e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

By 17 Comments

Extended – ends WEDNESDAY now! FREE download of “Let Patients Help!”

Let Patients Help cover
Click to visit the eBook download site

The current promotion below has ended but here’s a new one, through April 20.

Yes, this new patient engagement handbook, about which Eric Topol said “This book will unquestionably help many individuals become more active and fully engaged in their health care” and @Berci said “Every medical student must read this book.” A free download, two days only.

Get it here! Wednesday update: We appear to be crashing the site – sometimes it says “site not available” – sorry, please try again after a while!  The correct URL is indeed www.eburon.nl/tedxnijmegen?language_code=en

But also, read the fine print. Here:

The fine print:

  • This is a free “preview edition.” It has bugs. (Yes, an ebook can have bugs!) Some hot-links don’t work, and the endnotes will be improved.
  • When the final version is ready, you can download it. (You’ll register on the site.)
  • This is the .ePub format, not Kindle. Yes, there will be a Kindle edition (sooner than I expected). In the shopping cart, you’ll get a link to download the .ePub file. You’ll also get an email containing links to both the epub and the .mobi file (for Kindle).

What? Free eBook?
Last week you said NO eBook yet!

Yeah, I know. Let me tell you about my Dutch buddy @LucienEngelen.
[Read more…]

By 2 Comments

Orders resume for “Let Patients Help”

Let Patients Help coverWhat a fascinating experience this self-publishing is. You compose the book in Word, save as PDF, and upload it. If you did everything right, within 24 hours they say “Okay, go!” And it’s instantly available for sale.

And if you want to do a revised edition – e.g. to fix 7,000 typos….. or a major rewrite, or anything…. well, just upload another one.  NO COST.

This is sooo different from the print production cycle I grew up with. There, significant costs were incurred every time you make a new master, so you check check check check check before sending it to press. Today, it’s all digital.  And Amazon’s CreateSpace wants to encourage people to just try it, so they charge nothing for uploading files. Not a penny for setting up a title, not a penny for changes.

SO I WENT AHEAD THIS MONTH and released the first version for print, without checking carefully. How interesting! And what feedback I already got from my empowered, engaged readers.

I love that the all-digital workflow means I can make use of all this feedback! So here’s what’s already in this updated edition:

By 12 Comments

“Every medical student must read your book. How shall we achieve that?”

Regular followers of social media in medicine will instantly recognize the name @Berci: he’s Bertalan Meskó, MD, PhD, widely considered to be the hottest young doc who “gets it” about the future of medicine – and is actively working to create it. Look what he just tweeted, after reading an advance copy of Let Patients Help:

http://scienceroll.com/2013/03/20/let-patients-help-a-new-book-authored-by-e-patient-dave-debronkart/

(Click the image to visit the blog post he linked to.)

Yes, how SHALL we achieve that??  Please, discuss in the comments below!

More about @Berci –

[Read more…]

By 4 Comments

“This book will unquestionably help many individuals become more active and fully engaged in their health care.”

As I said yesterday, my new book Let Patients Help is available for sale now. Here’s the introduction, generously contributed by the famed Dr. Eric Topol.

An extraordinary paradox exists in medicine and health care today. On the one hand, as a recent Consumer Reports cover article on cancer tests pointed out “cancer screening remains stuck in a 1960s view of the disease.”[1] This problem of being stuck in our ways is much broader than cancer screening and can certainly be viewed to be operative across the board in health care. On the other hand, we have the newfound potential to obtain unparalleled, critical data and information about each individual. Whether this is via wearable sensors that capture one’s vital signs or sequencing the DNA that comprises one’s genome, we have new tools at our disposal – tools that were not available just a couple of years ago.

The buzzword of “big data” is used to refer to the immense amount of data that is currently being generated throughout the world—more than a zettabyte per year (that is 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes). At the same time we can now generate “big data” for each individual and define his or her medical essence. So we have entered an unprecedented time of the information era finally invading and converging with the medical world.

Moreover, this information is flowing in a new way. [Read more…]

By 1 Comment

Announcing “Let Patients Help,” with Dr. Danny Sands; introduction by Eric Topol

Book coverI’m thrilled to announce that my next book is available for sale:

Let Patients Help!
A patient engagement handbook –
how doctors, nurses, patients and caregivers
can partner for better care.

It’s concise – less than 100 pages – because I want people to READ it. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about medicine in recent years, it’s that the most useful advice is often concise.

Buy it here, on CreateSpace, Amazon’s self-publishing site:

Let Patients Help on CreateSpace

(CreateSpace requires creating a free account. It’ll be on Amazon in a while.)

It’s a book of lists:

  • Part 1: Ten Fundamental Truths
  • Part 2: Ten Ways to Let Patients Help
  • Part 3: Tip Sheets

As the subtitle suggests, this book is about partnership between patients and professionals. It tells why it’s valid and important for medicine to listen to patients, with specific how-to’s on making it a reality. A patient engagement handbook.

In keeping with that spirit, I managed to talk some really slick doctors into contributing:

[Read more…]

By 10 Comments

From now on for me, it’s health *and* care

Health & Care signature

This post became a chapter in my 2013 book Let Patients Help: A Patient Engagement Handbook.

Every year in this season I reflect and renew, emerging in January with new views. This year the first conclusion arrived early: I’m changing a key part of my language. From now on for me it’s not “healthcare,” it’s “health and care.”

Why? Because I’m increasingly seeing that it’s incomplete to look at transforming medicine by just talking about the care part – the part that kicks in when something goes wrong. All of us – patients and providers and insurance and government and industry and everyone – need to be thinking about health, every time we approach a problem with the health care system.

I know I’m not the first to say this, but as a marketing slogans guy (“Let Patients Help,” “gimme my damn data” etc), I’m keenly aware of the power of handy language. Everything I explained above can be said over and over, but it doesn’t fit easily into everyday discourse. “Health and care” is an easy plug-in replacement for the usual “health care.” And that boosts the odds people will use the new wording.

And language defines our thinking.

The implications for patient engagement are clear: it’s not sufficient to get engaged (to get it in gear, to get activated) only when sickness hits. My view from now on is, if you wanna be an e-patient, it starts with holding up your end of the bargain before you get sick.

So for 2013, let’s broaden our scope: the focus of our work should be “health and care.”
__________________

One more thing: I like the  word “care” – it’s patient-centered. In my life getting doctored and nursed, I’ve had the experience of being cared for, and I’ve had the experience of just being treated, without care. When I’m in trouble, what I want – what we should all shop and ask for – is great treatment delivered in a caring way.