When we get sick or face a new challenge in our lives, we often feel alone, but we shouldn’t. There are people who have been in the same situation and are eager to help if they only knew how to find us. That’s one of my core beliefs, based on the fieldwork and research I’ve […]
Clinical trials jump on the Cluetrain
When the organizers of a National Cancer Institute workshop on social media and clinical trials invited me to speak, they said: We have an ethical obligation to understand social media. Social media is not just trendy. It’s a tool, an opportunity to act in an ethical way, not only to increase recruitment but to help […]
Public Q&A: Avoiding burnout
How do you avoid professional burnout? Two clinician friends of mine recently shared their divergent paths: one is starting a company, the other is taking a sabbatical. Since avoiding extreme, chronic stress is a challenge that I hear about a lot I thought I’d share my advice for each of them and ask for community input. […]
If we give people access to the tools they need to solve problems, they will
One of my core beliefs is that if we give people access to the data, information, and tools they need to solve their own problems, they will. The Maker movement is an example of a group of people who embody this idea. They modify and improve the world around them. They look at a problem and not only say, […]
How to judge an innovation
Update: George Hacks is being held again this year, January 26-27, 2019. I’ll serve as a judge once again and I can’t wait to see what students come up with! George Hacks is a medical and assistive device hackathon happening this weekend in Washington, DC. The students organizing the event have done a stellar job recruiting […]
The Rise of the New Bio-citizen
Over the next two days, I’ll be part of a group convened by Eleonore Pauwels and Todd Kuiken to discuss barriers to citizen-driven biomedical research. If you are intrigued, read the report, “The Rise of the New Bio-citizen,” which lays out how people “are pursuing a range of activities from analyses of genomic data for […]
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