The next Health 2.0 Conference here on the West Coast is in the works, and it’s all about us patients!

They’re calling this one “Spring Fling,” taking place on March 4, 2008, at the Westin hotel in San Diego, CA. The Big Idea is “Connecting Consumers and Providers.” I’m excited to report that I’m scheduled to run a flagship panel about patients using Health 2.0 technologies for community and self-care. Cool!

If Health 2.0 is about anything, it’s about making health care more “commercial.” So what about some kind of Consumer Reports-type guide for choosing health plans and doctors? Well, get this: the folks behind the Zagat Survey, that famous slim burgundy restaurant ratings booklet, are making a move into health care with a new online system for rating doctors in one of the nation’s largest health insurers, WellPoint.

A little Monday Madness. Come on, sing along! You know the tune.

Working so hard every night and day
And never see the pay back
Trying so hard saving up the paper
Can we ever lay back?

Low-carb kisses hold me in your lap of luxury
I only want to fly first class, my pump’s my limousine
So elegant the way we test, our jabs just multiply
There’s a non-invasive dream in the sky
Look I’m livin’ like a queen

One drawback of blogging is that we tend to get all fired up about a topic, and then drop it like a hot potato. I’ve been posting here at DiabetesMine.com for three years now, and some great stuff has gotten buried in the process. So here’s the first edition of my new series called “Whatever Happened to…?” in which I’m planning to periodically revisit some people, products, and opinions of posts-past.

I had the most absurdly frustrating phone briefing yesterday with a company developing a very promising new technology for delivering insulin in an oral gel cap: Oramed Pharmaceuticals based in Jerusalem, Israel. Oddly, I was contacted by their PR/Investor Relations firm with the express purpose of “getting the word out to the public,” but trying to pry any of the key details out of their execs felt a bit like talking to the Israeli Secret Service. Nada.

As you can see, this compact new 250-page volume by Michael A. Weiss and Martha M. Funnell is actually called, “The Little Diabetes Book YOU Need to Read.” How’s that for making your book sound indispensable?

Oprah’s got a new pet project: thyroid disease.

Yup. Early last week, Oprah showcased her own “wake-up call for women” in learning that her sleep disorders and weight gain were in fact symptoms of a defective thyroid, that butterfly-shaped gland in the neck that is “widely viewed as a euphemism for being fat.” Thyroid disorders are extremely common in people with diabetes, especially women.

So I really don’t need to say “I told you so” on the whole Exubera flop business. It was just so darn obvious.

Having practically grown up in Disneyland, it definitely feels like going home. Except it seems a lot smaller, and a LOT more crowded, than I remember. Anyway, for a good 60% at least of our two-day annual park schlep last week, it lived up to it’s motto, “The Happiest Place on Earth.”

What do you talk about at the dinner table?

I discovered years ago that Europeans don’t generally have issues discussing the three topics we Americans consider taboo: politics, religion, and sex. My friends in Germany would say, “What else is there?” Well, illness for one thing…