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Journal of Participatory Medicine Releases New Content

The Journal of Participatory Medicine (JoPM), the online peer-reviewed, open access publication of the Society for Participatory Medicine, has released new content for its 2010 volume. The journal’s mission is to transform the culture of medicine from a delivery...

A Participatory Medicine Story

The nascent field of Participatory Medicine is currently in the “debating and defining” stage.    It has been tentatively defined by the steering group of the Journal of Participatory Medicine as: …a cooperative model of health care that encourages...

Improving Care by Emailing the Doctor

A study in the October issue of Pediatrics found that allowing patients to e mail their physicians improved their ease of access and their perception of the quality of care they received. Families who used this system also reported that they had a better understanding...

Superbugs

Today I heard a story on NPR about a new “superbug” that caused ear infections in children that were resistant to all currently recommended antibiotics used to treat this infection. This reminded me that antibiotics are being over used. This is, in part,...

What Works Best for Patients on the Web?

Joe Shapiro’s piece on patients turning to the internet was well done and interesting. Our thanks to Susannah Fox for her contribution to this article, and for her work on the survey about patients with chronic condititions who use the internet. I particularly...

Towards Universal Health Records

Recently, Microsoft Corporation announced the launch of Health Vault, a new, free service that allows anyone who needs an individual’s health information to view it online. While this is a great idea and is sorely needed to reduce health care costs and reduce...

Is Your Diagnosis Wrong?

One of the greatest benefits of the internet is its empowerment of patients by providing them with health information. We all know that doctors are human and make mistakes. Furthermore, the office practice of medicine is often as much an art as a science, so a...

ePatients and the Shape of Medical Knowledge

David Weinberger, a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center, speaks eloquently on the way digitization of information is changing the way we define knowledge. In a recent presentation he made at a Library of Congress conference he argues that the increasingly universal...

How Far Should Patients Go in Self Management

In the discussion of patient empowerment, it is worth considering how much care the patient should take on their own shoulders, and when they should turn to their doctor for help. Physicians often do more than would be required if the doctor and the patient was...

Dr. Tom and the E Patient Revolution

In this first post, I’d like to address the “e Patient world” and what you may expect to see develop in this area in the future. E Patients are those patients who are discovering ways to use the incredibly powerful tools and information available on...

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