In sunny California, among the palm trees and azure skies of Silicon Valley, it is hard not to believe that technology and entrepreneurialism can solve all of the world’s great challenges. Nonetheless, during my coffee-break conversations at the Health 2.0 8th Annual Fall Conference 2014 I am also struck by the personal stories of individual delegates and their loved ones who are struggling to make sense of the health reform initiatives that the nation is facing. This is despite what I consider a digital-savviness, technology readiness and generally keen interest in health among the conference participants. On more than one occasion I have heard people here in the US suggesting Canada or the UK as an ‘ideal’ health system.
Yet health reform concerns are equally prominent in the United Kingdom. Patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals are each in turn trying to comprehend the implications of proposed legislative amendments, while conscious that these proposals are in part driven by trying to meet the sheer financial burden of providing universal care to a populous country. For the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), more than a few politicians have cast an eye back across the pond at the model in the United States – seeing it as a possible model to sustainable health care, at least from a government finance perspective.
As the old adage says, the grass always seems greener on the other side.
Leading up to Health 2.0, Creation Healthcare provided a series of articles and insights about these health reforms based on healthcare professional opinions expressed in public social media. On the Health 2.0 website, you can read about:
- The link between health reform and politics
- Some of the drivers in health reform
- Key issues relating to health insurance
In conjunction with Health 2.0 we are also pleased to provide the above interactive view of anonymised healthcare professional opinion data for a 12-month period between September 1st, 2013 and September 1st, 2014. Do feel free to explore the visualization and click on various elements to see how the charts update based on your selection. You can even download the data set and play with some of the dimensions and measures using Tableau Public. Stay tuned on this website for more updates, visualizations and insights from healthcare professional opinions.
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