Healthcare has been a hot topic in the United States for the past few months. Legislative wrangling aside, the next revolution in healthcare could come from Silicon Valley.

Mobile apps, internet technologies, and cloud-based software exists for everything from instant news feeds and self-publishing to location-awareness and social causes. Sharing these experiences via social media has made the world better-connected and informed. These same technologies are on the cusp of being relevant to healthcare in our everyday lives.

A recent interview at ReadWriteWeb with Health 2.0 conference founder and health care blogger Matthew Holt discusses some of the potential uses of these technologies.

Holt noted the way that electronic health records are gaining traction but the potential future use of these records go far beyond saving trees. Making the information shareable and social to a trusted network, such as specialists, doctors, and researchers chosen by the patient, could create a health-oriented RSS feed and enable mashups that discover links in diseases  or any number of other uses. Unprecedented health data sets to work with have the potential to revolutionize drug discovery and enable deeper research about health.

Another potential for revolution is in the emerging “internet of things”. Once relegated to the laughable notion of an internet-connected toaster, researchers and futurists like Holt see potential in this concept to expand the reach of health awareness and fitness. Already, the success of the Nike shoe + iPod, and the Wii Fit have changed the common perception of social media, the internet of things, and their relationship to health.

Holt discussed the potential use of mobile apps like UPC scanners and mobile phone barcode readers to assess nutrition facts of products. Expanding on this concept would entail creating a virtual kind of health diary that seamlessly compares your diet to the items you have scanned. The  real world and the virtual world are ever-increasingly colliding, so why not use technology to your advantage in the healthcare realm?

The sticking points still remain to be worked out, and security, privacy, and permissions will remain issues for the near-term. However, with people like Holt and plenty of our own client partners looking into the future, the real healthcare revolution is just beginning, and it promises to be a whole lot more sopshisticated than a Foursquare badge.

Originally posted at Speaking of Social Media.