This post originally appeared on RWJF’s Culture of Health blog: I am thrilled to begin my job as the entrepreneur in residence (EIR) at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. You might think that the EIR role is traditionally associated with venture capital firms, not foundations. But scratch the surface and you’ll find commonalities between the two industries. […]
Tom Ferguson
I’m leaving Pew Research
Believe it or not, 14 years ago, the idea of using the internet for health was a novel concept. That’s when Pew Internet published its first report about the social impact of the internet on health and health care, raising eyebrows across the U.S. Our data was cited in mainstream news outlets, in JAMA, and, […]
Just in time someone like me
In 2005, I took a call from someone who worked at Planned Parenthood. He wanted the conversation to be off the record, so I didn’t even write down his name, which is a shame because that conversation changed the direction of my career. The caller had seen media coverage of Pew Internet’s health research, probably […]
Put down the clipboard and listen
Here are the remarks I prepared for the Feb. 6, 2014, Engage & Empower Me class at Stanford Medical School. It’s a long post, so if you’d prefer to zone out, you can watch the video. In thinking about this class, I thought a good framing question for tonight is: How does change happen? How […]
Never assume that what you are seeing or experiencing is everyone else’s reality.
Atul Gawande can shine a bright spotlight, even with just a few tweets. On Saturday he linked to an article about new social media guidelines for physicians which states: Aside from not “friending” patients [on Facebook], the guidelines also recommend the following to physicians: • Don’t use text messaging for medical interactions, even with established […]
The e is for engagement
What if we redefined the Quantified Self movement to include everyone who keeps a pair of “skinny jeans” in their closet? What if the 85% of U.S. adults who own a cell phone understood that it’s potentially a tool for health tracking? What if everyone designing health care tools first talked with patients and caregivers […]
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