I am a caregiver. I help coordinate the health and home care for an elder loved one who, for the purposes of maintaining a bit of anonymity, I will call “M.” He is a healthy, happy octogenarian. We have known each other for nearly 40 years, but we are not related by blood. I am […]
peer-to-peer health care
Public Q&A: Peer support for parents of teens with cancer
Helen Burstin, MD, reached out to ask if I know of an online peer-to-peer support group for parents of teens with cancer. For anyone who knows Helen: Don’t worry, it’s not for her own family. She is asking on behalf of a friend, who writes: “I’ve been able to find groups for parents of children […]
What if your clinician gave you a prescription to check out a patient group that they knew to be good?
Amy Gleason (@PatientSide) captured this line of mine, delivered on a panel at the Health Datapalooza yesterday. Her tweet generated an interesting cascade of reactions ranging from: “This is potentially dangerous” to “This is obvious (and old news).” I thought I’d expand on my observations and see if people want to expand on theirs in […]
Chasing cures
Bon Ku, MD, a regular on the TV show “Chasing the Cure,” and David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, author of CHASING MY CURE, invited me to join their upcoming panel at the Health Datapalooza. Guess what title we chose? We are nothing if not consistent: Chasing cures. We intend to focus on how open source principles can break […]
Crowd-diagnosing STDs on Reddit
Reddit is a massive Petri dish of human conversation, rife with peer-to-peer health encounters, so I was thrilled when Jane Sarasohn-Kahn alerted me to this article: “People Are Flocking to the Internet to Crowdsource Their STD Diagnosis—Yes, Really.” It focuses on a subreddit (aka online community) devoted to sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs). Kudos to Parade for […]
Why I (finally) signed up for health data access
Christine Bechtel, Lygeia Ricciardi, Dave deBronkart, Casey Quinlan, and Donna Cryer published an article in Health Affairs this week: “Why Aren’t More Patients Electronically Accessing Their Medical Records (Yet)?” Please click through and read it — it’s open access. Being a health geek, I read footnotes and every link in this article is worth your time. Bechtel […]
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