The Times ran an intriguing experiment on its Well blog yesterday: a medical problem-solving contest. The challenge, based on the story of a real girl who lives near Philadelphia, drew 1379 posted comments and closed this morning with publication of the answer.
Dr. Lisa Sanders, who moderated the piece, says today that the first submitted correct response came from a California physician; the second came from a Minnesota woman who is not a physician. Evidently she recognized the condition’s manifestations from her experience working with people who have it.
The public contest – and even the concept of using the word “contest” – to solve a real person’s medical condition interests me a lot. This kind of puzzle is, as far as I know, unprecedented apart from the somewhat removed domains of doctors’ journals and on-line platforms intended for physicians, medical school problem-based learning cases, clinical pathological conferences (CPC’s) and fictional TV shows. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
ABCNews.com has posted a great new piece by Dr. Roni Zeiger entitled, “The Biggest Wasted Resource in Health Care? You.” Subtitle: “How Your Internet Research Can Help Your Relationship With Your Doctor.” It’s well reasoned and clearly written, and continues the trend we cited a month ago, when Time posted Dr. Zack Meisel’s article saying that patients who Google can help doctors.
Related notes:
— Dr. Zeiger’s article title parallels what Dr. Charles Safran told the House Ways & Means Subcommittee on Health in 2004: Patients are “the most under-utilitized resource.” He was talking about health IT, quoting his colleague Dr. Warner Slack, who had said it many years earlier. I often quote it in my speeches for the Society for Participatory Medicine, asserting that it applies not just to IT but to all of healthcare.
— Dr. Zeiger is on the editorial board of our Journal of Participatory Medicine and is Chief Health Strategist at Google. He gets the power of patient engagement deeply and clearly. Last fall he posted a prediction that in the future it might be malpractice for doctors not to prescribe a patient community to help you help yourself with your conditions.
Prediction: Googling and patient networks will become essential as we move toward the practice of shared medical decision making (SMDM). I know firsthand that the information my kidney cancer community gave me about coping with treatments went well beyond what my excellent clinicians could offer. (We’re starting a series on SMDM. The first entry was in December.)
*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*
At this past October’s Health 2.0 meeting in San Francisco, many great new ideas about the future of healthcare were presented with a special emphasis on technology. For a great overview check out the keynotes by Jeff Goldsmith & Tim O’Reilly. The conference, organized by Matthew Holt & Indu Subaiya started in 2007 and bills itself as the “the leading showcase of cutting-edge technologies in healthcare.” Those not lucky enough to attend the conferences can follow along on the Health 2.0 blog.
Besides exploring the overarching themes of the future of healthcare in general and health IT in particular, many innovative companies, young and old, gave on-stage demos at the conference. One demonstration in particular stood out for me. This was the demo by the Accelerator Apps Network which showed the future of interconnected companies and applications seamlessly exchanging patient information. The Health 2.0 Accelerator Apps Network is a non-profit industry consortium launched by the Health 2.0 company. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
The puppeteer skit features the interaction between a young man with a rash and his older physician. The patient is an informed kind of guy: He’s checked his own medical record on the doctor’s website, read up on rashes in the Boston Globe, checked pix on WebMD, seen an episode of “Gray’s Anatomy” about a rash and, most inventively, checked iDiagnose, a hypothetical app (I hope) that led him to the conclusion that he might have epidermal necrosis.
“Not to worry,” the patient informs Dr. Matthews, who meanwhile has been trying to examine him (“Say aaahhh” and more): He’s eligible for an experimental protocol. After some back-and-forth in which the doctor — who’s been quite courteous until this point, calling the patient “Mr. Horcher,” for example, and not admonishing the patient who’s got so many ideas of his own — the doctor says that the patient may be exacerbating the condition by scratching it, and questions the wisdom of taking an experimental treatment for a rash. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
In brief, a woman who had been to see a number of different health care providers without getting a clear diagnosis showed up in an emergency room, went into a coma and nearly died. She was saved by a doctor’s review of the detailed notes she kept about her symptoms, etc., which she posted on Facebook. The story is vague on the details, but apparently her son facilitated getting the doc access to her Facebook page, and the details posted there allowed him to diagnose and treat her condition. She recovered fully.
Newt and Dr. Thapar wax rhapsodic about how Facebook saved a life, and sing the praises of social media’s role in modern medicine. (I’m not sure how this really fits in with Newt’s stance on health reform, within his 12-step program to achieve the total replacement of the Left…but, hey, nobody has the patience these days for so many details anyway.)
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The public contest – and even the concept of using the word “contest” – to solve a real person’s medical condition interests me a lot. This kind of puzzle is, as far as I know, unprecedented apart from the somewhat removed domains of doctors’ journals and on-line platforms intended for physicians, medical school problem-based learning cases, clinical pathological conferences (CPC’s) and fictional TV shows. Read more »
At this past October’s 
