e-Patient Dave

Toward a New Science of Patient Engagement

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Ushering in the Era of the Participating Patient

I hereby hang out my shingle: e-Patient Dave for hire. Call me.

ePatient Dave business photoI’m launching my consulting business in the new world of healthcare, especially patient engagement, personal health records, data quality, and related policy. What I do:

  • Compelling, motivating speaker and writer
  • Voice of the engaged patient
  • Policy advisor on
    • how technology can and should affect healthcare transformation
    • disruptive innovation: how it creates progress, how to manage it, how to survive its risks
    • personal health records

Healthcare is changing, especially in America. As the nation wrestles with the complex political and financial issues that paralyze talk of reform, a separate front advances steadily: patients are becoming engaged in their care.

Gone are the days when patients were passive recipients of care dispensed by healthcare providers in a one-sided “doctor knows best – and patients know nothing” model. Today engaged patients participate in their care, in an empowering partnership with nurses, physicians, staff and organizations who understand the new model.

A new, collaborative partnership.

It’s not that “doctor knows best” has turned into “patients know best.” To the contrary – this new relationship is a collaborative partnership, in which both parties feel more fulfilled.

But adjusting to this can be a challenge. How can providers, policymakers, care system creators and patients learn to dance to this new music? And health IT will play a vital role, especially patients’ ownership of their own data in personal health records (PHRs). All these are areas where I intend to “make a living by making a difference.”

Browse the site. Bring friends.

“e-Patient Dave” deBronkart is a high-tech marketing executive who has studied technological change (and how people deal with it) for years. In 2007 he succeeded in beating a near-fatal cancer, and has gone on to apply his analysis and communication skills to the new world of participatory medicine.

In 2009 Dave and his primary physician, Dr. Danny Sands, MD MPH, were elected founding co-chairs of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

A passionate spokesman for the cause, he lives, writes, and works in Nashua NH, near Boston’s Route 128 high tech corridor, where he is Director of Marketing Analytics for TimeTrade Appointment Systems. For more detail on Dave’s story, see the About page.