter @DCHealth2_0

You can register and learn more about the event at the meetup site :

DC/MD/VA Health 2.0 Meetup - Web 2.0/Social Media