The two panels I watched from the Web 2.0 summit were The Future of Health and Micheal Pollan the author of " In defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto" and the "Omnivores Dilemma".
In the first panel there were three panelists. Th first was Daniel Kraft from Stanford Medical School, one was Joanna Mountain from 23 and Me, genetic testing and the third was Carroll Mccall from Humana Inc. The main themes that I noticed in this panel were customization, prevention and being proactive when it comes to our health care. 23 and me is a genetic testing company where individuals can go and get a profile of their genetics which can enable them to understand if they are likely to get a certain disease based on their specific genetic traits. Joanna Mountain also said that there is a lack of desire from people to care about genetics or want to understand it, however when it is personalized and customized to patients they have found that patients are much more willing to learn a few new concepts about genetics when it relates to their own personal data. Even though currently genetic testing can only tell you about .1% of your genetic traits, it is growing rapidly and the price of the testing has dropped drastically, so it is more affordable. Daniel Kraft from Stanford Medical school, said he really liked what companies like 23 and Me were doing with genetic testing but wondered what a patient would need from him(or a physician) if they had their genetic profile. Carroll Mccall from Humana inc said that the need for physicians would be to show the patient how the genetic testing is relevant to them, the physician can make recommendations to the patient based on their individual genetic testing results. Carroll Mccall also discussed the healthcare side of the issue discussing how we need to make a change on how we view healthcare, it should be more of a relationship of receiving good care from the healthcare provider that looking at the return on investment. She also said that the an issue with insurance is that it is not customized per person, the insurance looks at everyone the same and insurance needs to shift to more customizable coverage for each individual. Daniel Kraft from Stanford medical school also discussed extending the physician and patient relationship to an online forum similar to Facebook, where the patient could chat with the physician or send them messages to extend the physician patient dialogue. Forums like Web MD are doing a great job of this currently.
In Micheal Pollan's forum he talked bout how food is key and in order to solve big issues that we are worried about today such as energy independence, healthcare cost and climate change we need to look at our food system first. Most of the main issues with healthcare can be traced back to the american diet. Pollan recommends a new way to raising and eating food called "eating sunshine". He says that every single calorie is a product of photosynthesis and we should all live by that motto. We need our animals on a farm not in feed lots and we need to re-localize our food systems as much as possible. The government has a disconnect in signing farm bills that allow large amounts of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soy oil to be produced, yet they are worried about the obesity crisis but clearly they are helping it along. Cheap food=Expensive healthcare. Pollan says we need to realign our agriculture policies along with our environmental and healthcare policies. In Pollan's opinion the web can empower consumers to make informed choices in two ways. The first is a device that will make the food system more transparent, not only will the device tell you the nutritional breakdown of the food, but it will tell you where it came from and how it was transported . The second way the web empowers consumers is though online local communities of people sharing information on where to to find food locally instead of going to the supermarket.
What these two panels have in common is that they both agree that the web is instrumental in progressing both issues of food and health forward. They also agree that that there is a definite link between our food and our healthcare crisis.
The differences between these two panels are that the first on health tends to focus more on customizing healthcare for the individual whereas the second, on food, looks at revamping the way we get food and the type of food we eat completely ,and not as much on customization.
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