e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
I Am “A Nobody & A Nothing” & I’m Proud Of It!
In our continuous series about undeclared conflicts of interest comes a great blog post from the Wall Street Journal. In it JAMA's editor in chief, Catherine DeAngelis, M.D, interviewed about a certain Jonathan Leo, had these choice words to describe him: "this guy is...
Bartering for your health
The wonderfully helpful NYTimes series Patient Money reported Friday on the topic of Opaque Inc., as posted recently here by Gilles. The article, Bargaining Down the Medical Bills, gives practical advice about how to negotiate your doctor, lab, and hospital fees. The...
Who gets to say what’s reliable, part 2:
A shoddy podcast – from an MD’s company
We've been talking here (especially about Medpedia) about the vital question of what constitutes reliable information. This morning I ran across a bit of idiocy on YouTube (you're shocked, I know) regarding my own type of cancer, titled "Two New Drugs for Renal Cell...
Stars & Stripes (!): Patients urged to take charge of their care
We've been known to have our minds blown, but this one started as an eye-popper and got better. A friend writes: "Even the DoD is getting in the act: Patients urged to take charge of their care." But holy cow, there was a LOT more behind that headline. Get this. It...
Opaque, Inc.
Cross-posted from my own blog. Truth be told, at present, the activities of "La Cosa Nostra" are more transparent that what goes on in the health care system. The only certainty I have, as an individual trying to figure out what is not wrong with the system, is what...
Social Networking in Health: e-Patients, Data & Privacy
Join Dr. John Grohol in a SXSW Core Conversation this Sunday in Austin, Texas. With the rise of social networking in health, the inevitable questions arise about patient's data and privacy. But such networks also allow for aggregating data which can help people spot...
Crowdsourced Healthcare Reform: The First Round
Cross-posted from my own blog. During 2 weeks in December 2008, over 9,000 Americans in all 50 states and the District of Columbia registered to host a health care community group to discuss healthcare reform. Thousands more participated in these gatherings. They all...
Health Affairs: Take Two Aspirin and Tweet Me in the Morning
Well, this ought to generate some chatter among us e-literati who've been trying to get noticed by the stodgies! (Or, as Pew would say, "The 74% of the 80% onliners who look for health info are 99.9% happy to see this.") The issue of Health Affairs that just crossed...
Profound illustration of effects of stress on well-being
A friend writes: If you ever needed an example of the mind's influence on disease, please see the figure at the bottom of page 3 here: Impact of exposure to war stress on exacerbations of MS. Wow.
When someone can read your medical records, is that “social networking”?
I have a fairly geeky abstract question about one aspect of the e-patient world. It's not pivotal for issues of empowerment, access to care, etc, but as my friends and I keep learning about participatory medicine, the topic of social networking keeps coming up. And...
Action! $300 Million to Actively Promote Participation & Improve Care
Cross-posted from my own blog. Laura Landro, in Wednesday's WSJ, wrote a great article, "Finding a Way to Ask Doctors Tough Questions" about the fact that it remains difficult to challenge health professionals about any aspect of the work they do. Thanks to Laura, I...
Boston Globe Kills Health & Science Section
In a sign of the times of the struggling newspaper business, The Boston Globe has axed its health and science section. Strangely, the Globe's medical blog makes no mention of the cut, despite the end of 25 years of specialty, focused reporting on the sciences and...
