e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

Search Results for: e book

Advance Praise for “Laugh, Sing & Eat Like a Pig”

When I circulated early PDFs I hoped for encouragement, but I didn’t expect the kind of praise people sent. Here are those comments. (Or, you can just buy it on Amazon!)

See also: the book’s home page and Three Introductory Essays (full text) and links to websites mentioned in the book.

“In my list of greatest personal reads.”

“Was it my cheering or tears, the intimacy of the story, the caring nature of the community, the power of his vision, or just my awe of his guts? I suspect it was for all of those reasons and more that Dave’s book now ranks in my list of greatest personal reads.”

— James B. Conway, MS, FACHE, adjunct faculty member of the Harvard School of Public Health; Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)

“Listen up to e-Patient Dave. A must-read.”

“If you want to be an empowered patient – and you should – listen up to ‘e-Patient Dave.’ His lessons on participatory medicine can save your life just as I believe they saved his. Dave’s story has inspired me, and I’m sure it will inspire you. Dave’s a pioneer in the empowered patient movement, and Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig is a must-read for anyone who wants to take charge of their healthcare.”

— Elizabeth Cohen MPH, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent
Author, The Empowered Patient (Random House)

“Required reading for patients and doctors”

“Dave embodies the idea that the patient is the most underutilized resource in medicine. His spirit, wisdom, and fearlessness are contagious. This book is required reading for patients and doctors, to learn how we can work together to make health care better.”

— Roni Zeiger, MD,
Chief Health Strategist, Google

“An enormous impact on medicine”

“There is no doubt that Dave has made an enormous impact on medicine. He has been featured in Time and US News, testified in Washington, DC and now his wisdom and advice are available in this book to anyone facing a serious disease.”

— Kent Bottles, MD, President,
Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement

 

Links

Laugh, Sing and Eat Like a Pig is a story of illness in the age of “e,” citing many online resources. Here are links. If I’ve overlooked anything, email me.

  • p. xv (e-Patient Precedents): Society for Participatory Medicine: website, to join
  • p. 19: WETA series “Healthcare 360” about health IT (where I was taped 2/13/07)
    • Entire pilot program (56:45), including opening segment with host Frank Sesno
    • My segment (YouTube), part of a panel with AHRQ’s Carolyn Clancy (I looked kinda sick – y’think?)
    • Dr. Regina Benjamin’s segment (YouTube), before she became Surgeon General (she describes twice losing her paper medical records in floods, and a third time in a fire. Then she went electronic!)
    • “Mi Via” segment (YouTube) – how electronic medical record systems let migrant workers get consistent care from from different doctors as they travel.
  • p. 22: Hugo walkers, folding canes, etc.
  • p. 104: Sounds True (publisher of talks by Ram Dass etc)
  • p. 187: Information Quality Trainwrecks blog – IQTrainwrecks (the most accurate blog post about what happened in my PHR data transfer)
  • p. 214: PCPCC (Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative) – advocates for the patient-centered medical home

Suggestions for more links? Write me.

Introduction

June 27, 2010

My book Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig: How an Empowered Patient Beat Stage IV Cancer (and what healthcare can learn from it) is nearing completion: it’ll be on Amazon in a week or two.

We who’ve worked on it hope it will provoke thought about how healthcare is changing because of what e-patients can contribute, empowered as individuals and enabled by the internet. To start that process, we’re publishing the introduction.

Three friends and mentors generously offered introductory essays.
These essays they have little to do with my story, and everything to do with how e-patients can help heal healthcare:

Other resources: the book’s home page; previews of advance praise from reviewers

Putting Information—
and Knowledge—in Patients’ Hands

Photo courtesy of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

By Daniel Z. Sands, MD, MPH

My primary care physician since 2003.
The first doctor to support me in being empowered and engaged

“Knowledge is Power,” wrote Francis Bacon. Nowhere is that more true than in healthcare. Knowledge allows us to care for and advocate for our health most effectively. This is especially true in chronic and serious illness.

It is said that information is a prerequisite for knowledge (and knowledge, combined with insight and experience, can lead to wisdom), and yet physicians often avoid sharing information with patients. This information asymmetry causes patients to be deprived of the tools they need to care for themselves.

Why the reason for this asymmetry? [Read more…]

By 8 Comments

Why I’m not attending the June 3 meeting

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.

[Read more…]

GPT and Me: AI hacks for fun and value

This will be a page where I try to explain what “generative AI” is – things like ChatGPT – and the marvelous ways you can use it for questions you have, even if nobody else in the world would ask it. That’s kind of the point: this thing is really brilliant, and you can ask it things forever, and it never gets tired of you.

For now this is disorganized, and I’m not telling hardly anyone it exists.

Health and fitness

Balance and Gait exercises: “From a friend: I have a pain in my back from a fall from a letter 40 years ago. Over time, now that I’m 79 it’s become more difficult to walk and I’m losing balance. So what would you recommend for the things I can do to improve my balance as well as improve my gait?” Note: at the end it suggests professional help: “Would your friend be open to seeing a physical therapist for an assessment? They could provide a tailored plan based on their specific limitations.“

Researching things

Video editing AI tools: “Do you have any video production skills? If I uploaded six clips and a script, could you turn it into a finished video? If you can’t, what AI tools can?”

Cooking help

I’m the most amateur cook in the world, and one thing that’s stopped me from learning more is that cookbooks are intimidating and full of paragraphs I don’t need. With GPT I just ask it the question that I want, nothing more nothing less. Then after its first answer, I continue the chat.

How to cook trout: “How do I cook rainbow trout indoors?”

Microwaving sausage guide: “How long should I microwave a 1/4 pound sausage at 1000W?” Includes a surprise turn of events – the sausage turned out to be way too spicy for me, so GPT taught me that you can neutralize such things using avocado and/or salt! Who knew??

Air Fryer Brussels Sprouts: “Roast Brussels sprouts in air fryer with seasoning.” Then: “How about something with far fewer ingredients? I’m a real rookie.”

Troubleshooting stuff

Prius laser parking assist problem: “I have a question about my 2021 Toyota Prius parking assist laser system. It’s snowing so for the first time in the car’s life the dashboard is beeping at me saying I have to clear the parking assist sensors. But I am on a highway so this makes no sense. How can I shut off this alert?” Note at end – I used the same fix during a business trip to Germany, on a BMW over there.