Philosophy

Healthcare companies, whether they are small technology start-ups or established healthcare organizations, are endeavoring to create value by utilizing the internet to streamline information flows. Their ultimate goal is to package information in a way that helps consumers manage their health more effectively. However, companies are encountering time-consuming and expensive challenges presented by the myriad of standards activities and interoperability strategies clouding the industry's innovative progress. The Health 2.0 Accelerator is a collaborative of these healthcare companies whose goal is to accelerate value creation that can transform the industry by:

• Removing integration barriers that limit collaborative business opportunities
• Facilitating organic growth of partnerships and community initiatives
• Allowing incremental automation of clinical and business processes
• Driving plug-and-play commerce among new and established businesses

The Accelerator believes in the power of healthcare service networks, or business communities where companies collaborate through loosely coupled business services to build simple or complex solutions that meet the evolving needs of the health care industry. In addition to enabling consumers to more effectively manage their health, the anticipated results include driving business to participants' services and creating “industry goods” that advance the field that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve for a participant acting alone. In the Accelerator’s view, every participating organization as well as the larger community benefits from service innovation, as it has the power to result in economies of scale, inter-operation and rapid scaling of the services produced. 

The Accelerator:

• Is open to all Health 2.0, healthcare companies and industry stakeholders interested in using new technologies and business processes to improve health care services, with a particular emphasis on driving consumerism (in the non-political sense of that word!) in health care
• Will advance innovation through collaboration of companies that want to work together on relevant service development projects
• Will provide the organization to develop the healthcare service network including assistance in prioritization of service development projects based on member interest, commonalities and anticipated positive impact on health care management with a particular focus on the ultimate consumer impact
• Will ensure that light-weight open frameworks developed to support a project will be returned back to the Health 2.0 Community without compromising the intellectual property of Accelerator participants
• Will maintain transparency in organization and decisions
• Will not become a standards organization or advocate for any particular standards; Individual projects are encouraged to involve the use of current standards where appropriate
• Is not a replacement for company-specific business or relationship development that is intended to create proprietary value.

The collaborative is currently defining the organizational structures, policies and procedures to promote coordination and consolidation across Accelerator projects and its participants. The anticipated second stage is envisioned to coordinate and support the goals of the organization, in particular, strategic and technical coordination among projects and framework contributions by a Guidance Board. The anticipated third stage may support development of new utilities and services agreed to be necessary but potentially beyond the scope of any one project.