The Open Health Care Manifesto - Get On The Healthtrain

OrganizedWisdom has signed on as founding supporters of Healthtrain, The Open Healthcare Manifesto, an important new set of standards which is still in its early stages of development. Dmitriy Kruglyak, from The Medical Blog Network and organizer of the upcoming Health Blogging Summit has been working on this for some time with a large group of collaborators and the project is really taking shape.

In 1999, Cluetrain Manifesto (which was just released in its entirety free online), made history by proposing a vision for how Internet communication will change business. This vision helped encourage many important innovations including blogging technology itself. As Dmitriy points out on his blog post about the manifesto, "healthcare is way more complex than 'general business' and the stakes are human lives. Surprisingly, Cluetrain principles have not been "translated" for this industry. Till now. HealthTrain = Healthcare Cluetrain."

The list of proposed principles, which are further discussed in the document:

1. Openness
2. Empowerment
3. Conversation
4. Empathy
5. Trust
6. Critical Thinking
7. Guidance
8. Control
9. Credentials
10. Transparency
11. Privacy
12. Anonymity
13. Scientific Validity
14. Conflicts of Interest
15. Sponsorship
16. Promotion
17. Controversy
18. Civility and Respect

It looks like the HealthTrain ideas will be discussed in depth at the first Healthcare Blogging Summit 2006 on December 11 in Washington DC.  We plan to be there and blogging about any of the new developments.