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Europeans Open To Innovations In Their Healthcare System

Pascal Lardier, International Director of Health 2.0 asked me for an interview about the future of health 2.0. Here is the interview and an excerpt:

Basically, the medical acts remain the same: doctors will continue to receive their patients. But both stakeholders need to adapt and be able to deal with the rapidly growing amount of information available online. As the patient’s motivation is clearly more important (their health is at stake), they are more open to these innovations/developments while medical professionals use the internet and social media for other purposes: education, collaboration, diagnostic technologies, etc… Patients and doctors basically use the same type of technologies for different purposes. I’m sure social media, used with strategy and caution, will help fill the gap between patients and their physicians.

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Does Your Doctor Look Up Information Online In Front Of You?

Nearly three-quarters of survey respondents said they look up information online in front of a patient sometimes or often, and another 11% said they do when absolutely needed. Only 13% deliberately avoid it.

ACP Internist polled its readers in relation to its story on computers in medicine, in which it focused on whether doctors should look up information in front of a patient. From this, 362 readers responded in August that: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Virtual World Hopes To Find Path To Real Participatory Healthcare

One of the best initiatives in social media and healthcare I’ve recently seen is definitely the Radboud REshape Academy.

Finding for our path to migrate into real participatory healthcare we come across a lot of interesting people, information, innovations and most of all questions.

Right from the beginning we started to share, with our network. We have been doing this with our conferences, our research, our lectures and through field trips made to our Radboud REshape & Innovation Centre for HC institutions, insurers, government and other people interested in changing healthcare. And of course our Innovation Centre.

In setting up The Radboud REshape Academy (@REshapeAcademy on twitter) we would like to create Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Interaction With A Patient Shows Physician A Major Transition In Medicine

Sometime around 1998 in the Texas Medical Center:

DrV: (enters exam room) Hey, How are you? I’m Bryan Vartabedian (extends hand).

Father: (arms crossed, smiling, leaning against wall) Oh I know who you are, Doc.  And I know where you went to school, where you’ve lived, if you’ve been sued and a few other things. And I’m fine, by the way.

DrV: Um, Okay. (Shakes hands with father. Looking to child, scruffing his hair).  And this must be Caleb.

An odd moment, for sure. When it happened I didn’t know what it was about. After similar encounters I understood.  It was about where patients found themselves in the early days of the information revolution.  And there was the father who wheeled into the exam room two large boxes of printouts perched on a dolly.  Inkjet validation of his role in the decision about his son’s surgery.

These situations illustrate Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

After One Year, The Mayo Clinic Center For Social Media Is Still Going Strong

I’ve always been a great fan of what Mayo Clinic has been doing on social media. Then after Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media was launched, I became a member of the international external advisory board which I’m very proud of. I reported when they launched a patient community and also discussed how well they did this. Now the Center is 1 year old and still performs perfectly. An excerpt form their previous entry:

Here’s a sneak peek of a few topics that were discussed during Mayo’s retreat: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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