Return to Maastricht, site of my TED Talk! Join us.

If you can, please come to the Netherlands in May for this conference. It’s a big deal for me in more ways than one: it’s in Maastricht, the city where the European Union was formed in 1993 and the city where I gave my TED Talk in 2011. Thirteen years ago – and boy has a lot happened since then!

From “Let Patients Help” to #PatientsUseAI

2011 was the era when “let patients help” was a strange rallying cry – the very idea of patients reading their doctors’ notes was pioneering and hard to understand … for some doctors. Our other call to action, “Gimme my DaM data” (“Data about Me”), had been born out of frustration with a system that wouldn’t listen.

OpenNotes. FHIR. Digital health.

It’s been thirteen years (an eighth of a century!) since that “e-Patient Rap” rang out in that gorgeous theater. It’s safe to say that the culture of healthcare has truly evolved since then:

• The OpenNotes movement was just starting; today the US government requires that patients have access to medical records. Real change!
• The FHIR standard had not even started then, but today it’s the international standard for moving health data between systems and out to our apps. A major improvement in data mobility!
• Digital health is booming – I myself am using apps and devices for everything from my blood pressure to glaucoma to sleep to my lingering post-COVID symptoms.

Knowledge truly is power … and we’re barely getting started, now that we have data access.

Plus … as regular readers know, #PatientsUseAI is just beginning.

What’s next? Come hear. May 14-16.

Learn more about the event at its international website. (The Dutch original is here.) Or jump straight to the registration site.

And want to know what’s really amazing?? Admission is free for both patients and healthcare professionals! If you can get yourself there, there’s only a €25 admin fee (plus tax) to enter.

(Or if you want to come and you’re not a true patient and not a professional, please email me (dave@epatientdave.com) if you want help with registration costs … there may be a “friends of Dave” discount available.:-))

I hope to see you there.