This is the big update to our preview post last November.

There’s a stage in a movement where it starts to get serious media coverage, and ours is coming of age. We’ve documented the progress:

• 2009: Susannah Fox was on NPR’s Morning Edition: Participatory medicine and health data rights on NPR
• 2010: Time reported on SPM and patient communities ACOR and PatientsLikeMe
• 2011: CBS Evening News reported on Shared Decision Making
• 2012: Device data rights activist Hugo Campos has been in print and NPR numerous times

Now, the next big news: This month for the first time, a local PBS station premieres a program that’s explicitly about the “e” word: “My Health Counts: e-Patients”!

Produced by WNED Buffalo-Toronto (@WNEDTV), the 30 minute program is hosted by Susan Hunt, who did an extraordinary job. It includes:

• An extensive description of participatory medicine
• Three e-patient stories – local resident Tom Dixon’s, SPM member Lygeia Ricciardi’s, and mine. (Regular readers know that Lygeia is also the top consumer engagement person at ONC, the IT section of the Department of Health and Human Services, but not all know the e-patient story her husband and she share as parents.)
• A “kitchen counter” discussion.

It premieres Wednesday February 27 at 10 p.m., with reprises at 12:30 pm on Friday, March 1 and 3 pm Sunday, March 3. See the program’s site.

Here’s the promotional trailer:  (email subscribers, view it on YouTube or come see it on the blog.)

In additional to Hunt’s articulate and knowledgeable hosting, the WNED team, led by producer Christie May, did a phenomenal job of compiling related online resources. Look:

• Engaging with your Medical Records
• Learn more about the OpenNotes Study
• Learn more about Peer-to-Peer Healthcare
• Finding Credible Health Information online
• Learn more about e-Patient Strategies

If that isn’t a solid survey of the e-patient world I don’t know what is. And that last link includes profiles of numerous SPM members: me, @Lygeia, @ReginaHolliday, Donna Cryer @DCPatient, and @TrishaTorrey.

What a pleasure to see this program, four years after the founding of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Thanks and great congratulations to the WNED team, and program sponsors the P2 Collaborative of Western New York. And thanks to every member – individual and corporate – who’s supported our growth.