Re Time‘s article “Group Therapy” in the February 8, 2010 issue, arriving on newsstands now:

Time‘s freelance reporter Bonnie Rochman contacted our Susannah Fox to discuss her remarks at the Institute of Medicine last October.

In hours of discussion about that post, while orienting Time to this new world, Susannah steered Rochman to many other people, who in turn spent additional hours. This is necessary to “get it right” on a complex subject like this, where it’s so easy to misconstrue. To the best of my knowledge the resulting article was accurate in every detail – an achievement.

Today’s magazine industry is today’s magazine industry, so a lot of valuable material ended up on the cutting room floor. Making the cut were PatientsLikeMe founder Jamie Heywood, ACOR founder Gilles Frydman, Dr. Danny Sands and me, along with Dr. Susan Love and many others. Significant contributors not named, though, include Susannah, “73 cents” artist/activist Regina Holliday and wise health IT analyst Vince Kuraitis. The Society for Participatory Medicine also received its first mention in mass media.

We’re grateful to Time for this important and accurate introduction of “patient 2.0” to the general public. We hope to see broader coverage of equally important intertwined issues, especially the vital one raised in Susannah’s recent post: in the new world of patient participation, how can patients be assured they’re getting reliable information? As we’ve said here many times, who gets to say what’s reliable?