by Susannah Fox | Feb 3, 2010
Alfred Sommer’s Washington Post column: “Tragedy of individual Haitians risks overshadowing chronic health problems” gets to the heart of the power of public health, communications, and the personal choices which make a difference in our lives....
by Susannah Fox | Jan 31, 2010
…The remaining 95% of “patients” out there are not motivated to become informed, or invest the time/energy/money in using any of these tools. These are the folks that know that fast food isn’t healthy, but are just too tired to choose differently. Some (emphasis on...
by Susannah Fox | Jan 21, 2010
Update: Roni Zeiger of Google Health emailed me and gave permission for me to post the following statement, which I think is a helpful addition to the conversation: Health information is obviously an important category of information users are looking for. For this...
by Susannah Fox | Jan 14, 2010
Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent, captured the zeitgeist of the health data rights movement in today’s must-read article, Patients demand: ‘Give us our damned data’. An e-patients all-star team is quoted in the story: Jen McCabe,...
by Susannah Fox | Dec 22, 2009
Or: Why health geeks should pay attention to internet access geeks. The Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Project and Internet Project just released an in-depth look at internet penetration across racial and ethnic categories in the U.S.: Latinos Online, 2006-2008...
by Susannah Fox | Dec 10, 2009
Listen in at 9pm Eastern on Monday, 12/14, to The Stupid Cancer Show. Host Matthew Zachary will interview Edward Shin, MD, founder of Healogica, Inc., Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, a health economist and blogger, and… me!
by Susannah Fox | Dec 1, 2009
David Eddy did nothing to reassure Kent Bottles about evidence-based guidelines in his recent keynote, saying essentially: “The problem is that we don’t know what we are doing” (!!)
by Susannah Fox | Nov 26, 2009
Alexandra Drane and her team have a new post on The Health Care Blog about how to put this holiday to work in a new way. Here’s a snippet: Some conversations are easier than others Our original mission – to get more and more people talking about their end of...
by Susannah Fox | Nov 20, 2009
A big part of my job, and one I love, is answering questions, mostly from reporters. Sometimes I have just the data or insight someone needs, often I recommend someone else. Here is a sample of frequently-asked questions and my current answers. Please add your...
by Susannah Fox | Nov 16, 2009
NPR’s Morning Edition story, “Patients Turn to Online Buddies for Help Healing,” combined research and real-life examples, participatory medicine and health data rights. Much of what I said during my interview with Joseph Shapiro is based on what...
by Susannah Fox | Nov 8, 2009
I scan menus for keywords (fig, parsnips, salmon…) and it turns out I scan Twitter the same way, looking for anyone who is talking about my favorite topics (data, consumers, information quality…) So when I saw Jonathan Richman’s tweet the other...
by Susannah Fox | Oct 29, 2009
“If you expose human beings to an experimental treatment, the public has a fundamental right to see the results of those experiments.” – Steven Nissen, chairman of the cardiology department at the Cleveland Clinic, quoted in The Sunlight Foundation’s...
by Susannah Fox | Oct 14, 2009
Update: National Cancer Policy Forum published a book based on the workshop, A Foundation for Evidence-Based Practice: A Rapid Learning System for Cancer Care, which you can buy, read online for free, or download as a PDF. The discussion portion of this panel was...
by Susannah Fox | Oct 2, 2009
In politics and in health care, participation matters as much as access. The passion we saw in the political campaigns last year is matched by the passion we see when someone is trying to save a life, find a better treatment, or just manage the health of a loved one....
by Susannah Fox | Sep 25, 2009
That’s a direct quote from Paul Tang, of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, at last week’s meeting of the Health IT Policy committee, of which he is vice chair. Dr. Tang was riffing on an e-Patient Dave quote, which I read during my testimony: I want...
by Susannah Fox | Sep 17, 2009
What would you say to policymakers who are discussing the implementation of a national health information infrastructure? Here’s what I’d say: E-patients want access to tools and information. Many will find what they need, many will not. You can help....
by Susannah Fox | Sep 14, 2009
If you hate HIPAA, it’s your lucky day. Paul Ohm is handing you ammunition in his article, “Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization.” His argument: our current information privacy structure is a house built on sand....
by Susannah Fox | Aug 27, 2009
CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen makes a compelling case in her column today: How to get Kennedy-esque health care on your budget. Anyone with internet access can gather the information they need to make better health decisions, as e-Patient Dave and Karen Parles did, and...
by Susannah Fox | Aug 20, 2009
Kevin Kruse posted a video yesterday which includes this line: The age of participatory medicine has begun. It’s a promo for e-Patients Connections 2009, a conference to be held in Philadelphia this October, but also has good citations (ahem, including my...
by Susannah Fox | Aug 18, 2009
Federal agencies can, and should, be the first responders to health questions. Social media can help. That’s my summary of presentations from last week’s National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media conference, where I had the sense,...
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