e-Patient Dave

Democratizing Healthcare

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The Autonomic Nervous System: the Medical Frontier of the 21st Century

In July I gave a virtual talk for Dysautonomia International. Dysautonomia is a family of different conditions, sometimes surprisingly diverse, all related to the autonomic nervous system (ANS). A patient-started and patient-run organization, Dysautonomia International is doing a stupendous job of educating and advocating about this field. The purpose of my talk was to encourage the membership, too, to be proactive in speaking out about how they see things.

The video below is the entire 82 minute closing session of the conference. My talk starts around 24:00, but I encourage you to watch those first minutes, to listen in as patient/founder Lauren Stiles presents what the organization has been doing and introduces this year’s three award winners. This is a great advocacy organization!

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Speeches as empowerment: transforming the culture of care

Speaking isn’t just a business – it’s a vehicle for accomplishing what we really need: changing how people think … especially, empowering them to take effective action, to become involved in their health. Here’s a photo from a speech to radiologists, encouraging them to share images with patients:

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Patient engagement in glaucoma: new speech to medical librarians

This is my second speech to NNLM, the Network of the National Library of Medicine. As I said in announcing the first one,

Medical librarians (“medlibs”) have always been a magical resource, to me, because in addition to helping researchers and medicos, they can help ordinary people dig up information they need but don’t know where to find. It’s truly empowering.

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We’re back, part 2: FHIR DevDays Cleveland, with new patient sessions!

I’m thrilled to share the next great news in the recovery and reboot of the healthcare conference world. Two weeks ago I shared “We’re back!” about my next real-life keynote in Berlin – the first in two years. Now this, also the first in two years: FHIR DevDays, the twice-annual conference for software developers working on FHIR, the health data interoperability standard I’ve often blogged about. I’m equally thrilled to again be the DevDays Patient Track lead. It will be so good to see people again and enjoy the random encounters in hallways and pubs.

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We’re back! Conference travel resumes – safely, of course!

I’m thrilled to share that the conference world is starting (slowly, carefully) to emerge from the shadows. My first conference travel engagement is in Berlin, for the German Managed Care association!

The conference is in German, but they’ve asked me to do the opening keynote – a conference position I always love!

Of course I travel carefully: I’m triple-vaxed, and regardless of regulations I mask up, I minimize my time indoors at airports, and I carry a pocket-sized meter to keep an eye on CO2 and filtration, on and off the plane.

I’m also thrilled at additional events are coming up (virtual and live), as society figures out how to emerge from the shadow of this monster pandemic. I’ll be blogging about those too in the coming weeks. So exciting!