e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
“How to become a more effective e-patient” (and clinician): lecture at Duke by Dr. Charles Smith
Well, here's a treat: Dr. Charles Smith, a founder of the Society for Participatory Medicine, recently gave a lecture at Duke titled "How to Become a More Effective e-Patient." Here it is, in four YouTube segments. "Charlie," as we all call him, is a wonderful guy....
Rheingold, Nelson, and Engelbart
Howard Rheingold has shared video of a backyard discussion he had with technology pioneers Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson when they dropped by for dinner, along with Howard's wife Judy and Nelson's wife Marlene Mallicoat. Brief but intense discussion of the technology...
Should Patients Read Doctor’s Notes? Wrong Question.
When you have a doctor’s appointment, and she makes some notes and later formalizes them for your medical record, would you like read them?  There’s been debate over the years about whether patients should read the notes that doctors write about them and their health...
Medical Self-Care: The Doc Tom interview in Mother Earth News
Next in our series of posts about our founder Doc Tom. Previous time capsules: 1980 and 1985. Come, ye economics buffs and algebra fans; get out your pencils and solve for x, n, and XX: Whatever else the year 19XX is remembered for, it will — without a doubt — go down...
Next history lesson: Doc Tom (and the Graedons) in the way-back machine
Last Friday we dug up our founder Doc Tom's Seven Laws of Self-Care, from 1985. At one time Tom served as medical editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, the Woodstock-era empowerment resource whose subtitle was "Access to Tools." At left (click to enlarge) is the cover of...
Living N=1
If you haven't listened to the Patient Voices series on The New York Times site, let me be the first to recommend it. I spend quite a bit of time writing up survey data, working with moderately large respondent pools (N=2,253 is the number of people who completed my...
Patient Communities: Which Way Forward?
If you were designing a disease treatment system from scratch, bringing together clinicians, patients, researchers, and advocates, what platform would you use to take advantage of the community created by this umbrella group? This isn't just some health geek SimCity...
Reflections after a specialist visit *without* OpenNotes
Next in our series on my experience with OpenNotes, a project sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio. This item has nothing to do with OpenNotes itself - it's what I'm seeing now that I've started accessing my doctor's notes. In short, I...
Must-hear: four Journal of Participatory Medicine contributors discuss how we know what we know
Last night I got word of an unexpected treat: an hour-long conversation between some real experts about participatory medicine. It's on Andrew Schorr's Patient Power site - he and his team are powerhouses as well, and they produced a special hour-long audio program. I...
Blowing your mind with Doc Tom’s seven laws of self care
Regular readers know that our founder, "Doc Tom" Ferguson, was an absolute visionary who saw that patients have a much bigger role in their own health than most people realize - at least in our culture. The white paper at top right of this site is the culmination of...
Why Victor Montori joined the Society for Participatory Medicine
Next in our "Why I Joined" series is Victor Montori, MD of the Mayo Clinic. My wife and I met him in May; he's high energy, with boundless optimism. And as you'll see, he feels very strongly about patients being at the center of healthcare. The civil rights movement...
We’re quoted in PBS Newshour online
Our Susannah Fox (and her research) are quoted in a piece yesterday on PBS Newshour's online edition about the HealthCare.gov insurance research site. There's also a small quote from me.
