e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
One Doctor’s Prescription for Fixing U.S. Healthcare
John Grohol initially posted this in our "Found on the Net" sidebar, but I clicked through, and I think it's important enough that it belongs as a main post. (Short doesn't imply sidebar.) I'm particularly drawn to "equal rights for physicians," something my gut has...
Extending Your Healthcare Dollar
50 Ways To Squeeze Value From Your Healthcare Dollar Without Killing Yourself. An interesting list from one of the main websites specialized in frugal living. There is not much about patient empowerment but there are many interesting bits of advice. The comments...
Learning from medical errors
As an empowered patient I'm willing to go to the ends of the earth to help the medical community get beyond the famed "culture of blame," so everyone involved can learn from errors. Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center had a wrong site incident, and responded...
Crowdsourcing the Definition of Participatory Medicine
"Crowdsourcing: the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call." Jeff Howe Or in other words Participatory Outsourcing. There is clearly a growing...
Blogging to Save a Father’s Life
Yesterday, RocketBoom founder Andrew Baron took to the blogosphere to round up support in his efforts to get a rare drug approved for use in treating his father. His father was diagnosed with a very bad form of cancer called multiple myeloma and his dad's doctor...
Complex Patient Choices on Life or Death
“There are certain choices patients make that I have never understood, choices that from my perspective as a doctor seem to undermine their very chances for survival. Or at least undermine the efforts doctors, nurses and even complete strangers make on their behalf....
Spellchecker
"I noticed that my spellchecker doesn’t recognize 'subprime'. […] I am guessing that will be remedied soon. "in the Beginning" Stephen J. Dubner; 09/30/2008 This is so true! Just like e-patient and participatory medicine! None of these terms have made their way into...
“When physicians are ready to promote patient empowerment / engagement, what do we want them to do?”
Ted Eytan has a post by this name. It's a question asked of him by Ann Barber, MD. I couldn't be happier! His post and the comments have gotten lively. I posted about Chapter 2 of e-Patients: how they can help us heal health care, which includes the seven preliminary...
Mobilizing Support for the CIS
I just heard from Gary Kreps, Professor of Health Communication at George Mason University and e-patient pioneer, reporting about drastic cutbacks to the Cancer Information Service programs. Excellent up-to-date information […]
Health 2.0 Northeast Meeting Review
I along with e-Patient Dave, Dan Hoch and Danny Sands, attended the second Health 2.0 Northeast meeting in Cambridge, Mass. on Tuesday night (Oct. 7, 2008). It was an initially […]
Patient Power: Andrew Schorr
Andrew Schorr's recent comment also merits a separate post: I am a 12-year leukemia survivor and very grateful to the ACOR community members who helped me numerous times along the way. I have dedicated my life to creating community online and also, in a supplementary...
Response to Tara Parker-Pope’s “You’re Sick. Now What?”
Christine Gray's comments on the New York Times open thread merit a separate post (updated on 10/7/2008): Five years ago, when many pediatric hospitals were unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge the capacities of online medical support groups, my thirteen-year-old...
