Search Results for: e book

April 27, 2015 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

Washington Post: “How is the doctor-patient relationship changing? It’s going electronic.”

It appears the Washington Post is getting seriously interested in both the value of, and the consumer perspective on, health IT. This is a good thing, because (a) the whole purpose of healthcare is to take care of patients, (b) patients (that would be you) are the ultimate stakeholder, (c) no patient can contribute their best to their care if they can’t see the information, (d) nor can any doctor or nurse do what they’re trained to if they don’t have all the information, and (the good news) (e) we all can do better if we have the information.

This is not some crazy call-to-action from the fringes: it’s mainstream. I mean, three years ago the Institute of Medicine (the pinnacle of medicine in America) said medicine depends on “Patient-clinician partnerships” with “Engaged, empowered patients” and must be “anchored on patient needs and perspectives.” And, as my primary physician Dr. Danny Sands often says, “How can patients participate if they can’t see what I see?”

Tuesday’s Post has a pair of articles by Suzanne Levingston. I’m quoted in the first, and Dr. Sands is quoted in the second:

How is the doctor-patient relationship changing? It’s going electronic (above, ~1500 words) is a broad survey of how medicine’s landscape has altered because you and I have the internet, which means we can for the first time in history connect to two pivotal resources: information we could never see before, and each other. (My own story, including how the internet helped saved my life, is on my About page; it was also published in the British Medical Journal two years ago.)

There’s lots of health-care technology out there. How do you choose? (490 words – a sidebar, I presume) is a brief overview of the wide range of apps and info tools available today. As regular readers know, I view these tools as exactly analogous to the hundreds of desktop publishing tools that became available in its early years: examples of what can be done when data gets free, not all of which should be done, or even has any reason to get done.

But that’s the whole point: when information gets loose, innovators all over creation get to try things – at their own risk, with their own investment – and we-all out here get to make up our own minds about which of it is worth anything. The world shifts. As I’ve often said, “To innovators, data is fuel.” And I’ll never forget Todd Park (the US Chief Technical Officer) shouting from the stage, “Data Liberación!”

Also quoted in the bigger article are my respected colleagues Susannah Fox and Wendy Sue Swanson MD. Fox is widely felt in healthcare circles to be the wisest observer of what you and I actually do online (a debunker of many myths, with facts and heart), and Seattle pediatrician Swanson is almost legendary for her sober, reality-based, compassionate advice to parents in today’s ever-changing world.

Also cited is Dr. Eric Topol, who wrote the introduction to Let Patients Help, which I co-authored with Dr. Sands, and which is now in 7 languages (and a Chinese company just bought the rights). I’ve just finished reading Eric’s new book The Patient Will See You Now, which goes very very deep and wide into these articles’ topics. I hope to review it soon.

More later on why these realistic articles are important at this moment in time. Because just as with the rise of desktop publishing, and just as with Topol’s book, not everyone is happy with the coming change.

April 21, 2015 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

A call to action and two new media items

These are busy times! I haven’t posted anything in over weeks so I’m going to handle three items in one.

1. Call to action: “No MU without Me”

Two weeks ago, two important things came up in the Washington health IT policy world. On the e-patients blog I wrote two posts about them, which I encourage you to look at.

Post 1: “No MU without ME”: join the campaign to fight health data hiding

This is an important post, getting lots of attention. Two important DC policy items in this post –

A proposed rule change to roll back current requirements for hospitals to help you to get your data.
Meanwhile, ONC (the federal office that for health IT policy) sent a report to Congress saying that some system vendors and some healthcare providers are “knowingly interfering” with the transfer of patient record data. Knowingly interfering!

The result is that a national day of action has been proposed, because a primary complaint from hospitals is “Look, nobody even asks for their information. Why should we have to automate delivering it??” (Read the post for more precise specifics.) Stay tuned. Meanwhile, a social media campaign has started: “No MU Without Me” – it’s explained in the post.

Post 2: NY Times editorial on forces who “knowingly interfere” with health info exchange

On Sunday the Times ran an editorial on the subject, spotlighting that the ONC report had noted “business interests” as the cause of the data obstruction. In my post I said, pretty pointedly:

Restricting flow of patient information is not a valid playground for private business interests.

If you have a story about how healthcare was helped or harmed by access to your (or your family’s) records, let me know so we can add it to the story database we’ll be collecting.
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March 20, 2015 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

BMJ and Mayo blogs published two of my essays today

A quick note as I prepare to leave for my very exciting Mayo Clinic visit next week – unexpectedly, today two new posts went live on other people’s blogs.

Mayo Clinic Social Medial Health Network:
Social Media is the Profound Change Fueling the e-Patient World

Click to enlarge

I’m on the Mayo social media center’s External Advisory Board, so I’m required to write something yearly, and this was it – timed to coincide with my trip next week, though I didn’t know they’d time it this closely.

An important part of this post is the illustration – an updated version of a graphic I’ve used for years, highlighting that medical knowledge has shifted from being a closed system to an open network. This concept is widely known in high tech, but can seem downright alarming to people in medicine. I don’t fault them – it’s their training, and the idea of a closed system carries with it great responsibility. But it has changed, and it’s important to understand.

Please read the post (it’s not long) to understand the increasingly apparent impact this change is having on the practice of medicine. Please.

Not coincidentally, the graphic was first created by Dutch colleague and now friend Lucien Engelen, who conceived and produced the TEDx Maastricht conference where I did my TED Talk four years ago. And the first version of this graphic was produced a year before that, back in 2010. Thought leadership is thought leadership.

BMJ blog:
“Precision medicine” needs patient partnership

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March 3, 2015 By e-Patient Dave 56 Comments

Proposing a new science of patient engagement

In three weeks at the Mayo Clinic, as their invited Visiting Professor in Internal Medicine, I’ll be delivering the most fascinating talk of my career. I’ll be formally starting the process of examining whether we must all agree that there’s a hole in the dominant paradigm of how medicine works, and whether we must solve this together by creating a new, scientific approach to patient engagement.

To start, please watch the four minute video below. For convenience, and to make it more searchable, at bottom of this post is a transcript.

To do this I’ll be using the 1962 book that brought the word “paradigm” into popular use: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. His definition of paradigm was much more strict and rigorous than the trendy loose word we throw around today; he studied numerous scientific revolutions (Newton, Copernicus, etc) and identified a regular, repeated structure to the process by which a scientific field takes form and then, sometimes, realizes a revolution is needed.

The process is both scientific and sociological – a fact that annoyed the crap out of scientists who believed that they are solely logical. From Wikipedia:
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February 19, 2015 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

Daily Digest: The West Wing, lab coats, and more

West Wing replay: Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said something recently that had Aaron Carroll reflect on the West Wing over on The Incidental Economist blog. “When real life imitates ‘The West Wing,’ Surgeon General edition”

Less is more, health IT edition: On the HL7 Standards blog, Michelle Ronan Noteboom looks at the idea that too much is way too much when it comes to several things, including portals and medical treatment. “When Less Is More in Health IT”

You can get it at Lowe’s: Not hardware, although they do certainly have plenty of that. In this piece on the Health Affairs blog, Bob Ihrie and Alan Spiro take a look at how Lowe’s retooled their employee health insurance coverage with an eye on behavioral economics, trust, and relationship dynamics. “Engaging Health Care Consumers: the Lowe’s Experience”

Tattoo you: I (Casey) have been making the health IT event rounds lately as a patient voice on panels about health tech and patient engagement. Since I took a very out-there step related to my own health data, my appearance in the room can start some interesting conversations. An example, by Jim Tate in the HITECH Answers blog: “Patient Engagement: I Tattoo, Therefore I Am”

Lab coats – yes or no? A meta-analysis of the study data available on patient satisfaction scores and physician attire shows that patients are likely to rate a doctor who’s dressed professionally higher than one who isn’t. What’s your thinking there – would you prefer a tie (which can be an infection vector), or are scrubs OK with you? From Lena Weiner in HealthLeaders Media: “Physicians’ Attire Linked to Patient Satisfaction Rates”

From the This Will Never Get Old desk: A film director and his wife took to YouTube back in 2010 to illustrate the user experience when you’re a patient booking healthcare, setting that illustration in the context of air travel booking. The results were, and are, hilarious. The New Altons on YouTube: “If air travel worked like healthcare“

February 18, 2015 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

Daily Digest: Sugar high, CEO hackathons, and more

3% is not enough: According to this piece from Modern Healthcare, the security threat revealed by the Anthem breach might not be enough to increase spending on cybersecurity, for healthcare or for anyone else. “Experts doubt Anthem breach will boost security spending”

Sugar high: Dr. Abigail James, a neuroscientist and educator who’s known globally for her thinking on the science of learning, points out the results of a Yale study on energy drinks and school children, and shares some tips for parents on weaning their kids off the sugar/caffeine rush. “Sugar high: It’s REAL”

Marble doesn’t matter? I (Casey) have an admitted admiration for hospitalist MDs, based on my work producing a podcast series for The Hospitalist magazine. This post, from the Society of Hospital Medicine’s Hospital Leader blog, is Dr. Bradley Flansbaum’s take on the results of a Johns Hopkins study on hospital fittings – think Ritz Carlton vs. Quality Inn – and their impact on patient satisfaction scoring on physicians. “If your hospital was the Ritz Carlton, how high would your patients rate you?”

Irish science breakthrough: It’s early days in this study, but preliminary reports show some hope for Alzheimer’s and MS patients from a drug under study in Dublin. It’s called MCC950. We’ll be watching this one. From the Irish Times: “Ireland leads a drug breakthrough in fight against MS, Alzheimer’s”

Data geek hacky sack: Our longtime friend Brian Ahier is a health IT geek extraordinaire. Here’s a profile of his upcoming booth-babe appearance at HIMSS15, which includes his belief that health IT is an evergreen bipartisan issue. And a call to develop a wearable that counts hacky sack kicks. From Healthcare IT News: “Brian Ahier: HIE-vangelist, hacky sack extraordinaire”

Healthcare hackathon for CEOs: This showed up in my Facebook news feed today, and I was fascinated. In Denver, a dedicated man named Tom Higley – a real Renaissance man: attorney, musician, tech entrepreneur – has a very interesting event underway this week, where 10 CEOs will listen to 10 “wicked” healthcare ideas, and then incubate a solution to one of them in 10 days. From the Denver Post: “Sold-out production gives 10 CEOs 10 days to build viable health startup“