Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Spring Conference: New Media Technologies & the Biocitizen
The Health Horizons Spring Conference is May 23-24 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, CA!
New Media Technologies & the Biocitizen
We're all familiar with how online access to health and medical information has changed the doctor-patient relationship. In the coming decade, the health and health care landscape will be further transformed by new media technologies. YouTube, MySpace and other Web 2.0 social technologies and media are gaining attention in the Global Health Economy. User-generated content on health affinity Web sites, blogosphere rants with their power to spur collective action, real-world exchanges facilitated by social software, and social support exchanged in massive multiplayer online games all tap into the collective intelligence of social networks for health.
This collective intelligence will introduce new health information authorities and redefine the health care consumer in the future. Indeed, hints at what lies beyond the current consumer paradigm can be found in the increasingly complex ways that social affinities are being created on the basis of biological data and the role these media and technologies play in enhancing the market power and force of biocitizens.
The Health Horizons Spring Conference will explore the role of new media technologies in the health and health care arena and explore how players in the global health economy might innovate around them. We'll provide an overview of future possibilities as well as develop scenarios as part of our effort to map the quickly emerging landscape of new media technologies and biocitizenship.