Archive for September, 2009
Guest Blog Post on e-Patients Blog
September 30, 2009
I was privileged to be asked by ePatientDave to post an enhanced version of my blog post on the Journal of Participatory Medicine on the e-Patients blog yesterday. I stand by my claim that everyone in health care needs to understand the e-patient movement and participatory medicine to understand the future of medicine.
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Forget Medical Privacy?
September 29, 2009
On the blog for PatientsLikeMe is a brief comment about a provocative statement by Wired Magazine to “Forget Medical Privacy.” Wired published this as part of their “12 Shocking Ideas That Will Change the World.” PatientsLikeMe which is the only Health 2.0 site I know of that values openness and has an openness policy believing that it will contribute to health care instead of holding privacy so tightly that it inhibits the ability to use valuable clinical data. A video on the blog post addresses the question of openness directly: “Given my status, what is the best outcome I can achieve and how do I get there?”
From Wired: “And that lack of openness, Heywood argues, is making us sicker: With
data scarce, there’s no clear way for physicians to know what
treatments are working for other practitioners.” In fact, hospitals are allowed to use data from the Electronic Medical Record with the approval of their Institutional Review Board.
At the Medicine 2.0 Congress, a award winning presentation by PatientsLikeMe demonstrated how they can utilize data shared by patients to quickly address drug side effects and other commonly shared problems. A combination of using existing data, such as, from an EMR and patient shared data, such as, from social networking sites, can certainly accelerate medical research while not totally abandoning privacy.
Technorati: Health 2.0
Share this:Google Scholar – A Personal Journey
September 26, 2009
The Krafty Librarian has taken on Google Scholar and discusses the good and bad of its search results from a medical librarian’s perspective. This led me on a vanity search of my own publications. Good news – by searching for “Sharp JW” & “Cleveland Clinic” most of my previous publications came up. What was interesting was to see citations. I had no idea how may articles and books used some of my publications. For instance, a search of “Sharp JW” & “Prostate Cancer” shows many citations in books especially from some of my quality of life and internet and cancer articles. Also came across an abstract on LVADs and quality of life I had forgotten about.
While there may be some limitations of Google Scholar, some of the features are a real plus.
Share this:Journal of Participatory Medicine and e-Patients
September 25, 2009
If you have not read the e-Patient White Paper, you do not understand the future of medicine. Being an e-Patient is beyond being empowered. The subtitle, How they can help us heal healthcare, describes the potential for a revolution of change.
Now comes the Journal of Participatory Medicine to fill a gap in journals which acknowledge the active role of the patient in current medical practice. While other journals, such as, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, publish articles on patient participation in health care and social media, but a single journal devoted to this topic will be a welcome addition and make the topic more officially sanctioned as a valid field of medical study. The editorial board is very impression and lends an important boost to this new journal.
Technorati: Health 2.0
Share this:HealthCamp – Incubator for Innovation
September 24, 2009
In Toronto last week, in addition to Medicine 2.0, I attended my first HealthCamp, sponsored by MyHealthInnovaton, aka, Innovation Cell. Using an unconference format, HealthCamp creates an environment for creative thinking with the attendees creating the agenda for the day. Great ideas were everrywhere – from pitches on new startups to ideas which are in their infancy, the approach is invigorating. HealthCamps have now been attended by over 1000 participants. I hope the movement will continue to spread. Maybe its time for one in Ohio.
Upcoming HealthCamp events.
Medicine 2.0 Congress in Toronto – E-Patients take the lead
September 23, 2009
Having attended the Medicine 2.0 Congress in Toronto last week, the enduring theme of e-Patients as full participants in health care with full rights to their data was apparent. ePatient Dave led off with the keynote and sent me back to the ePatient white paper, particularly, the research section. More on that later.
My part is recorded here:
- a photo of me presenting
- Medicine 2.0 blog post on what I said
- My delicious links related to the presentation
- and my slides:
Convergence of eHealth and Health 2.0?
September 15, 2009
While some create strong distinctions between the terms eHealth and Health 2.0, others use them interchangeably. eHealth clearly came before Health 2.0 but is it just an evolution from one to the other. The general consensus seems to be that ehealth is a broad term including electronic medical records, personal health records and other health care tools. Some include mobile devices, home monitoring and telemedicine within ehealth. Health 2.0 evolved more recently and focuses on Web 2.0 tools especially social media tools and their use in health care.
Are they converging or is there an opportunity for convergence? They need to converge because in the future ePatients will demand a single view of their health both from PHRs and social media. Perhaps it will look something like Google Wave.
