Today, I’m going to camp. Just like with any camp, there’s a mix of nerves and excitement. Excited about learning new stuff. Nerves over performing in front of others. Nerves and excitement over meeting new people.

But this camp isn’t like the camps of summer’s way past, where new lanyard-weaving techniques were learned, where a mangled camp song solo was greeted with water balloons, where the older kids thought up devious pranks to pull on their underlings. This camp is the new approach to conferences, where top down is turned on its ear and the participants vote on what they want to discuss and learn about. Within a topical framework, of course, which for today’s camp is three rapidly emerging areas of health care: mobile health, telemedicine and social health.

HealthCampRDU is billed as “America’s Largest Healthcare Think Tank.” Fifteen breakout sessions are scheduled for the day, on topics ranging from “Social Media’s Role Helping Shift Our Culture from Treating to Wellness,” to “How to Keep Employees Engaged in Their Health” to “Why Does Amazon Know Me Better Than My Doctor?” to “Confessions of a Crackberry Addict: How Does Our New Found Mobility Affect Our Mental Health?” Three keynote addresses are also planned:

• Nick Augustinos, Senior Director of Global Healthcare Solutions with Cisco will address “Health Care Innovations – Cisco’s Perspective.”
• Robert Furberg, Research Programmer and Analyst with RTI International will talk about Transforming Health Care Delivery: The Mobile Communications, Connectivity, New Media, and Medicine Revolution.”
• Dr. Jeffrey Taekman, Director of the Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center at Duke University Medical Center.

The goal of HealthCampRDU, which is sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, is simple: To bring together local health care types — insurers, academia, the government, providers, industry and patients — to share their thoughts and experiences. It’s a rare opportunity for the various players in the local health care community to hear what one another is thinking.

I’ll be covering as much ground as possible at today’s camp, and will provide live coverage via Twitter (www.twitter.com/joeagogo). I’ll also share some thoughts on my day at camp in this space next week — a letter from camp, if you will.

Speaking of which, I leave you for now with one man’s take on time-honored tradition of summer camp.