Digital technology has altered the way health care is delivered and how people gather health information. In fact, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, half of smartphone owners use their devices to get health information and one-fifth of smartphone owners have health apps. On Wednesday, February 13, 2013, the University of Vermont College of Medicine, University of Vermont Continuing Education, and NetSquared – a global network of professionals committed to digital technology as a means of delivering social good – partnered to delve deeper into this issue with a panel discussion, titled “Digital Health Revolution.”

The event, which was free and open to the public, took place in the College of Medicine's Medical Education Center and featured welcome remarks from Associate Dean for Public Health Jan Carney, M.D., M.P.H., and Cynthia Belliveau, Ed.D., dean of Continuing Education. The panel of Vermonters who are designing and using innovative technologies to support the health and well-being of communities around the world, included:

• Jill Jemison, director of technology services at the UVM College of Medicine
• Lewis Mitchell, post-doctoral student at UVM’s Department of Mathematics & Statistics and Computational Story Lab
• Deb VanDyke, founder of Global Health Media Project
• Anna Clements and Hannah Judge, founders of Broad Street Maps
• Katie McCurdy, user experience designer and researcher and creator of Health Visualization Timeline

The panelists discussed such issues as how we can: measure happiness using Twitter; help end the spread of cholera using an animated video; improve the health outcomes of communities using GIS mapping; use online education to prepare doctors of the future; and use data visualization to communicate complex medical histories with our physicians.

Find out more about the Burlington NetSquared Meetup Group.