July 4, 2009

Thomas Jefferson had a radical notion: When the people are well-informed, they can be trusted to govern themselves. This powerful idea worked to end our rule by the King, but at the time it didn’t apply to slaves and it didn’t apply to women. It still doesn’t apply to patients. And it should.

Organized in 2009, the Society for Participatory Medicine will build on the work started last century by Tom Ferguson MD, creator of the e-Patients Scholars Working Group. “Doc Tom” saw that the internet would give us access to information and access to each other, and with that combination, we the people could be well-informed enough to become potent partners with our health professionals.

Today we declare a new era: the era of Participatory Medicine. Join us!

Our two founding core initiatives are the e-patients.net blog and the Journal of Participatory Medicine.