The E-Patient becomes a patient February 13, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in e-patient, Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Video, Web 2.0.2 comments
E-patient Dave deBronkart has been the most important and amazing voice of the e-patient movement for years now after surviving a kidney cancer years ago. When I asked him to comment on how medical students should become doctors who are aware of the e-patient movement, he sent me and my students this message.
He announced a few days ago that he has skin cancer again.
An odd consequence of speaking at medical conferences is that sometimes my face is displayed, real big, on monitors at the front of a room. That happened in November at the Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) annual meeting in Washington.
At the end, Lisa Letourneau MD, MPH of Maine Quality Countsraced up, pointed to my jaw, and said “You should have that checked. I think it’s a basal cell.” (That’s the least serious type of skin cancer – see Wikipedia: “Basal-cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common type of skin cancer. It rarely metastasizes or kills.”) A few days later I took the picture at left, and started watching.
And now here is the newest piece of the story, Dave approaches the issue from a different angle:
I’ve decided to explore my options by doing what companies do when they’re shopping for a solution: they write a Request for Proposals, and let vendors reply. But in this case what I published isn’t cast in stone – I invite discussion and suggestions. And, significantly, I start with the context: partnership; participatory medicine -
I cannot wait to see how the industry and the healthcare system respond to such innovative approach.
What about HealthTap? February 11, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
I guess you have heard about HealthTap, I even saw Ron Gutman’s talk at Stanford a few months ago. I’ve never thought that letting patients ask questions and letting physicians answer these questions without providing clear credentials, without knowing or seeing the patient in person is a good idea. To be clear, I think it’s a very dangerous idea, because people will probably use the service and while this Q&A approach would work in all areas, medicine is an exception. Practicing medicine happens in person, through real doctor visits, or even when online communication between doctor and patient is encouraged, a first real meeting is required (remember the model of Jay Parkinson,MD?).
I just found a great article covering this issue. An excerpt:
[U]sers post questions and doctors post brief answers. The service is free, and the doctors aren’t paid. Instead, they engage in gamelike competitions, earning points and climbing numbered levels. They can also receive nonmonetary awards — many of them whimsically named, like the “It’s Not Brain Surgery” prize, earned for answering 21 questions at the site.
So far, so good. But there’s more. The professional credentials of the physician answering your question, such as a board-certified specialty, are not available on the site. Instead, you get a crowdsourced “reputation level” built up by accumulating HealthTap awards, by clicks of approval from other doctors and by other measurable activities at the site.
The advice itself is limited to 400 characters, a length the Times worries is “hardly well-suited for providing nuanced answers to some medical questions.”
I would love to hear what you think!
Sherpaa: A New Initiative in Healthcare February 7, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Health, Web 2.0, Medicine 2.0, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Innovation.add a comment
You all know the story of Jay Parkinson, MD who launched the first online GP service years ago in New York. After it became a “franchise”, he left and started a new company, The Future Well. A few months ago, I met him at Stanford, asked about his new projects and he mentioned the Sherpaa idea. Well, here is the official launch and the concept of Sherpaa.
To me it seems that Sherpaa tries to help patients when there are easier solutions for a health-related problem compared to using the traditional healthcare system. They give a specific example, what happens when you cut your finger:
- You call your Guide
- We ask you to snap a photo of the cut and email it to us
- We look at it and it looks like something that can be handled outside the ER
- We give instructions on what to do in the meantime as we schedule a stitch up
- We call Dr. Sung (our plastic surgeon)
- You are free to meet Dr. Sung in his office in an hour
- You are on the road to recovery
—without sherpaa
Cost in ER: $4000
Time in ER: 8 hrs—with sherpaa
Cost in Dr. Sung’s office: $1000
Time with Dr. Sung: 30 min
I believe the idea is timely and the structure is well-designed knowing Jay’s enthusiasm and proficiency. The only concern is how the healthcare system will look at their machinery. What do you think?
Ambulance crews tweet ‘working life’ February 6, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
It seems tweeting during work hours in order to give some insights about that specific job is quite trendy these days. A few days ago, I read a BBC report about the North West Ambulance Services that started to use Twitter while working so people could feel themselves closer to the crews.
Five North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) crews from Liverpool, Burnley, Kendal, Crewe and Manchester will take part in the week-long project.
NWAS Director of Emergency Services Derek Cartwright said each crew would tweet for one day.
He said the tweets would not reveal patient details, but would show “the human side of the service”.
Then a friend from the UK informed me on Twitter (where else?) that London Ambulane has been doing the same thing for some time.
As I think this is a great idea and locally it can have a huge impact, I would love to see other examples from other countries and I count on you in collecting these examples.
What happens to your online life when you die? February 4, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Video, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
I have plenty of social media accounts with many contacts and friends. I have data stored in the cloud and have a lot of passwords and files online. Have you ever wondered what happens to your online life when you die?
Well, they say over 1.7 million Facebook users died in 2011. An Australian website collected all the information you need to know from digital preservation to digital waste you would leave behind.
From Bionic Bodyshop to E-patient Bootcamp February 3, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in e-patient, Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.add a comment
Private hospitals in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, have adopted a tech-savvy way to remind patients of their next appointment. By sending out SMS reminders, outpatients were able to keep their scheduled hospital visits and reduce the number of nonattendance. This mobile method was especially helpful and effective for patients needing ongoing treatment, for example with dengue fever.
Advanced medical devices are the tools that enable humans and robots to merge, perhaps signaling the dawn of a technological singularity. How close are we now? Take a tour and shop around — we’ve been cramming more intricate engineering into our bodies than you might think.
Evidence Based Medicine in Social Media February 3, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.4 comments
Do you remember when Google Flu Trends was launched and we were all amazed by the great idea behind that? And do you remember when a study from the University of Washington came up concluding that Google Flu Trends is not as accurate as CDC’s national surveillance programs? So it is social media, it’s trendy and innovative but useless in medicine and healthcare.
Here is the over-shined iPad2 which everyone loves and would like to use at hospitals and clinical practices and we see an amazing number of apps designed for that. A new study now concluded that diagnostic imaging on iPads is twice as slow.
A study from the University of Maryland found that radiologists using iPad 2s to evaluate patients for tuberculosis (TB) took twice as long to make a diagnosis as they did when using a 27-inch LCD monitor. Still, the study of 200 negative and 40 positive TB cases that included five radiologists, found the two displays to yield no significant differences when it came to diagnostic decisions.
Whatever tool, device or service we use in medicine, we must stick to the evidence based approach.
Top 10 Hepatitis Social Media Resources February 2, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0, Webicina.1 comment so far
Webicina’s new Hepatitis and Social Media collection features relevant and quality social media resources from blogs and podcasts to community sites, Youtube and Twitter accounts focusing on hepatitis.
Here is my top 10 social media selection for hepatitis:
- HBV and HCV Advocate’s Hepatitis Blog (blog)
- Hepatitis B Foundation – Podcast Directory (podcast)
- Inspire – Hepatitis-C Community (community site)
- HCV Support (community site)
- Global Hepatitis Initiative (Facebook)
- Hepatitis Central (Twitter)
- Hepatitis Australia (Youtube)
- Mayo Clinic – Hepatitis (information resource)
- AnswersIn Medicine Hepatitis C (mobile app)
- Hepatitis Foundation (Youtube)
And PeRSSonalized Hepatitis, the simplest, free, customizable, multi-lingual medical information aggregator will let you follow these resources easily in a personalized way.
Feel free to share any of these resources and let us know if you think others should be added.
Educational Comics: Schizophrenia and more January 30, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0.add a comment
Last week, I gave a presentation about how people with mental conditions and their doctors use the web and social media at the Congress of Psychiatry and I saw a great idea when walking around after my talk. The comics book shown below (Microchip in the brain) is used for educating people dealing with schizophrenia. It guides the patient through a whole story describing the symptoms, issues at the doctor visit and other important topics.
As I checked it online, there are other great comic books focusing on different conditions. Such high quality educational materials can be a huge help both for patients and their relatives.
Support for ‘Bald Barbie’ Campaign on Facebook January 24, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Health, Cancer, Web 2.0, Medicine 2.0, Health 2.0, e-patient, Facebook.add a comment
A Facebook campaign was launched a few weeks ago in order to urge Mattel to produce a bald version of its Barbie doll that will help children with cancer and others who have lost their hair due to illness cope with their conditions while playing. An excerpt from a recent article:
“We hope it gets the message out that being bald is beautiful and is no big deal. There’s no need to cover up,” she said.
Sypin’s own daughter is one of those children. The 12-year-old, named Kin Inich, lost her hair after chemotherapy.
Even though her daughter isn’t a huge Barbie fan, Sypin said she is excited about the idea.
“She said if they make one, she would totally get it,” Sypin said. “The first thing she said was if they make that doll, she would buy a bunch and take them to a children’s hospital and give them to children with cancer.”
Here is the Facebook page on which you can support this great idea!
