I’m glad to announce that Health and Web 2.0 in the Information Age videos are available at YouTube.

Health in the Information Age by Rita Espanha

Health and Web 2.0 by Michael Hardey

Health and Web 2.0: initiatives from Catalonia Government by Joan Guanyabens

Enjoy them! Thanks again to those who made this conference possible. Of course, Feedbacks are welcome!

Ismael Peña, a colleague at Open University of Catalonia and a friend of mine, has been working on issues relative with Open Access, Open Science, Open Educational Resources, Open Source Software, etc. His post titled Introduction to the open paradigm sum up the main features of Open movement. Talking about “paradigm” is a tricky question so I have suggested him to title his introduction as Openness at the informationalism paradigm. Anyway, a few days ago he sent me a link to The Health Commons

Health Commons is a coalition of parties interested in changing the way basic science is translated into the understanding and improvement of human health. Coalition members agree to share data, knowledge, and services under standardized terms and conditions by committing to a set of common technologies, digital information standards, research materials, contracts, workflows, and software. These commitments ensure that knowledge, data, materials and tools can move seamlessly from partner to partner across the entire drug discovery chain. They enable participants to offer standardized services, ranging from simple molecular assays to complex drug synthesis solutions, that others can discover in directories and integrate into their own processes to expedite development — or assemble like LEGO blocks to create new services.

This is the new project from Science Commons that has “the ambition of achieving for the world of science and data, what Creative Commons had begun to achieve for the world of culture, art and educational material: to ease unnecessary legal and technical barriers to sharing, to promote innovation, to provide easy, high quality tools that let individuals and organizations specify the terms under which they wished to share their material” (see An Introduction to Science Commons).

John Wilbanks and Marty Tenenbaum have written Health Commons: Therapy Development in a Networked World - an introduction and overview and have produced a video titled An Introduction to Health Commons

I’m very interested in these kind of initiatives or project. Please contact me flupianez[at]ictconsequences.net if you have or know any initiative related to Health and Openness at the informationalism paradigm as Health Commons or the examples I’m collecting at my wiki under the category Openness at Health.

First of all I would like to thank Gustavo Cardoso, Miquel Angel Mayer and indeed Rita Espanha and Michael Hardey for the marvellous working days we had in Barcelona. It was a honour to have the opportunity to share during three days thoughts, reflections, past researches and ideas about health and the Internet. I’m sure those are just the beginning of future collaborations. Thank you very much for such a wonderful days.

The conferences matched the audience’s expectations. Michael and Rita have allowed me to upload their presentations to the Internet as long as many people have showed their interest in the conference but they were not able to attend to Barcelona. I ‘m pleasure to announce that both conferences were video recorded and will be available in two week at UOC YouTube Channel.

Rita Espanha and Gustavo Cardoso have been reserching the transition to Network Society in Portugal. Most of the researches are available at OberCom. OberCom (Observatory for the Media) is directed by Gustavo Cardoso. He and Rita Espanha supervise the centre’s scientific research development; manage the centre research networking and institutional relations. OberCom is a non-profit research centre whose main goal is the production of data and diffusion of information about the Media, thus contributing to better knowledge of the field of communications in Portugal.

As I posted before, they have developed a research project titled Health in the Information Age. Their main conclusions were showed in Rita’s presentation

In 1999 Michael Hardey wrote Doctor in the house: the Internet as a source of lay health knowledge and the challenge to expertise. He was one of the first researchers who started to analyse Health and the Internet and the transformation of the relation between health professions and their clients/users/patients. In 2001, “E-Health”: the Internet and the transformation of patients into consumers and producers of health knowledge was published. Is it sound like Web 2.0?. His forthcoming paper will be Hardey, M. (2008) Public health and Web 2.0, Journal of the Royal Institute of Health Promotion 128(4):171-179

Finally, I would like to thank International Graduate Institute (Open University of Catalonia) and TicSalut Foundation for sponsoring the conference.

I’m pleasure to announce “Health and Web 2.0 in the Information Age Conference” on 15th May at Barcelona Biomedical Research Park. The speakers are:

• Prof. Rita Esphana (CIES-ISCTE - OberCom, Portugal) - “Health in the Information Age”
• Prof. Michael Hardey (Hull/York Medical School - SIRU, UK) - “Health and Web 2.0″

The conference is sponsored by International Graduate Institute (Open University of Catalonia) and TicSalut Foundation and is open to the public (the lectures will be in English. A simultaneous interpretation service will be available) :

• Programme
• Free registration

I’m excited with Michael and Rita conferences and even more excited with the two days before the conference. After many emails and a visit to Lisbon we are going to meet face to face to all together to strengthen future collaborations. Network is great!

Yesterday, I was invited by Cristina Iniesta, Hospital del Mar Manager Director and Health Promoting Hospital Network Coordinator, to present the results from Internet, Health and Society in Catalonia in one of the network meetings at Hospital Sant Joan de Deu.

The aims of the presentation were: (1) to analyse in what way and to what extent the Internet is adopted and embedded by Catalan health system; (2) to discuss the implications for health promotion, taking into account Health Promoting Hospital objectives and, (3) to find ways of future collaborations.

The atmosphere of the session was excellent. I’m sure we will find many ways of future collaboration. Finally, I’m grateful to Kathryn O´Connor, my wonderful English teacher at UOC, for introducing me Cristina Iniesta and, last but not least, I would like to thank Cristina Iniesta for her kind invitation and her open thinking.