Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009, 6 494 Along the bottom are the aspects of health to measure, starting with the usual conditions and symptoms and now including genomic testing, a wider range of ongoing blood-based and other biomarker testing, behavioral tracking such as nutritional intake, exercise and sleep and more systemically, evaluating and monitoring a person’s environment. The body of Figure 1 shows the participants of the multi-party health care system and their relative importance from the reference frame of the individual. Individuals themselves can be the focus and center of action-taking in a number of areas such as measuring, tracking, experimenting and engaging in interventions, treatments and research. Consumers are starting to do this individually, in collaboration with health peers, who also have greater prominence now, and in co-care with physicians and other medical professionals. Box 1 provides a look at how some of the industry’s key thinkers are characterizing the changing definition of health and health care. Box 1. Quoted excerpts regarding the changing definition of health and heath care. “…the NHS [National Health Service] of the future will be one of patient power, patients engaged and taking control over their own health and healthcare.” – Gordon Brown, U.K. Prime Minister (http://socialhealthnetwork.org) “The premise is that we are at a new phase of health and medical care, where more decisions are being made by individuals on their own behalf, rather than by physicians, and that, furthermore, these decisions are being informed by new tools based on statistics, data, and predictions … We will act on the basis of risk factors and predictive scores, rather than on conventional wisdom and doctors recommendations. We will act in collaboration with others, drawing on collective experience with health and disease … these tools will create a new opportunity and a new responsibility for people to act - to make health decisions well before they become patients.” – Thomas Goetz, Decision Tree (http://thedecisiontree.com/blog/?p=278) “We believe that the new generation of web services will change the way medicine is practiced and healthcare is delivered.” – Bertalan Meskó, medical blogger (http://scienceroll.com/medicine-20) 1.1. Scope of Analysis This paper focuses primarily on one aspect of the broader shifts in life sciences, how health and health care are understood and realized, particularly through emerging patient-driven health care models. The paper is intended to provide an early view into these models which could potentially have a large future impact but are only just in their beginning phases. The paper does not balance the discussion of the new models with adequate acknowledgement of the contribution of medical professionals working in traditional health care systems. Also in this early survey of the field, the paper only gives anecdotal rather than comprehensive coverage to the many shortcomings of emerging patient-driven health care models. Some of these shortcomings may include potential bias, error, lack