When Keith Schorsch began suffering from facial paralysis, fatigue, and severe muscular and skeletal pain, eleven doctors failed to identify the cause. Luckily, a friend recognized the symptoms as similar to what she had suffered when she had Lyme disease – and that’s the clue that saved Keith. Keith turned his experience into a consumer […]
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Here Comes Everybody–Susannah Fox
Over on the Inkwell, our own Jon Lebkowsky is interviewing Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody.” My favorite quote so far: “The places where experts matter and flourish are places where it is expertise, rather than authority (which is to say knowledge and experience, rather than imprimatur and access to public expression) that give […]
Consumers talk back to CNN’s Empowered Patient–Susannah Fox
For several informative empowered patient stories, see the Comments at bottom of this post. CNN’s Empowered Patient column, by medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, contains good, if not groundbreaking, advice, plus the occasional exaggeration or misconception. For example, here on e-patients.net, Charlie Smith praised the Empowered Patient column on misdiagnosis; Gilles Frydman dismantled the tips on […]
The Plausible Promise of Participatory Medicine–Susannah Fox
I think participatory medicine is what Eric Raymond calls a “plausible promise”: something big enough to inspire interest yet achievable enough to inspire confidence. Reforming health care is too big for most people to grasp; creating spaces for participatory medicine is not. E-patients are already finding, sharing, and mashing up health information online. If you […]
Patient Activism–Susannah Fox
If you have doubts about the impact of social media on health care, please read this 2005 post on The Health Care Blog about a grandmother’s campaign on behalf of her grandson. There’s a lot of heart (and snark) in the comments.
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