Power to the Patient!
I was invited to attend a policy discussion at the White House complex tomorrow, June 3, 2025. The subject is important to me – access to our health data, plus some items about publishing data about quality of healthcare and about patient safety. These are things I’ve advocated on for years.
But I decided I can’t stomach the idea of attending, and I want to say why, plus say what I would say if I were there. The video is 12 minutes long. More notes below.
An online friend, Brian Hennon, works in hospice and is deeply interested in respecting the traditions of different faiths regarding goals of care and end-of-life conversations.
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!
These are exciting times for patient empowerment and all of medicine! Knowledge is power and generative A.I. is causing an explosion in it. Patients and families are finding that AI tools like GPT-4, Claude.ai and Gemini can profoundly improve their ability to be informed, empowered, and engaged in their care. Participatory medicine!
The other day Grace Cordovano, the extraordinary board-certified patient advocate, spoke a sentence that opened new worlds: “People need to realize: Patients are end users of AI.” Presto: new hashtag #PatientsUseAI, and an awareness campaign that’s starting right now.
Look at all the ways we’re already using AI to get work done:
I’ve been learning everything I can about what AI will do to help healthcare achieve its potential, and especially how it will help e-patients be stronger contributors. The game’s not over (this game will never be over) but so far, this is the book! The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond.
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This is going to be fun: a live, unscripted, free-for-all “ask me anything” YouTube event on the subject of Patient Design. At noon ET on Tuesday, March 21, just go here. Or go there now and click the little “Notify me” button at bottom left. There’s no registration required, but you can sign up here on EventBrite for reminders.
The host is “The Medical Futurist,” Bertalan Meskó, in Budapest. I’ve had a long history of collaborating with “Berci” (his nickname); my first blog post about him was 13 years ago yesterday, he endorsed my 2013 book Let Patients Help, and I’ve lectured at his course at Semelweiss University.
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