e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
e-Patient Beware: Bad Data, Badly Reported
Here’s an interesting (though oddly titled) post by Jon Richman: Lies, Damn Lies and Pharma Social Media Statistics. It is interesting because it beautifully un-packs misreporting on a topic of great interest to e-patients. It is oddly titled because while the...
“Patients are not consumers”
Economist Paul Krugman, blogging at the New York Times, argues that patients should not be referred to as "consumers." Krugman says "The idea that all this can be reduced to money — that doctors are just people selling services to consumers of health care — is, well,...
Powerful new “Doctor becomes an e-patient” story in Journal of Participatory Medicine
Two years ago we wrote "Let's hear it for the 'd-patients'" — doctors who become e-patients themselves. We said "D-patients prove that patient empowerment is anything but anti-doctor. Heck, sometimes it’s a doctor preservation movement." A new article in our Journal...
Heads-up on EMR usability discussion
On April 21 I've been invited to testify again on behalf of patients at a meeting organized by the Office of the National Coordinator for health IT. As we did here twice last year, let's discuss what the meeting should here. Here's the document they sent. Comments,...
ISO: Randomized Trials
I received an email the other day containing the following question: Are you aware of any randomized trials – in progress, or published – that examined the impact of social networking web 2.0, etc. on patient-level variables (e.g., improved rates of preventive health...
Rest in Peace: Personal Health Records (PHRs)
While doing some research the other day on personal health records (PHRs), I came across this article, describing Revolution Health's announcement -- without much media attention -- about dropping its PHR at the beginning of 2010. (Disclosure: I worked for Revolution...
PatientsLikeMe goes wide
PatientsLikeMe opened up to every condition today. From their press release: Today, PatientsLikeMe (www.patientslikeme.com) announces the expansion of its platform and invites patients with any condition to join. The five-year-old free online health data-sharing...
SPM on the Air: People’s Pharmacy (NPR)
Joe and Terry Graedon, long-time friends of "Doc Tom" Ferguson, produce The People's Pharmacy, a website and radio program on NPR. Last Saturday's program was about the Society for Participatory Medicine, which they helped to found in 2009. (They were also among Doc...
An ode to health data rights
Fun for Friday: David Hale singing an ode inspired by Regina Holliday and e-Patient Dave:
BMJ posts expert roundtable audio on Salzburg Statement and Shared Decision Making
The BMJ (British Medical Journal) has posted a three-part downloadable podcast about the Salzburg Statement. Part 1: History and current status of shared decision making. [26:04] Part 2: Vision of the future, and barriers to getting there. [23:31] Part 3: Informed...
Peer-to-peer healthcare on NPR
To me, there are two types of breaking news in health care: the macro and the micro. Macro health news breaks when there is a natural disaster, a scientific breakthrough, or a new twist in a policy debate (see: "ACOs"). I read up on the facts and try to make sense of...
Accountable Care Organizations and Patient-Centeredness
As you may know, the proposed Accountable Care Organization regulations were released yesterday. I’ve posted links to the various documents and some early news reports on my blog: Accountable care organization proposed regulations released for public comment. I’ll...
