e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
Surprise: doc finds it’s useful having records online
NY Times: Rural Doctor Finds Benefits in Electronics. I know all the experts have a thousand reasons why "it's not that simple," but I do this stuff all the time in my day job and I don't know what's such a big freakin mystery. Having data online works. Look: that's...
The I in IT stands for Information
I've been thinking a lot about where to take the discussion that's exploded on my post about moving my data from PatientSite into Google Health. I'm hardly an IT guru, but as I said, I do work with data at my day job. And before we proceed, there's something I think...
When is “Information Therapy” Simply Learning?
I sometimes wonder whether we complicate things that are pretty simple, by assigning more labels and new terms to things that have perfectly good labels already. For instance, I once thought I knew what "information therapy" meant. It meant a doctor or other...
You’re Not Crazy After All
Had chemotherapy and weeks after the treatment has ended, still feeling not quite yourself? You're not alone. The memory and cognitive problems after receiving chemotherapy is known as "chemobrain." As Ellen Clegg notes in The Cloud Over Chemotherapy, finally the...
An angry veterinarian says “I don’t understand…”
From my wife: I truly don't understand why human medicine finds it is so difficult to put medical records on the computer. Veterinary medicine has had that ability at least for the last 10-15 years. An example is the Idexx Cornerstone Veterinary Practice Management...
A wonderful story of participatory medicine
Amy Marcus, in today's WSJ, wrote a powerful article about a mom moving medical mountains to help her twin daughters survive a rare and deadly disease. Entitled "A Mom Brokers Treatment for Her Twins' Fatal Illness. Bucking Scientific Convention, Ms. Hempel Gets...
Imagine someone had been managing your data, and then you looked.
This is a complex post, so don’t jump to any conclusions. Two weeks ago (gad, was it that long?) I asked you to think about something for a few days: Imagine that for all your life, and your parents’ lives, your money had been managed by other people who had extensive...
Mobile, social technology and the impact on health care
Fard Johnmar interviewed me about internet adoption, the use of social technologies among minority groups, and my hope that e-patients' "passion, knowledge, and ingenuity is brought forward no matter what else is planned for health care reform." Mobile access is an...
A business thinker asks: what will it take to get traction?
IBM's "Smarter Planet" blog has picked up e-Patient Dave's post A Thousand Points of Pain, about how enmeshed and entangled our healthcare system has become, and the implications for people who want to design a transformed system. Dave added a prolog for business...
Electronic Medical Records? Yeah, Not So Much
So with all this talk about healthcare technologies and the new budget and Health 2.0, you'd think that electronic medical records (EMRs) were on the rise. Perhaps they are, but as the Associated Press reports, fewer than 2 percent of providers have completely...
If you have been the victim of clinical harm…
... or involved in an incident, as patient or provider, Paul Levy solicits your submission. He's hosting the medical blogosphere's Grand Rounds next Tuesday, and has chosen the topic When Things Go Awry. Details and instructions are here.
e-Patient Judy Feder:
Patient Community Knowledge Saves a Life
Judy Feder is an e-patient who has contributed several comments here in the past. But it was just today that I learned what an extraordinary new e-patient chapter has unfolded in her life in the past few months. If you're a student of the e-patient principles, see how...
