I just attended HealthCamp Boston as a primer before the Health 2.0 Conference and was happy to see that around 150 people congregated for this day-long unconference at Microsoft. For being organized in just 6 weeks, attendance was impressive compared to the paltry 20 or so people who showed up for HealthCamp SF during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last month.

I want to give a shout out to Mark Scrimshire for his dedication in setting up these informal gatherings around the country as well as getting the word out about them. Mark has been a long time advocate of leveraging social media to facilitate conversations about changing the way healthcare is delivered in this country.

He actively encourages all participants to blog, tweet and upload photos and videos during events as was done for HealthCamp Boston where you can find posts under the hashtags #HCBos and #SocPharm. In reading the tweet feed from the event it is evident that the participants were engaging in multiple levels of conversation during the talks – one tweet that resonated with me was from @otoole4info:  ”RT @DaphneLeigh: RT @Doctor_V: There are 6 physicians attending HealthCamp Boston. Is it me or is that crazy low?”

Although many industry pundits are starting to get on the Health 2.0 bandwagon, how do we get the docs to more actively jump into the conversation? Half of the problem is that they don’t get paid to and the other half is general techphobia – maybe part of Obama’s $163B healthcare reform bill can go to a tech and social media incentive program?!