semantic web and consumer-driven healthcare movement

On www2008 and this week's semtech2008, I had chance talking with several
people in this group about consumer side of the healthcare. The reason I'm
thinking and talking about consumer health is because this area is less
covered in HCLS group's activities. According to Eric and Ivan from w3c, the
next healthcare charter is being formed. I thought it would be good to bring
this up here and see if there are more people interested in exploring the
relationship between consumer health information and semantic web. If you
think tackling consumer health by w3c healthcare group will be helpful to
you or your work, please let the group know by responding to this email.

Background: Most of you may have heard of "consumer-driven healthcare" or
"papient health record" in news from US government and industry recently.
The voice  for helping consumers to become more involved in their healthcare
decision is getting stronger and stronger. If you go to HHS, FDA, CDC, NIH,
NLM websites, you will find plenty of government initiatives that are aiming
to improve consumer health by giving consumers more needed information and
making patient records shared easier. Some highly visible initiatives have
been also coming out of google, microsoft, and revolution health (AOL
founder Steve Case's company) recently. I was absolutely amazed when I heard
a presentation on microsoft's futuristic version of how patient will
interact with all the different players in the healthcare chain. I'm not
sure whether and when this vision can realized. But, what's clear is that
the consumers demand more and the industry should provide the technologies
to help it.

Personally, I'm working for a healthcare search engine company (
healthline.com). My understanding of the current movement of consumer-driven
healthcare system is not just about patient health record. In general, the
movement is about giving consumers more power in managing their health. This
may mean  many things: Patient health records are available anywhere/anytime
(with proper security). Patient can easily find all needed information
(diseases, symptoms, treatments, drugs, diagnostics, prevention, etc) online
at hospital's, clinic and insurance company's web sites. Online tools that
enable personalized medicine directly benefiting consumers. I also imagine
there will be new approaches emerging, which we have not thought of before.

Given this exciting environment, I think the consumer health information
area is a huge playing field for semantic web. What do you think?

Best,
AJ
-- 
AJ Chen, PhD
Co-Chair, Semantic Web SIG, sdforum.org
Technical Architect, healthline.com
http://web2express.org
Palo Alto, CA