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Alpha Geeks in Health Care

Here’s how tech guru Tim O’Reilly describes his work: So often, signs of the future are all around us, but it isn’t until much later that most of the world realizes their significance. Meanwhile, the innovators who are busy inventing that future live...

2011 Socialnomics video is out

On this blog we try to understand and explain how the world has changed and is changing, with the goal of helping everyone – policy people, patients, clinicians, administrators, businesses – optimize for the world as it changes. Nowhere is that more...

Peer-to-peer Healthcare: Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Obvious.

Here’s my simple definition of peer-to-peer healthcare: Patients and caregivers know things — about themselves, about each other, about treatments — and they want to share what they know to help other people. Technology helps to surface and organize...

The Social Life of Health Information, 2011

Here it is: my 2010-11 yearbook! Will you sign it? That’s how I feel about this latest report from the Pew Internet Project and the California HealthCare Foundation: “The Social Life of Health Information, 2011.”  It contains all the insights...

Map the frontier. Bring data. (More coming soon!)

The Pew Internet Project and California HealthCare Foundation will released our latest report on the internet’s impact on health and health care tonight at midnight (Eastern U.S. time). It is titled, “The Social Life of Health Information, 2011” (and...

Patient empowerment talk hits Israel

My friend Dorron Levy, who lives near Tel Aviv, alerted me to this blog post in Hebrew; Google’s English translation here. It starts with CNN’s Empowered Patient reporter Elizabeth Cohen, and moves on to discuss a recent conference organized by the...

Rest in Peace: Personal Health Records (PHRs)

While doing some research the other day on personal health records (PHRs), I came across this article, describing Revolution Health’s announcement — without much media attention — about dropping its PHR at the beginning of 2010. (Disclosure: I worked...

The Salzburg Statement on Shared Decision Making

This Thursday at the headquarters of the British Medical Journal in London, an important announcement will be made about patients’ rights to be actively involved in decisions about their treatment. Below is the press release about it. The subject is shared...

Too Many Doctors?

I don’t hide the fact that I am a dyed in the wool liberal. I read, and agree with, pretty much everything Paul Krugman writes. But, it’s rare for me to discover the kind of synergy between my Krugman-inspired ire over economic policy and politics generally and the...

Putting patients into “meaningful use”

The Health Research Institute at PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report today entitled Putting patients into “meaningful use.” It begins with the anecdote I’ve blogged about previously regarding a diagnosis by Facebook in lieu of a PHR, which some...

Journal of Participatory Medicine: Top Ten Articles

From the editors of our society’s journal, the Journal of Participatory Medicine: As we close out Volume 2 of JoPM, we’re pleased to look back at how the journal has grown. We published a total of 23 articles in 2010. We published our first two podcasts....

“A lot of shackling lives in language”

What do we (patients) call ourselves? This is a deep subject that’s been debated a lot. (If I were Susannah Fox I’d toss in a dozen worthy links here:), but I’m short on time. Please add some in comments.) There is indeed power in the words we use,...

Cancer 2.0

Given the evidence that people are ready, willing, and able to engage in online discussions about cancer prevention and treatment, what steps are being taken to ensure that the U.S. (and the world) does not miss this latest opportunity for education and discovery? The...

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