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CCHIT, PHR and the Lack of e-Patient Representation

When Google Health was launched, a few weeks ago, all the onus was put on the privacy issue. So much so that we may have lost focus on other issues that are of real importance to the future of e-Patients (that means you and me and everybody else you know!). For...

Parade should have asked e-patients

Aside from debunking a crummy column, this is a call to action for journalists. Today Parade featured a column that appears to be pure flackery. If the editors had done a reality check with a patient community they would have been much better informed, with little...

Google Releases Google Health

Google Health launched this week to the public. It is pretty much what everyone anticipated — an online electronic record that people can maintain if they wanted to. Highlights include quick information at your fingertips to your health concerns that you enter...

Randy Pausch, empowered patient / participatory medicine

Chapter 12 of Randy Pausch’s best-selling book The Last Lecture opens with a classic anecdote of what it looks like when an empowered patient practices participatory medicine with an equally participatory care team: CT scans revealed I had pancreatic cancer, and it...

Why Doesn’t My Doctor Answer My Email?

Because he or she is afraid — afraid of being overwhelmed by one more responsibility, of not being reimbursed for time spent answering emails, of patient privacy, of HIPAA, and of course, of legal liability if they set an expectation of replying to emails in a...

Minnesota wrong kidney tragedy, part II

Important update: before reading, please see correction 3/23/08 to Tuesday’s original post. The basic issue is unchanged but in any sensitive case like this accuracy is vital. I received a comment on Tuesday’s post from a doctor in the Twin Cities, Dr. Bill Utz....
Flashback to 2001

Flashback to 2001

Bowing to popular demand (OK, one person) I uploaded a PDF of the 2001 press release from the American Medical Association which suggested that Americans make a New Year’s resolution to “trust your physician, not a chat room” since the information found online puts...

e-Patients Lead The Way at Health 2.0 Conference

The Health 2.0 Conference in San Diego, CA (March 4, 2008) was a buzz with ideas of innovation and connectivity. Matthew Holt and Indu Subalya, MD managed to cram more presentations into one day than most conferences do in two days. The almost-overwhelming day was...

Rate a Doctor?

For years Doc Tom urged us to facilitate patients’ publicly rating doctors as a way to accelerate e-pateints movement. Alan (DrGreene) was excited about this, even though he was a physician, but I was afraid it would open Pandora’s box. In the winter of...

Markle Foundation Policy Meeting 2007

The Markle Foundation has a health program that is dedicated to accelerating the rate at which information technology enables consumers and the health system that supports them to improve health and healthcare. That’s a mouthful. Well, anyway, they held a...

The Business of Survival

The Boston Globe today has a great article that, to me anyway, really illustrates the amazing resiliency and imagination of the human spirit when faced with the unthinkable. It describes Avi Kremer’s story, a man diagnosed with ALS who decided to fight back,...

This just in from Health 2.0

Yesterday was the landmark Health 2.0 conference (user-generated Healthcare) held in San Francisco. The event was hosted by Matthew Holt and Indu Subalya, MD. Originally envisioned as about a hundred folks getting together for a day to push the movement forward, this...

Health 2.0 in The Economist

Health 2.0. It’s all that people can talk about some days in the online health world. It has no definition, though, it’s not much more than the nebulous “Web 2.0,” except topic-specific. The September 6, 2007 edition of The Economist takes a...

Google Forms Advisory Council Heavy on Bigwigs

Well, at least Google tries. We have to give them credit for that, and for this very first step — which I honestly hope is just that (as others have suggested giving Google the benefit of the doubt) — it’s a doosey. They’ve gone and created an...

Reading Behind the Scenes: CafePharma and Others

The New York Times today featured an article about growing online communities for the drug and medical device makers employees and sales reps (via bookofjoe), such as CafePharma. How does this intersect with e-patients and helping them learn more about treatment...

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...

Some of My Favorite Health/Pharma Blogs

I just thought I’d post a short welcome message to see how this works and to make sure I’ve got the hang of posting something in this blog. A part of becoming an empowered patient is reading what the docs are reading, as well as reading the latest gossip...

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