e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

Search Results for: communities

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Hey Watson! Let patients help!

USNews Watson article (click to visit)Katherine Hobson has a new article about IBM Watson in the US News and World Report Best Hospitals issue:

The IBM Wiz Kid’s Work on Cancer
Watson’s foray into oncology is only the first baby step toward applying “big data” to thorny medical problems.

As this giant Jeopardy-winning supercomputer continues its venture into medicine, it’s fascinating to watch, but I continue to scream “WAKE UP!!” to anyone at IBM who’ll listen, because I think there’s a vast opportunity that’s not being pursued. And we need it! (I’m quoted at the end of the article, opining on this.)

What they’re doing

I love that they’re exposing Watson to gobs and gobs of previous cases, as the article describes, so it can sniff for patterns. If there’s one thing a well programmed computer can do, it’s sniff for familiar patterns.

And I love that they’re using it to suggest diagnoses and treatments to the doctor, not make diagnoses or recommendations. (I’ve long said that I doubted IBM’s lawyers would want to be anywhere near liability for a wrong diagnosis and its consequences!) An “information-suck-and-sort” machine should do just that.

(At least for today. Who knows what we’ll think in a few years; I’m not in a position to predict.)

What they’re not doing (yet)

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“Typesetters have proofreaders. Doctors don’t.” Let Patients Help!

iHealthBeat screen capture (click to visit the article)
Click to visit the article

Please see the “call to action” at bottom of this post: if you have a story of patients improving the chart – or a provider preventing it – put it in a comment on iHealthBeat.
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I have a new essay in iHealthbeat’s “Perspective” feature: Patient Participation: Let Patients Help With Medical Record Quality, Completeness.

This was a pretty great invitation. As it says at the bottom of the site, “iHealthBeat is published daily for the California HealthCare Foundation by The Advisory Board Company.” CHCF (the foundation) has done a ton of great work over the years at understanding the practical realities of medicine as it works out for families and communities, and The Advisory Board Company is a respected, high profile company that advises health leaders of all sorts. So when Managing Editor Kate Ackerman wrote to me – six months ago! – inviting an essay, I was thrilled:

I wanted to see if you’d be interested in writing a Perspective article for iHealthBeat on the importance of patient engagement in health IT efforts. Here’s a link to our Perspectives archives so you can get a better sense of the feature: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/perspectives-archive.aspx

One never knows why the timing works out the way it is, but it didn’t work then, and when she asked again recently, it did. Of course, back then the angle wasn’t clear to me, and this time it was: Typesetters have proofreaders; clinicians don’t. Let patients help!

If you want to support the movement, see if there’s something you could add an anecdote in the comments on that post – a story you know, first-hand or close, where patient and family engagement in the medical record prevented a disaster. Or helped in some smaller way.

 

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Speaker Academy, #2: Understanding the industry

Straw island on Lake Titicaca, from http://www.oocities.org/mr_rev2001/titicaca.htm
From http://www.oocities.org/mr_rev2001/titicaca.htm

Yesterday’s post closed with “no matter how compelling your story, it ain’t about you, and it ain’t about me: it’s about understanding your audience and their concerns. That means there’s work to do. Take along a lunch.”

Soon we’ll get into specifics of how to present yourself to your market (the people who might hire you). But first, it’s essential to understand the world those people live in. This post continues the notes Randi Oster took from our call last week.

Again, my comments are indented italics, like this. (The picture at right is explained below.)

Lesson #2: The healthcare “ocean” is huge and diverse. Learn what matters to each audience.

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Managing online reputations: my piece in @KevinMD’s new book

Cover of Kevin's book (click to go to Amazon)
Click to see the book on Amazon

My Nashua, New Hampshire neighbor @KevinMD (Twitter, blog) is known as “social media’s leading physician voice,” and I believe it. His blog is terrific, both technically and in breadth, depth, and consistency. I don’t know how he does it, on top of running a vibrant family practice in a busy area.

I’m late in discussing it, but he recently published a new book with many invited contributions, including one from me. It’s Establishing, Managing, and Protecting Your Online Reputation, and it’s smart.

This is a tricky subject, because online reputation is something consumer/patients are increasingly consulting as they start acting like consumers (trying to be informed), and reputation is a form of data – and as with all data, it’s really hard to know sometimes if the data is high quality. That was precisely my point in my submission, which I’m posting here, with permission (which of course Kevin granted, since I wrote the stuff! :-))

Space didn’t permit all these words to make it into the book, but here’s the full text of what I had to say.
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Reputation – online or off – means a lot.
But whose opinion is it?

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Interesting new e-patient resource: Medivizor

Added 9/11/2013:  I do not endorse this product. I have no idea if the information it gathers is reliable. I add this because in a press release the company lists me in people who have “covered” their service; I want to be clear, as it says below, that although I wrote about it, I didn’t endorse it. Frankly it feels a bit dicey that a careful curator of information would be a little bit incautious about the meaning of words.

I get a lot of requests to look at new products, websites, services. If I were rich and retired (or tenured :-)) I’d spend my whole life exploring, but I’m not, so I can’t. This is one, though, that caught my eye, because it proposes to automate something that can normally only be done by peers: filter all the information out there and tell you what’s useful to you.

If this works out, it could become an essential resource for engaging patients and families.

Disclaimer: I haven’t been able to vet the site, testing it as someone with “skin in the game” because the company is currently only handling a few conditions. Also, I’m open to reports of similar products that claim to do what I describe here. This is a description of what interests me, not a final and absolute endorsement.

Okay, enough fine print:

Medivizor is a startup that culls literature and other resources, including the social web. They select portions relevant to you (based on a questionnaire and your feedback), rephrase it in ordinary language, and send it to you. As their site says:

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e-Patient request: epilepsy community?

From time to time I post a request from someone who seeks a community of patients for a particular condition.  I’ve been accumulating them on the communities page on this site. Sure wish we had a grant to grow a list and manage it well!  How many people would THAT help??

This one is from a person who’s had mild epilepsy symptoms for years.  It’s been well managed, allowing normal life, but it may be time to look for “what’s next” sorts of treatments. So, in addition to working with their medicos, the family’s wondering about astute patient communities.

I know about the one at PatientsLikeMe. Any others?