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July 30, 2018 By e-Patient Dave 3 Comments

Book review: Augmented Health(care):
the end of the beginning, by Lucien Engelen

This book is so good I don’t know where to start. Just read it. (There’s an introductory 20% discount on the e-book below.)

Except – seriously – don’t read it if you demand a roadmap from here to the future. This is from the future. The image above, of a kid with a telescope, has been in the author’s office since I first met him, but until I was halfway through this book I didn’t understand why.

In Augmented Health(care) Dutch innovator Lucien Engelen of Radboud University Medical Center goes on a tour of the landscape that may strike the unfamiliar as manic or just plain nuts. Don’t trust that reaction – listen. He is unbound by the traditional view but absolutely bound to a future world where health – and care – are augmented such that things actually work.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: books, Culture change, disruption, Evolution, Health policy, Innovation, Leadership, patient engagement, Patient-centered tech, Patient-centered thinking, Patients as Consumers 3 Comments

July 13, 2018 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

“What will this cost?” Episode 4 of Power of the Patient, with Clear Health Costs

Episode 4 of the Power of the Patient podcast is live here.

Want better control over your health costs? Investigative journalism has finally come to healthcare, and it’s winning prizes bigtime.

My guest Jeanne Pinder is a former New York Times editor whose company Clear Health Costs has just won the Edward R. Murrow award for investigative journalism, for their contribution to the “Cracking the Code” series in New Orleans. [Read more…]

Filed Under: cost cutting edition, Patients as Consumers, podcast Leave a Comment

June 6, 2018 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

Skeptics ask why patients would even WANT their medical images. We asked on Facebook.

No wonder people get tired of fighting to improve social attitudes. This one is so obvious, yet we keep getting asked the same outdated questions. What amazes me, though, is that this time the skeptical scoffing comes from uninformed innovators, not old-timers! Makes me want to bang my head on the desk.

Last week I posted here about my talk at the SIIM conference in DC, including the rousing favorable response from the audience on Twitter. It appears the popularity has aroused scoffing skepticism AGAIN: “What would patients even DO with their images?? They don’t know how to read them…”

Notice how that thinking presumes the only thing a patient could do with the image is try to play doctor!  So I blogged a bunch of the stories patients told me on Facebook in response to my request.  Have a look at the post and the fascinating range of stories people shared. How wrong the skeptics are, when they think a patient is trying to step into the doctor’s shoes. Some do in fact become good enough to spot things like a missed tumor(!) – but in most cases the patient does something that adds to what doctors normally do. Isn’t that interesting? Go read.

 

 

Filed Under: Health data, Participatory Medicine, patient engagement, Patients as Consumers, Uncategorized Leave a Comment

March 28, 2018 By e-Patient Dave 6 Comments

Alumni club dinner: How e-patients can help healthcare achieve its potential

After eight years of speeches at conferences, I’ve observed that while medicine achieves incredible miracles that were impossible a generation ago – like saving my sorry life – it still falls short of potential more often than necessary. Lots of people write big fat books about it, but some problems don’t change, which raises the question: what can we tell consumers of the system, patients, that will help them get the best care when they’re in need?

So that’s a new series of speeches I’ll be doing, not just at big conferences but at local meetings in cities and towns, hospitals and community centers. These talks aren’t designed to change the healthcare system much; to the contrary, they’ll empower ordinary people who use the system to help the system do its best.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Aging, Culture change, Health data, Innovation, patient engagement, Patients as Consumers, public speaking 6 Comments

March 1, 2018 By e-Patient Dave 2 Comments

We must democratize healthcare.

Revolutionary fist with words "liberate, empower, progress, transform, release, set free, break outTo achieve its potential, healthcare must be democratized.

I’ve reached this conclusion after hundreds of speaking events in eighteen countries over nine years. For me “speaking” has always involved a lot of listening and learning, and the more I’ve learned, the more I’ve puzzled over this paradox:

  • Medicine can save incredibly more lives today than ever (evidenced by the extraordinary growth in elder population in my birthday post “65!”)
  • Yet we still have terrible shortfalls: we have sewage leaks in operating rooms; we have medical errors causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in the US every year; and much more.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Culture change, Evolution, Innovation, Patient-centered thinking, Patients as Consumers 2 Comments

November 14, 2017 By e-Patient Dave 6 Comments

American healthcare: a malignant tumor that can’t stop killing its host

As I said recently, I’ve been writing less here for a number of reasons. One is that I’ve been asked to write on other sites. Another, a sobering factor, as that after years of study, I’ve concluded that the American healthcare system has tied itself in a fatal knot. The post shown here, on the Patient Power blog, is an example of both.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: cost cutting edition, Health policy, Patients as Consumers 6 Comments

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