GameChangers has a health care client, and because of that I am aware of this panel before my friend Josh Rose, head of digital media for Deutsch Advertising, who’s not attending SXSW this year, sends out a morning tweet asking his network if anyone’s planning to attend the ‘Social Media and Health Care’ discussion. I am grateful to Josh for the extra impetus, though, because this turns out to be my favorite discussion of the conference. Nothing is resolved, no consensus gained, no conclusions reached. But the quality of the questions posed, perspectives presented and the passion people bring to the subject are amazing and inspiring. 
People here represent insurance companies, big pharma, start-ups, physician networks, social networks built around various health concerns, and NGOs. There are several physicians in the audience, and one guy, Vik Duggal (www.konstructr.com) from the construction business who makes a remark on which, the way I see it, the entire conversation pivots. Until Vik speaks, the focus has been on privacy issues. And then Vik says, “All of these comments about patient privacy and the relationship between employees and employers assume the current model. I’m in the construction business and I can tell you that everything about it is going to change in the next five years. What’s true today will not be true in the future.”
It’s like Vik dropped a lit cigarette into a gas tank. The room erupts in conversation that the moderator soon loses any chance of moderating. I had not planned to say anything, but when the moderator tries to calm things down by saying, “I’ve got to tell you, I’m not optimistic” I shout at him, just to keep things lively, “That’s your choice!”
A young physician from Brooklyn, Jay Parkinson, is launching his own social network, HelloHealth. He says, “Doctors like patients who come in already educated about what’s wrong with them. Education and prevention are the best medicines we have.”
Later I tell the story of how, at no cost to me, I healed myself of a case of Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) using Google search and a YouTube video of a treatment known as the Epley Maneuver; and how my accountant had paid over $6,000 to ‘the health care system’ to get healed of the same ailment. One guy jumps all over this. “And who would you have blamed if it hadn’t worked?” he asks accusatorily. “Myself!” I bark back at him over a whole chorus of people chiming in with anecdotes of their own.
At one point near the end of the session, a woman with an autistic child makes the following statement: “I can tell you that the parents of an autistic child typically know more about autism than the average physician, and in my experience, the average physician welcomes what the parents know.”