Re-Mixing Public Health: Platforms for Public Health Innovation

I’ve put together a rather long presentation that has an introduction to social media for public health and then moves to a series of examples of different types of platforms used for collaboration and innovation in the social sector, government 2.0, public health. The presentation highlights the growing challenges that we face in public health with complex, multi-sectoral problems and the changing way(s) we’re seeing organizations think about the problems. I’ve decided to include everything from mapping tools and data visualizations, open innovation platforms, mobile and urban computing, sensors, etc. The presentation highlights a number of technologies but the real gist of the story is that we need to rethink organizational structures and networks, governance, the politics of data, emergent forms of technological and biological citizenship and not just think in terms of technologies, but rather socio-technological change and how we’re going to engage with these changes. The tools are already here—it requires a shift in how we think, and that is where we need to innovate. I’ll be putting together a longer white paper on this later in the summer.