Empowering people to acknowledge preventive health is a step-by-step process; something that the social web is increasingly shifting to a process that is relatable and friendly, instead of intense and private.  And while healthy living is cool, understanding our health and finding the best options for maintaining it, especially when we’re sick, is something everyone has to think about, but likely something we want to think about as little as possible.

New technologies allowing for quantified-self and the wider reach of social media have presented new options for health, but how are these best applied and do they really work for the wide array of patients that exist? Sharing more personal data with the institutions, experts, and with other people via social technology is enlightening or even fun, but will it allow for innovations shaping the medicine of tomorrow?

At the root of these discussions, it seems clear that the patient will be the one to ultimately lead change and improvements to the cost, access, and quality of healthcare. Leading this discussion on new solutions and technologies will be: