e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
First anniversary of our Declaration of Participation. Please renew!
How fitting for the Fourth - a year after our Declaration (see below), I just received my renewal notice for the Society for Participatory Medicine. Here's a Doctor's Channel interview, posted a year ago today, in which Society co-chair Alan Greene MD draws an analogy...
In the UK, over-50s getting online faster than anyone else
Over 50s lead dash to the internet: "The latest figures on new internet users in the UK have shown that people aged 50 or over made up the largest social group to join last year"": more than half of new users. As the article says, "Don't knock silver surfers." (Thanks...
Healthcare.gov goes live: terrific site on health coverage options
This week the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) introduced Healthcare.gov, a consumer information website mandated by the Affordable Care Act (aka the health reform bill). A video of the introduction meeting is here. The site is fabulous; HHS Chief...
Chilmark: “Where is the consumer in HIEs?”
As we adopt new technology NOW is the time to think strategically: "As I make my next move, where do I end up? How am I positioned for the next step?" Patients have a lot at stake in adoption of Health Information Exchanges (HIEs). Chilmark Research has posted a good...
Hm: Because of viewing my visit notes, I did something better.
Earlier this month I wrote that the OpenNotes project had kicked off. It's important - if you haven't read about it, please click that link. My primary physician and I are participating, but candidly I didn't expect to get much out of it: as I told a friend, "I'm not...
“You’re 100% alive or 100% dead at any given moment”
A recurring training topic on this blog, originally for e-patients but also for clinicians and policy people, is understanding statistics. (See posts in that category.)Â Not only are statistics often misinterpreted; even when they're correctly understood, patients too...
National Library of Medicine’s ePatient Conference
The e-patient movement is so real that in April the National Library of Medicine had its first ePatient Conference. Yes, that's what they called it. The event is covered on the inside front cover of the current Medline Plus, including Society co-chair e-Patient Dave....
Paul Roemer’s e-patient story: Cancer, who’s in charge here?
Paul Roemer (LinkedIn, Twitter ) is speaking this Thursday at Health 2.0 in Bethesda. He's a Twitter friend who has a lot in common with me: a cancer kicker with a business background, who now sees himself as an e-patient. There’s one big difference: he went through...
Patient Communities… at Walgreens?
In May, I spoke at the Chronic Care and Prevention Congress about my most recent report, "Chronic Disease and the Internet." I talked about the social life of health information and the internet's power to connect people with information and with each other. Living...
Health Geek Tip: Abstracts are ads. Read full studies when you can.
Ivan Oransky, executive editor of Reuters Health, provided excellent evidence yesterday regarding the need to look past abstracts of journal articles if accuracy matters to you: His own post on Embargo Watch: "More thoughts on ASCO: How the embargo policy can lead to...
OpenNotes background information: WIHI webcast and Ted Eytan post
It's bonanza time for people intrigued with the OpenNotes project, which we mentioned Saturday. While looking for something else tonight, I ran across this, about OpenNotes, from December: “Concern that sharing information with patients may cause sustained...
“Over My Dead Body”: Why System Usability Matters
It's widely rumored that a health IT industry executive was unhappy about suggestions that systems have to be usable in the eyes of employees who use them while caring for us. (Us. The patients. Your mother.) According to the rumor, the exec said "Over my dead body."...
