There is a strong connection between web 2.0 and medicine. We refer to this connection as medicine 2.0 or health 2.0. Medicine 2.0 is mostly about medical communication and education, while health 2.0 focuses on the IT innovations of medical practices and the entire healthcare. One of the best bloggers writing about this field of medicine is Scott Shreeve at Crossover Healthcare. Now he examined the long tail phenomenon in the health 2.0 world.

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There are so many sites and services in a lot of different categories (medical videos; medical search engines or patient community sites) and only a minority of them will survive. Even if some of us will fail, this is a good tendency as it leads to quality services.

iHealthBeat had some interesting articles as well:

• 40,000 additional health IT professionals will be needed!
• Virtual Visits Moving Into Medical Mainstream

Aetna expanded a three-state pilot project to the rest of the U.S. after determining that paying physicians to consult with patients online in California, Florida and Washington state was a success.

Have you ever heard about the dynamic virtual patient? The addition of artificial intelligence with path planning behaviors inside the virtual patient helps to create physiological events that influence the viewer’s decision making.

And don’t forget to check out the LinkedIn question of Gunther Eysenbach: What functionalities should a health-specific Web2.0 (social networking) application developed specifically for patients/consumers/health professionals have? Where do you see Health 2.0 going?

There are new trends in health 2.0, and we should be ready and open to these. Follow our blog carnival for more.