Sage Commons Congress drives participatory medicine

The second Sage Commons Congress was held in San Francisco CA April 15-16, 2011. Conceptually an ‘open science,’ ‘data 2.0,’ ‘health 2.0,’ and ‘medicine 2.0’ event, the main purpose was for a variety of working groups to collaborate and outline goals for future work. The open science focal points for the group were data (aggregation, packaging, access, and usability) and public engagement. Of particular note was the launch of a new journal, Open Network Biology, which aims to facilitate experiment reproducibility through improved access to underlying data. The event is summarized here, and conference videos and presentations are available here.

The congress was an example of the growing activity in alternatives to the traditional conduct of health research and medicine, and important as an ongoing collaborative effort between many open health science initiatives. Alternative efforts could become a key partner in traditional health care delivery, particularly in realizing preventive medicine through measurement and intervention while conditions are still pre-clinical. Boutique physicians, health social networks, quantified self health tracking, patient-controlled health records, and patient-organized clinical trials could be important features in the near-term health landscape.