Outtakes from HealthCamp SF

Todd Park, CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, at HealthCamp SF Bay.

Here are some images I shot last Wednesday at the HealthCamp SF unconference at Kaiser Permanente in San Leandro — part of Health Innovation Week in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some 350 to 400 people turned out for the event, which featured a stellar lineup of thought leaders in healthcare, including Todd Park, CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Here’s the Flickr set of 60 photos I took. Next week at our new site TimeforNurses.com I hope to publish my interview with Kathy English, RN, of Cisco, who led a breakout session that covered new technologies for hospitals and nursing departments. (Disclosure: Socialmedia.biz built the nursing site — I hope you check it out!)

A few snippets from HealthCamp SF

Here are a few of the many takeaways from HealthCamp SF:

• HHS CTO Todd Park trotted out the number of people who play Farmville — 73 million! — and said, “The guy or gal who invents Healthville will provide a tremendous service to the community.” Healthcare needs to be engaging and interesting.

• More Park: He mentioned that he recently played a game of “healthcare poker” and was hooked for three hours. The game pitted health indicators in Boston vs. those in New York — say, the lung cancer rate. “I learned things about health care in America that I didn’t know,” he said.

• Ron Gutman, founder of HealthTap, which puts on Hacking4Health and helps you make better decisions about your health and well being: “There are a million developers on the Facebook platform today. We want to bring 100,000 developers to health.” (Check the #Hack4Health hashtag from time to time.)

• Alex Tam (@alextam) of Frog Design showed off Healthy Commute, a Google Maps mashup still in development that will let you see healthier restaurants along your commute.

• You’ve probably seen the commercials for Nike Plus, which contains a sensor in your running shoes to track fitness — it now has 2 million users.

• Susan Brown of Silicon Valley led a breakout session and pointed to two valuable resources: Realwomenonhealth.com and The Women’s Health Conversation Network.

• Carl Says (@carlsays) looks to be a cool iPad app that provides rewards/deals when you check into Facebook Places or Foursquare.

• A fun mobile app: RunKeeper lets you go for a run with your phone and you get a 5k badge that lets you brag to your Foursquare network.

• HealthTap is also collaborating with my friend, Stanford Business School’s Jennifer Aaker, who’s doing the first-ever Stanford class on Quantifying Happiness.

Cross-posted to Time for Nurses.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.