e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
Nancy Finn: E-Visits foster continuum of care and communication, but there is a price
Nancy Finn submitted this guest post about the challenges facing doctors and patients who want to have clinical conversations online. The quest for the right communication formula and balance that will satisfy doctors and e-patients who want to experience continuous...
Australian Consumer Health Forum flips from opt-in to opt-out for EHR enrollment
Big news from Down Under: the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a group of fifty consumer health advocates has unanimously backed an "opt-out" process for enrollment in electronic health records, reversing their previous position. The issue is whether by default all...
Help Me Choose: Sessions at Medicine 2.0
In 2008, I asked for this community's help in choosing which sessions to attend at the Chronic Disease Care conference sponsored by the California HealthCare Foundation. I loved the input I got and wrote 3 posts on what I learned about spreading improvement in care,...
New FDA book: “Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User’s Guide”
Guest post by SPM member Gangadhar Sulkunte. We posted his family's e-patient story two years ago. The FDA's Risk Communication Advisory Committee has published a PDF book called "Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User's Guide." It's meant to help...
Rare disease patient community and Mayo explore trial with far-flung patients
SPM member John Novack of Inspire.com sent this, about a project some members of an Inspire patient group created. They got the Mayo Clinic to explore whether a clinical trial can be done in a very unconventional setting: across the internet, instead of within one...
Two Doctors Take a Patient-Centric Approach in New Books (NYTimes)
Today's New York Times has a review of two new books, Doctors with Plenty of Time for Patients. Reviewer Abigail Zuger MD says "Suppose ... you could actually rent the doctor’s attention for as long as you needed it?" In these books two doctor take plenty of time to...
New Study in JoPM Uses Smartphones To Enable Healthy Choices
The Journal of Participatory Medicine has just published a research paper, "Exploring Everyday Health Routines of a Low Socioeconomic Population through Multimedia Elicitations." Participants in this novel study used smartphones to capture pictures and videos of their...
“The Office” Takes on Primary Care
Not really, but check out this new campaign by the Puget Sound Health Alliance aimed at getting the employees of their purchaser members (businesses and labor union trusts) to make better use of primary care. These videos* will make you chuckle / guffaw / giggle even...
“The Participation Hypothesis”
Found in the August 24/31 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association: A quote from Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001): "Significant changes in human behavior can be brought about rapidly only if the persons who are expected to change participate in deciding...
“Who Can Fix Health Care?” Al Mulley’s talk at TEDx Dartmouth
Stop what you're doing, as soon as possible, and spend 20 minutes watching this. It's the most powerful short talk I've ever seen about health care. Our e-patient white paper is titled "e-Patients: How they can help heal healthcare." In this talk from March's TEDx...
JoPM recommendation: “Team Up for Health”
The Journal of Participatory Medicine has just published a Media Watch piece about a new initiative from the California HealthCare Foundation called Team Up for Health. This website is a good example of an online tool that helps primary care providers support patients...
A “shopping for healthcare” blog
Anytime Susannah Fox tweets "I am fascinated by...," I stop what I'm doing and click. Today it's this: "I am fascinated by this healthcare costs blog: healthcaresavvy.wbur.org Thanks @agropper @WBUR @stephenjdowns." It's on the site of WBUR, Boston's public radio...