e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

Search Results for: let-patients-help

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New look for the website!

New banner screen grabIt’s time for a new look!

After three years with a “Facebook Blue” banner at the top of the site, I’m switching to this new one. This one does two things:

  • It uses the graphic identity of my book cover, Let Patients Help.
  • It takes advantage of the new publicity photo all patients got (free!) at the Medicine X conference at Stanford this year.

In a way, my face is as close as I’ll get to a logo. :)   I worked for a couple of months this summer with design consultant Jonathan Klein, trying to figure out what I wanted to convey. Then the other day while talking with my web consultant Alicia Staley (mid-flight!) this idea evolved. Love it! Great ideas pop to the surface when @Stales and I jabber.

Finally, my book cover designer Tania Helhoski of BirdDesign Studio did the art, since she also created the book cover this was based on.

What do you think? Give us love! Or pick the nits.

p.s. There’s more to come – more changes along the same line. Big things in the wind!

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Going global: Let Patients Help Europe Tour, Fall 2013

Euro tour map Nov 2013
Map created by www.travellerspoint.com. Fun and free!

Let Patients Help is a successful book, but in the early days of its movement, it was common to hear skeptics say “This is only in America.” Boy was that wrong.

The first massive proof was TEDx Maastricht, the seminal event constructed by Lucien Engelen from Radboud UMC (university medical center) in the Dutch town of Nijmegen. It was such a big deal – the first conference I know of anywhere that was totally focused around patients … so many patients that a blogger Grand Rounds was devoted to videos of the talks patients gave at that event.

It was the first time anyone heard the chant “Let Patients Help” in a TED Talk, and the response has been enormous: almost a half million views so far on TED.com. TED says there’s usually the same number on other sites, so that means almost a million views. Volunteers have added subtitles created in 26 languages, so I’d say it’s not “only in America.”

This fall, Europe goes “e,” big-time, with four events in one month.

In November four events in four European customers will focus on Let Patients Help, all driven by visionaries who are seriously working on patient engagement – in Athens, Budapest, Amsterdam and Brussels.
[Read more…]

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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)

[Read more…]

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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.
__________

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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“Better Health: Everyone’s Responsibility” – resources for today’s conference

Patients Included badge
Click to view Lucien Engelen’s “Patients Included” story on LinkedIn

Conference logoFor years we in the participatory medicine movement have been talking about the need to involve patients in all aspects of medicine – not just our own cases but even in the design of the whole system. The movement is exemplified by the Patients Included badge at right, created by Dutch health visionary Lucien Engelen.

Today I’m speaking at a truly extraordinary healthcare event in Hartford – it’s completely about, for, and aimed at  the public – us ordinary people:

  • The title is right on target: “Better Health: Everyone’s Responsibility”
  • The event is scheduled from 12:45-8, so people only have to take a half day off work
  • Admission is $35 including dinner(!!), or $10 without(!!)

Over 500 local people (aka patients) are attending. For more, see the event’s website.

In my talk I’ll mention various resources participants can look up, to learn more about the movement and boost their own abilities.  I’m going to publish this post now, and through the day I’ll add various things as they come to mind.

BIG thanks to the event’s organizers, the CT Partners for Health partnership and its founder Qualidigm. Here are some starter links: [Read more…]

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From Let Patients Help: “For patients: collaborating effectively with your clinicians” by Dr Danny Sands

In a Twitter chat this afternoon, friend Dr. Jack West noted that some e-patients are great to work with and others, not so much. It’s obvious we need to teach people how to do this effectively – both docs and patients alike … sort of a “patient engagement handbook.”

So I decided to publish this, from the “tip sheets” section of my book Let Patients Help: A Patient Engagement Handbook: :-) This part is written by my primary physician, e-patient pioneer Dr. Danny Sands.

Let Patients Help front cover

For patients: collaborating effectively
with your clinicians

By Dr. Danny Sands

  1. Appreciate that healthcare should be a collaboration among the patient, the patient’s caregivers and family, and clinicians.
  2. Be mutually respectful of each other’s contributions. Your physician is an expert in medicine, but you are an expert in you.
  3. Take responsibility for your health—healthcare is not a spectator sport: it’s participatory.
  4. Prepare for your visit: read about your conditions, review your record, make a list so you don’t forget, and discuss the agenda in advance. [Read more…]