Andy Levitt, founder and CEO of HealthTalker, continues his coverage of the Health 2.0 conference.

Today was Day 2 at Health 2.0 in San Francisco, and the overwhelming theme for me at the conference was this: it feels a lot like it did eight years ago.

In many ways, I am impressed with the number of companies that are all focused on the same goal of improving the way people consume healthcare and related information. Many more start-ups and early stage companies presented again in the standard, rapid-fire demo mode, where each company has less than four minutes to make their pitch. While this does allow for greater awareness of some of the new companies out there, it all starts to sound the same after a while.

A lot of companies talked of significant traffic to their sites or to their communities – but I had to wonder if in fact all of this traffic is coming from the same people, continuing to search many websites, hoping to find the answers or feedback that they want to hear.

A colleague of mine had an interesting insight: that the experience for a consumer to search for information online happens as a very intimate moment. If you or a loved one was just diagnosed with a serious disease, you will likely then turn to many websites to find answers and seek hope.

So where do you place your trust? (more…)