“You’re crazy,” was the refrain. “The industry doesn’t need another conference.” It was April of this year when I announced the launch of e-Patient Connections 2009. The friendly feedback included,

• “We already have enough conferences for the health 2.0 crowd.”
• “There is no role for pharma in an empowered patient conference.”
• “Philadelphia?! The East coast doesn’t have any mojo - all big conferences are done in CA.”
• and my favorite, “Um, Kevin, do I even know you?”

Thankfully, I am a little bit crazy and have the simple belief that we do need another conference - one focused on the best ways to reach empowered, digital health consumers (ie, e-patients).

Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of other conferences focused on user-generated or participatory medicine, and I attend them and I like them. Some serve to share academic research and thoughtful findings. Others serve to launch new companies or products and focus on policy and PHR/EMR issues. Still others dive deeply into one specific issue like health games or perhaps hospital marketing.

e-Patient Connections 2009 will be unique for three reasons:

1)      It is about CONNECTING with e-patients, which more plainly speaking means how do you actually get customers, users, visitors, members, followers, friends, etc.

2)      It is for PRACTITIONERS who actually have to plan the projects, gain support, deal with regulatory issues, build a product/service/company, get users and measure ROI

3)      It breaks down silos so health communicators can BENCHMARK across industries - especially life sciences, hospitals, health publishers, and public health educators

Some after hearing my spiel will recoil a bit, look down their nose and say, “Oh, I get it. Your event is all about selling and marketing to health consumers.” Hey, I’ve been accused of worse.

And let’s face the reality that nothing happens - NOTHING - if you can’t get people to join your great community, or to read your great content, or to enroll in your great wellness plan, or to swallow your great pill, or to use a great PHR, or to download your mobile app…Nothing happens.

The participatory medicine community is filled with great ideas, innovative solutions, and the highest of intentions. And yet too often our efforts are missing the Hollywood ending to A Field of Dreams. Oh we’re building it, but how do we get people to come?

So I’m going to continue to march with my drum, step by step, beat by beat. The world does need another health conference, one for practitioners and focused on the real-world best practices for actually connecting with e-patients. We are all selling. We’re all selling better health aren’t we?

I might be crazy, but I bet I’ll have a lot of crazy friends joining me on October 26, in Philadelphia.

Kevin
www.ePatient2009.com