Hodapp called software-as-a-service (SaaS) business models, cloud computing, social networking and mobile applications game changers. He held up Kaiser Permanente's Blue Sky vision, with home as the hub of care and fewer physician visits, as being the wave of the future. Genomics will offer up cost-effective, predictive treatment plans and emerging Health 2.0 tools will address preventive care. Smart search tools will deliver information that will enable patients to educate themselves.

Hodapp is exactly right on each count because SaaS, the cloud, social networking and mobile applications all rely on each other and are enabling a critical mass of functionality and connectedness.

The NHIN is moving onto the http://www.govhealthit.com/newsitem.aspx?nid=73396">cloud as well.

Before long, I imagine most health information will be managed in the cloud because records ultimately need to be connected to people, and people don't want to manage their health records locally any more than they really want to manage their own computer.

On the provider side, health care is mobile, and mobility is enabled by SaaS and the cloud.

Radiologists can accurately diagnose acute appendicitis from a remote location with a mobile phone equipped with special software, according to a study presented Monday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

It's really amazing that mobility is not seen as something that is imperative to the user experience in health care, completely underestimated as a basic need for health care applications. We'll see a lot of these coming