With increasing avenues for communication and knowledge dissemination, the practice of health care is changing faster than imagined. Free services like you tube, face book, Wikis, blogs, Twitter, social networks eg. Patientslikeme and a host of other services provide a health consumer with ample information and opinions. No longer is a patient forced to blindly trust his doctor"s judgment. The patient can easily search for more opinions, review personal experiences of friends and strangers plus the latest research studies in the field. This has changed the role of a Doctor to one of facilitator of health, rather than the unquestionable saviour .E-Health insider has come up with a 108 paged report titled ‘Web 2.0 in the Health Sector: Industry Review with a UK perspective’. {£575.00 (inc VAT)}
The report argues that e-health 2.0 will first and foremost be consumer-led. Health is consistently one of the most searched for subjects online. The application of web 2.0 technologies into health is already challenging traditional doctor-patient relationships and beginning to place far greater power in the hands of consumers. These changes are likely to be rapid and may prove highly disruptive. Further, it concludes that new applications based on social health networks and content generated by health service users themselves - such as reviews of doctors and hospitals – will rapidly evolve to challenge existing healthcare systems and create new ways of delivering healthcare.

The profiles provide a snapshot of innovation across healthcare: from organisations providing online communities for patients with specific conditions, tools for chronic disease management, sites that enable patients to rate the quality of care they receive, together with tools to enable clinicians to better search for and share research data.

No doubt Web2.0 has changed the game, bringing about a total rethink in long established practices.But this is just the beginning.

With Web3.0 and Personalized Medical services like Webicinia and 23andme , internet technologies are bound to change the rules of health care for ever.