by Danny Sands, MD | Jul 16, 2025
We don’t regularly post obituaries on the e-Patients Blog. But sometimes we lose someone of great moment to the SPM and the e-patient community. Nancy Finn was one such person. Nancy Finn was a beacon of inspiration and advocacy. Recently, we faced the profound loss...
by e-Patient Dave | Mar 16, 2023
Update 3/19: We’ve opened a CaringBridge page for Casey, where her support team will post updates. You can subscribe to get notifications and to leave words of support, memories, etc. Anyone can view; posting requires free registration. This news hit us worse...
by Danny van Leeuwen | Apr 18, 2022
Engaging patients differs depending on the role. Those on national Boards lead, strategize, advocate, communicate. Adam Thompson is on the Board of NQF. Listen in. Proem As a nurse, I studied individual health. Then I became a student of organizational health. That...
by Danny van Leeuwen | Jan 3, 2022
Coaching, critical to my success in life, art, politics, advocacy. Still need to do my own work & make choices. Listen to a session with one of my coaches, Jan Oldenburg https://health-hats.com/pod153/ or watch it on YouTube https://youtu.be/4TnT6Pk3TgM or read it...
by John Novack | Dec 15, 2021
Pioneers of medical progress are lauded in published articles and by their professional peers. But it is often the patient advocates, particularly those who demanded better treatment, spearheaded clinical trial advances, and bravely took on institutions and standards...
by Randy Houk | Aug 16, 2021
I am so honored and excited to introduce myself to you, SPM Blog readers, SPM members and friends, and to share with you a preview of coming attractions. By that I mean that since I’ve been the new Executive Director for SPM for a day and a half, my vision for what...
by Ileana Balcu | Nov 23, 2019
As I was volunteering for SPM, it took years to learn its history and understand where we are, how the Society got created, and why it is what it is. This is not a historical well-documented history of SPM, it’s my imperfect interpretation of its history. Doc Tom...
by Ileana Balcu | Nov 20, 2019
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn makes a compelling argument at how important it is to think about all aspects of health, not just the healthcare system in her most recent blog post: Social Determinants of Health – My Early Childhood Education and Recent Learnings, Shared at the...
by Ileana Balcu | Nov 15, 2019
My painting teacher, Wes Sherman, calls himself a conservator. He shares paintings, pictures, and tidbits of art history with special attention to artists that inspire him. I learned so much from a year of tidbits shared on Instagram. As I was driving back from the...
by e-Patient Dave | Oct 31, 2019
In 2009, the Society for Participatory Medicine was created to continue the work of “Doc Tom” Ferguson (1943-2006), the founder of the e-patient movement and a true visionary who foresaw decades ago that “e-patients” (empowered, engaged, equipped, enabled)...
by e-Patient Dave | Apr 5, 2019
SPM member Jeanne Pinder has spent years crusading for price transparency with her startup ClearHealthCosts. She’s formed partnerships with WHYY in Philadelphia, been on CBS News, won awards for investigative journalism with NOLA.com and Fox 8’s...
by Danny van Leeuwen | May 27, 2018
Thanks to support from SPM Travel Fund I attended Regina Holliday’s Cinderblocks Conference in Grantsville, MD. Still pound-for-pound the best conference going. Several days of local and national presentations about health, public health, and advocacy. Small,...
by Ileana Balcu | Jun 19, 2017
Lawrence “Larry” Weed (born December 1923, died June 3, 2017) was an American physician, researcher, educator, entrepreneur, and author, who is best known for creating the problem-oriented medical record as well as one of the first electronic health records....
by Ileana Balcu | Feb 11, 2017
This is a post by SPM Board Member John Hoben – Business Development Director at Bio-Optronics. Hoben’s passion is reconfiguring medical industrial complex assets and transactions from sickness response to true preventive delivery. This entails focusing on...
by Ileana Balcu | Sep 29, 2016
Beautiful and comprehensive blog post from Regina Holliday about different types of patient advocates, the evolution of the patient as speaker, consumer, policy-igniter and her own work....
by e-Patient Dave | Sep 22, 2016
In July we invited you to vote on a large group of patient activists, to select finalists in Health 2.0 conference’s tenth annual conference: Health 2.0: first conference to offer Patient Activist awards. Vote! What a gathering this will be: travel expenses for...
by e-Patient Dave | Aug 8, 2016
We’d love to start a list of other patient-authored papers and posters – let us know in the comments! We know of Dana M. Lewis & Scott Leibrand’s poster about #OpenAPS in June – who else?? We’ve written before about e-patient Sean...
by Ileana Balcu | Jul 30, 2016
In the Spring of 2016 I had the opportunity to teach the course New Media and Health Communication for an undergraduate class at The College of New Jersey. The class, designed by Dr. Yifeng Hu, already included an introduction to participatory medicine and patient...
by e-Patient Dave | Jun 7, 2016
https://vimeo.com/169280480 I’ve known Eric Dishman for about five years, because we’re both kidney cancer patients. I’ve known that he’s a really sharp thinker, and a high-ranking executive at Intel, deeply interested in and involved in their...
by e-Patient Dave | May 23, 2016
A truly significant moment in the history of medicine happened last Wednesday. I say that after attending almost 500 conferences and policy meetings in the past seven years, and I don’t say it lightly. Something many people think is impossible was presented live...
A cure for what killed Doc Tom! Can people afford it?June 27, 2025
Learning Health Systems Empower Every American to Actually Make America Healthy Again Together, Part 2May 29, 2025
More important than Time and MoneyFebruary 5, 2025
Recent Comments