Read this quote from Owen Thomas’s piece about Jeff Bezos and his purchase of The Washington Post, but insert “health care” in place of “media”:
In the tech world—the world where Bezos made his fortune—it’s taken for granted that one should use data about how people use a product to make that product better and introduce new features.
What if we actually did that in the media world—without sneering, without gritting our teeth, and without oversimplifying the enormity of the task?
What if?
What if that question were extended to research methods? That is, what if researchers could, without sneering or gritting our teeth, use data to make our projects more inviting to respondents and participants?
I can’t wait to get to explore these ideas at Stanford Medicine X this year. I’m going to lead a Master Class on Participatory Research and this will be one of my themes — data-driven innovation. Another session will focus on other “What if health care…?” questions. I’d love to get the discussion going now on both sessions — please comment below if you have ideas or questions. And I hope I’ll see you in Palo Alto later this month!
> What is participatory research?
> What can you learn when you listen more than ask?
I need twelve heads and butts to attend all the sessions I want at MedX. I sure hope this one ends up making the cut, because a few days later I’ll be talking about research (MEDICAL research, drug development) at the World Parkinson’s Congress.
Could the scientific establishment DARE to do this? (“What can you learn when you listen more than ask?”)
Who gets to say what outcomes researchers should pursue?
Who gets to say what data points in the findings are worth our attention?
Who gets to say what we should do next?
You should post a “Help Me Choose” essay on your blog. I did it for a chronic disease conference in 2008 and then for Medicine 2.0 2011.
Tip: be really specific and put all the details you can into the post so people don’t have to click away to find what you’re referring to.
Very exciting blog post. Really like the comparison to media and tech. Comparing healthcare to other industries is so helpful in illuminating what we should be doing next. Just a random fact for the day, when Amazon first allowed users to rate books, other book sellers told Bezos he was crazy. Didn’t he know that he would sell fewer copies of a book if it had a bad rating? He went ahead anyway. Ultimately it lead to selling more books. Participation drove engagement AND success. Here’s to the crazy ones.
That’s a fascinating story, Brett. Do you have a link to it somewhere? I’d like to learn more about it. Thanks!
+1 for the citation request! Love that story.
I found out this morning that 200,000 people have taken the Pew Research Center’s News IQ quiz in just the past 4 days. People LOVE our quizzes, comparing their results with other people’s.
What people don’t love is answering phone surveys, which fuel the quizzes. Response rates have dropped to 9% (from 25% in 2003, for example), raising questions about the representativeness of public opinion surveys.
What if we added in a feedback loop? What if we somehow allowed people to participate? I don’t know exactly how to do this, but I know we need to figure it out. And an opportunity is staring us in the face.
Now, who wants to share their score on the News IQ quiz? I got 12/13 🙂
What if postal workers had been responsible for creating the email, how it would be? The service may not even exist. Would have been considered “no compliance” during the approval phase of the project …. And what if the MP3 had to be created by executives from major record labels? Have happened? In my experience I have observed that many researchers are like traditional postmen. They want to continue delivering the paper letters because only thus they can paste the label that proves they conducted an “ethical research”.
Sorry about the lack of my english…
Your English is more than up to the task! “What if?” can have a darker edge to it, as you write. My attempt at a metaphor: It is hard to see the potential of solar panels when you are mining the last seam of coal, way down deep in the Earth.
> it’s hard to see the potential of solar panels
> when you’re mining the last seam of coal,
> way down deep in the Earth.
Oh, you metaphor hotshot – I thought of hiding my admiration, but I won’t even try. 🙂 Well done.
I’ll contribute my slogan-trimmer version:
It’s hard to see the potential of solar
when you’re mining the last seam of coal.
That almost sounds like a shot of Bob Dylan, doesn’t it! (Except he doesn’t write Iambic…)
So wish I could attend your master class at MedX, but they scheduled my presentation at the same time in another room. Hopefully we can still connect.