It's Hip. It's Funky. It's Health IT.

Austin's funky South by Southwest festival is the place to hear the latest alt-country music, discover the next new independent filmmaker and talk about ... health IT?

Health IT was indeed on the agenda at South by Southwest Interactive, which included a health track "featuring panels that attracted government technology bigwigs, pharmaceutical reps, physicians and innovators," according to the Austin Business Journal. The five-day interactive festival, attracting techno-geeks from a spectrum of specialties, included 23 panels on health and technology, the paper reports.

Apparently the health IT world has a ways to go until its innovation matches that of the music and film artists for which the festival has traditionally been known.

Gigi Peterking, vice president of digital health for Edelman, described the mobile health application market as nascent, the paper reports. Industry needs to integrate gaming experts into the mix to come up with more useful apps, she said during a panel called "Health: Is There Really an App for That?" The app market, she said, is "still at the Friendster stage; we haven't gotten to the Facebook stage."

Other panel topics included: "Matchmaking Comes to Healthcare for Doctors and Patients," "Health Communities: Superheroes Who Need a Justice League," "Health Data Everywhere: Not a Drop to Link," and "Stop the Bleeding! Immersive Simulations for Surgeons."