Designing Peer-to-peer Health

“How can peer to peer connection make a healthier society? Can Amazon reviews give us fresh insight into our health? Why do on-line patient communities represent an incredible untapped resource in healthcare? How can a co-designed death give us a fuller life?”

Bon Ku and I explore these questions and more in Episode 59 of his podcast, Design Lab. It’s the most personal public conversation I’ve engaged in, so please give it a listen and let me know if it inspires your own thinking in new ways.

Here are some of the resources and people I mention:

• Paul Tarini, originator of my favorite title: Internet Geologist
• John Costik and the Nightscout project
• Sara Riggare‘s 1 in 8,765 illustration (which I got wrong in the interview – oops!)
• JAMA study of crowd-diagnosing on r/STD (and my take on it)
• Injection tips (an example of peer-to-peer health advice)
• Jodi Ferrier and Laurie Strongin, two of my peer mentors (they challenged me to write this Harvard Business Review article)
• Elegy for A. and M. (how Mitsuru and I started our care partner co-design project)
• Lessons learned about hospice care (how it ended)
• Alexandra Drane, creator of Engage With Grace (a worksheet for end-of-life conversations), co-founder of Archangels (a company reframing caregiving and proving there’s an ROI on love, co-founded with Sarah Stephens Winnay)
• BJ Miller, creator of Mettle Health (during Mitsuru’s final days, I watched BJ’s TED talk every morning and kept a copy of A Beginner’s Guide to the End close by)
• Yoko Sen, creator of My Last Sound