e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
TEDMED End Of Life videos are up
Last October we posted about two great TEDMED talks related to death. The videos are now up. The empowered, engaged patient cannot ignore this issue. Patients who've faced death will know why these talks on death are about being alive. It's not a paradox; sit down for...
In the End
Three years ago our family was faced with a difficult decision. What is the best care for our mother? We toured all the possible local options, but when it came down to it, there was only one facility* willing to take my mother due to the advanced state of her Alzheimer’s disease. It would not have been my first choice. In fact, it would not have been my second or third choice. I found it to be a completely dreary and depressing place. Picture a Nursing Home from the 50s, not a modern day Elder Care Center.
What if information spread more quickly than a virus?
On March 11, the White House hosted an event to mark National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. The event was livestreamed from whitehouse.gov and is archived on YouTube: I have written before about the unique nature of conferences concerning...
How can a community organization tap into the health dev craze?
Updated on 3/24/2011: I recently met the director of a community health organization A. Toni Young, founder and executive director of the Community Education Group here in Washington, DC. She has big dreams for harnessing the power of her clients' health data but few...
The Salzburg Statement on Shared Decision Making
This Thursday at the headquarters of the British Medical Journal in London, an important announcement will be made about patients' rights to be actively involved in decisions about their treatment. Below is the press release about it. The subject is shared decision...
Care coordination: a MUCH bigger task than most of us realize
There's so much going on health IT these days, it'll make your head spin. Fortunately, it appears a bang-up good job is being done by the health IT team at HHS and the implementers they're working with. Example of "head spin" and what's at stake for consumer/patients:...
Health IT update: Significant announcement and webcast today about the Direct Project
Readers interested in health IT issues will want to know about today's webcast at 1:00 ET, and the policy issue described here by SPM's policy chair David Harlow (Twitter @HealthBlawg), from the SPM members listserv: There’s a significant announcement out from the ONC...
Compelling lecture on clinical decision making and diagnostic error
Today's post on Paul Levy's blog led me back to this November post, where he posted this 35 minute lecture. I was going to write about the subject, embedding this at the end, but you have to absorb this first. Clinicians and patients alike, please watch. I think if we...
“I Am Iron Man”
Guest post by SPM member Regina Holliday. Perhaps because my world-view is shaped by the escapades and explanations of active little boys, I often speak of super-heroes in relation to health care. I listen daily to tales of poisonous spider bites, DNA mutations and...
Ooops: Health Net Loses 1.9 Million Patient Data Records
As a reminder that even the best technology still relies on humans not making dumb mistakes, PCMag.com reports that Health Net's technology partner, IBM, has seemingly lost a few hard drives. Normally not a big deal. Except that these drives contained patient data...
The discovery of practice variation: follow the data
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. Sherlock Holmes, in Scandal in Bohemia I’ve been reading Jack Wennberg’s new book Tracking Medicine, which is about his...
Peer-to-peer Healthcare at the White House
It's hard to say this without sounding like I'm bragging, but that's not going to stop me: I'm going to the White House tomorrow to talk about Pew Internet Project's latest research on peer-to-peer healthcare. The White House Office of National AIDS Policy is...
