Demo has always been my favorite conference and this past week in Santa Clara proved valuable once again. This was the twentieth year I have been attending. The Demo conference allows entrepreneurs to show off new gadgets, software, hardware and business ideas and enables the press, analysts, investors, and technology enthusiasts to assess what they see. The product introductions that take place reveal key technology trends over the coming 12 to 18 months.

Sxity-six companies were launched in two days. Only one was healthcare related but I was quite impressed with it. The site, healthinreach.com, is designed to make it easy for patients to find a doctor that meets their criteria — based on ailment, cost, location, speciality, rating, bedside manner, and a host of other things. They get data from state medical boards. How does it know about bedside manner? Crowdsourcing, of course.  HealthInReach is free for patients but doctors pay a fee; in effect a finders fee.  The site is very user friendly. They even provide scheduling of appointments. The company is focused on the west coast now but plans to go national.

There were many other start-ups of interest but I will mention just a few that I found of interest. See the complete list and details at demo.com.

MicroFueler – a portable organic waste conversion ethanol system. Looks like a gas station pump, complete with nozzle. Converts grass clippings to fuel for your car.

Footfeed – the first dedicated location-based check-in aggregation platform. Check-in to Brightkite, Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook, and Twitter simultaneously.

Parallels – runs on the Mac and lets you run Windows apps side by side with Apple apps. No dual boot required.

VoiceBase.com – brings storage, search and sharing to voice communications just like email did for text. Very handy idea for conferences, presentations, meetings, and negotiations.

See the rest at demo.com.