e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
First Diagnosing Mole iPhone app
Well, it was bound to happen. Skin Scan is a new iPhone app that purports to analyze your moles for evidence of malignancy -- all in the application itself through its own proprietary algorithms. Just take a few photos over time, and it will analyze their patterns and...
Alpha Geeks in Health Care
Here's how tech guru Tim O'Reilly describes his work: So often, signs of the future are all around us, but it isn't until much later that most of the world realizes their significance. Meanwhile, the innovators who are busy inventing that future live in a world of...
“Father Knows Best”: Vint Cerf on what innovation really is
For those who like to look deep into the structure and causes of change, something fun is in process: an interview with Vint Cerf, with an explicit e-patient component. Cerf is acknowledged as one of the fathers of the internet. In my lifetime few people, if any, have...
Health Month, the game
I admit it: I'm not a gamer. But I am competitive. Plus I love micro-fitness challenges and I've read (and believe the lessons of) The Decision Tree. So when Jen McCabe described Health Month, I was intrigued. It's a game in which you choose the rules for behavior...
Would Your Doctor Pay for Wasted Time? (CNN.com)
Strictly speaking this isn't about participatory medicine, but it is about being an empowered consumer of care. There are several dimensions to empowerment, including (but not limited to): Knowing what you want Recognizing whether you're getting it When you're not,...
Shared Decision Making in the News
Media coverage of the challenges we face in making good treatment decisions often focuses on and sensationalizes medical errors, catastrophes and risks. So it was great to see this impressive TV news clip circulated by Gary Schwitzer of HealthNewsReview.org in his...
Examples, please: peer-to-peer healthcare
I'm writing an article and would love to tap into this community's knowledge. I know of a few examples of clinical practices using Facebook and Twitter to connect with patients, such as MacArthur OB/GYN, but I'd love to learn about other examples, especially ones...
Bye Bye Google Health
Like so many attempts before it -- drkoop.com and RevolutionHealth.com to name just two -- Google has found that implementing personal health records in a meaningful way is really, really hard. So hard, in fact, that it has given up and is shuttering its Google Health...
2011 Socialnomics video is out
On this blog we try to understand and explain how the world has changed and is changing, with the goal of helping everyone - policy people, patients, clinicians, administrators, businesses - optimize for the world as it changes. Nowhere is that more apparent than in...
Richard Smith: Beware journals, especially “top” ones (BMJ blog)
e-Patients who want to collaborate with their physicians, and be responsible for their medical decisions, need to clearly understand what constitutes good evidence. It’s not always easy…
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FICO’s new Med Compliance score: #FAIL
This is a cross-post, plus commentary at end, starting with an item today by SPM member Alexandra Albin (@MsAxolotl, a frequent patient herself), from her blog: My life in the Bush of Doctors. It arose from a boiling discussion on the SPM member listserv. To...
NYTimes: Smaller hospitals often perform double CTs unnecessarily
Engaged patients and families, alert: the NY Times reports (here) on a form of unwarranted practice variation that has been exposing elders to excess radiation. Many smaller hospitals have been needlessly exposing their Medicare patients to double CT scans on the same...
