SPM member Richard Anderson @RiAnder has a lot of experience helping to found and develop another organization’s local chapters around the world. Because of a nightmare experience with the U.S. healthcare system, he has decided to work to change that system, and as part of that work, to start a local chapter of SPM in the San Francisco Bay Area. This will be SPM’s first such chapter. He invites you to join and to help out, including perhaps sponsoring:
____________

I’m delighted to announce that I’m in the process of starting the first local chapter of the Society for Participatory Medicine. This is all happening in the San Francisco Bay Area.

If you reside in the SF Bay Area, I invite you to join the group: http://www.meetup.com/Society-for-Participatory-Medicine-San-Francisco-Bay-Area/. If you know of others in the San Francisco Bay Area who you think might be interested in joining, please let them know about the group as well.

Topics/issues to be addressed at chapter meetings will include

• participatory medicine
• the e-Patient movement
• peer-to-peer healthcare
• other uses of social media in healthcare
• human-centered healthcare design and innovation
• doctors and patients as designers
• the quantified self
• patient and doctor engagement
• empathy
• healthcare technology
• patient experiences of the healthcare system
• and more.

Our first meeting has not yet been scheduled, as I’m still seeking venue options (and sponsors). Indeed, if you know of any venue (or sponsor) possibilities, please let me know. But, as you’ll see, the first meeting will feature Hugo Campos speaking about what patient engagement means to him. (More about what will happen at that first meeting will be posted as details become available.) [If you don’t know super-e-patient Hugo, search his name on this site.]

That URL again: http://www.meetup.com/Society-for-Participatory-Medicine-San-Francisco-Bay-Area/.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Richard Anderson
riander at well dot com