South By Southwest (SXSW): Technology, Creativity, Unicorns and Health

I am super excited to be representing Duet Health and heading to Austin soon for the interactive/technology portion of South By Southwest (SXSW) starting March 9th, 2012. This year is the second year for inclusion of health technology sessions and the second year that I am attending. Last year, I had the honor of participating in a SXSW health technology session.  SXSW showcases the best of the best in creative technology that has already inflitrated our lives with just a few examples that had their 'coming out' showcase at SXSW as follows: twitter, four-square, siri.

I am aiming to not only spread the word about mobile health in diabetes care with apps such as the EndoGoddess app, but I am also aiming to stretch the boundaries of what is possible by tickling my technical creativity while listening to non-health related sessions.

An awesome example of grassroots crowdsourced creativity in health is the recent creation of the unicorn as the mascot for the diabetes online community. People with diabetes have been having a lot of fun sharing their unicorn stories. Such sharing creates a vital online community and has an important role in keeping the diabetes online community (one of the largest online health communities) relevant to its members. A creative member of the diabetes online community, Kim Vlasnik, explains:

It should be noted that one of the main crowdsourcing tools used by the diabetes online community to create this unicorn mascot was provided by a SXSW creative technology, twitter. Perhaps the next creative technologies will allow us to actually PRODUCE the unicorn! Well, I'll certainly keep my mind open to the possibilities while attending sessions at SXSW. :)