Health 2.0

"Health 2.0" is a term introduced in the mid-2000s, as the subset of health care technologies mirroring the wider Web 2.0 movement. It has been defined variously as including social media, user-generated content, and cloud-based and mobile technologies. Some Health 2.0 proponents see these technologies as empowering patients to have greater control over their own health care and diminishing medical paternalism. Critics of the technologies have expressed concerns about possible misinformation and violations of patient privacy,

Health 2.0 built on the possibilities for changing health care, which started with the introduction of eHealth in the mid-1990s following the emergence of the World Wide Web. In the mid-2000s, following the widespread adoption both of the Internet and of easy to use tools for communication, social networking, and self-publishing, there was spate of media attention to and increasing interest from patients, clinicians, and medical librarians in using these tools for health care and medical purposes.

Early examples of Health 2.0 were the use of a specific set of Web tools (blogs, email list-servs, online communities, podcasts, search, tagging, Twitter, videos, , and more) by actors in health care including doctors, patients, and scientists, using principles of open source and user-generated content, and the power of networks and social networks in order to personalize health care, to collaborate, and to promote health education. Possible explanations why health care has generated its own "2.0" term are the availability and proliferation of Health 2.0 applications across health care in general, and the potential for improving public health in particular.

While the "2.0" moniker was originally associated with concepts like collaboration, openness, participation, and social networking, in recent years the term "Health 2.0" has evolved to mean the role of Saas and cloud-based technologies, and their associated applications on multiple devices. Health 2.0 describes the integration of these into much of general clinical and administrative workflow in health care. As of 2014, approximately 3,000 companies were offering products and services matching this definition, with venture capital funding in the sector exceeding $2.3 billion in 2013.

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