by David Harlow | Sep 30, 2011
On September 14, HHS released for comment draft lab results regulations that will, if finalized, effectively bathe the Achilles’ heel of health data in the River Styx of ¡data liberación! Lab results will be made available to patients, just like all other...
by Kathleen O'Malley | Sep 27, 2011
Guest blogger and SPM member Nancy Finn looks at ways to improve patient-physician communication. There has been a lot of discussion about patient/provider communication, partly driven by the move to electronic health records and the question of who has access to the...
by Kathleen O'Malley | Sep 25, 2011
Guest blogger Beth Austin shares her professional and personal advice on choosing the right doctor. She is the principal of Crescendo Consulting Group. I’ve spent a lot of time in my professional life knee-deep in articles on healthcare quality and medical...
by Susannah Fox | Sep 23, 2011
I was honored to give the closing keynote at the Medicine 2.0’11 Congress at Stanford. In preparation for it, I gathered all of the Pew Internet Project’s recent research on social networks, smartphones, and health communications. Then I added stories from...
by e-Patient Dave | Sep 23, 2011
In the past year I’ve come to see medical decision making as one of the key crucibles in which participatory medicine plays out. We’ve blogged several times about shared decision making (SDM), and by its nature it requires participatory thinking. A new...
by Kathleen O'Malley | Sep 21, 2011
The Journal of Participatory Medicine recently published a new commentary, “A Skydiver Jumps, and an Online Community Exults,” about the unexpected power of storytelling in a lung cancer support group. After sharing an uplifting story with her online...
by Kathleen O'Malley | Sep 19, 2011
Guest blogger Dr. Neel Shah is the Executive Director of www.CostsOfCare.org and a senior resident in the Massachusetts General Hospital-Brigham & Women’s Hospital combined residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Last year, the nonprofit that I direct launched an...
by Kathleen O'Malley | Sep 12, 2011
Guest blogger Tami Boehmer shares a recent conversation with e-Patient Dave about the pitfalls of survival statistics and the power of hope. Tami’s blog, “From Incurable to Incredible,” is at www.miraclesurvivors.com. I recently had the honor of...
by Kathleen O'Malley | Sep 9, 2011
Jonena Relth submitted this guest post to share her very positive experience with her surgeon. I was being prepped for surgery last week and my surgeon, Dr. Davies, came in to discuss the procedure. He explained to me that he had reviewed my file several times and...
by Jessie Gruman | Sep 6, 2011
Have you followed the long and painful efforts to improve the information prescription drug manufacturers are required to provide us? Really, given that almost half of us in the US take at least one prescription medication daily, you’d think this would be a high...
by Gilles Frydman | Sep 4, 2011
I have known Sharon Anderson for many years and watched her eAdvocacy evolve. A nine year leiomyosarcoma (LMS — a very rare cancer) survivor, Sharon has tirelessly used her social work skills to help LMS patients directly while actively promoting an increase in...
by Kathleen O'Malley | Sep 2, 2011
Nancy Finn submitted this guest post about the challenges facing doctors and patients who want to have clinical conversations online. The quest for the right communication formula and balance that will satisfy doctors and e-patients who want to experience continuous...
by e-Patient Dave | Aug 23, 2011
Stop what you’re doing, as soon as possible, and spend 20 minutes watching this. It’s the most powerful short talk I’ve ever seen about health care. Our e-patient white paper is titled “e-Patients: How they can help heal healthcare.” In...
by Kathleen O'Malley | Aug 9, 2011
Social media is well established in our society and it shows much promise as a tool of patient-physician communication. But despite some cases of good and enriching rapport between patients and physicians in social media, the medical world, on the whole, is still...
by e-Patient Dave | Aug 5, 2011
I’m about to board a plane at 5 a.m. so this is a quick preliminary note. One of the key skills an engaged, informed patient needs is how to find good quality care. Today USA Today reports that Medicare has just released information that I think we’ve had...
by e-Patient Dave | Aug 2, 2011
The Society for Participatory Medicine recently named three new board members. They’ve been introduced to the members on our private listserve, and we’ve been thinking about introducing the new leadership to the public here. One is Sue Woods MD MPH, a...
by e-Patient Dave | Jul 26, 2011
We’ve updated this blog’s design template so it’s more clearly a member of the SPM family. Specifically, we’re now using a color-modified version of our Journal of Participatory Medicine’s template, which is a lot slicker and more modern than this...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Jul 24, 2011
I’m all for citizen journalism, and can even stand the content mills like LiveStrong, who have pimped out their name and brand in order to make a quick buck. But I draw the line with bad reporting and worse, biased representation of the data to prove a point....
by e-Patient Dave | Jul 22, 2011
This has nothing to do with healthcare, but it’s the most priceless example I’ve seen in a long time of Not Customer-Oriented Thinking, and perhaps Scary Workflow, both of which do apply to healthcare sometimes. As a Boston-based traveler, I have United...
by Kathleen O'Malley | Jul 19, 2011
SPM member John Novack, of the Inspire.com patient communities, submitted this guest post by Wendy Station about another online community — another great example of patients engaging in their care, supplementing the value they get from their medical...
SPM at the World Orphan Drug ConferenceApril 6, 2026
Introducing the CHAMP Principal Investigator: Cait DesRoches (Part 2)April 1, 2026
Everylife Foundation Community Congress Annual Meeting HighlightsJanuary 19, 2026
Collaboration is the Best Medicine: Patient-Centered Collaboration Grounded in Caritas®December 16, 2025
Recent Comments