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November 8, 2013 By e-Patient Dave 3 Comments

Patients in Power conference: background and live blog

At 2:00 a.m. New York time, a conference started in Athens, Greece: the second annual Patients In Power conference, created by powerhouse cancer patient Kathi Apostolidis. I want the U.S. to know what’s happening here, so the usual Twitter stream won’t do: most of it will be over by the time America’s online. So I’m going to live blog parts, so people can read later. Through the day I’ll blog about it occasionally. Here are the basics:
Patient Created v2

  • Live stream on LiveMedia.Gr (with archive)
  • The Patients In Power website (in Greek and English)
  • Facebook page
  • Twitter account: @PiPGr
  • The #PiPGr Twitter stream on TChat
  • Twitter analytics on Symplur

Later posts here today:

  • European Charter of Patient Rights
  • Eruption in the session on Cross Border Care

Patients more than Included

Patients Included badgeThe badge at left is the symbol of the Patients Included movement, created by Lucien Engelen, director of the Radboud REshape & Innovation Center at Radboud University Medical Center. Its purpose is to put an end to conferences that propose to be for the benefit of patients, without including said patients in the conference.

The best known “all about the patients” conference is Larry Chu’s Medicine X at Stanford: patients are truly at the center, e-patients are advisors to the conference, and the conference subsidizes participation by patients. This conference in Athens goes even further: the organizing committee consists of forty patients  & advocates, and just one academic. Every single aspect of this conference was conceived, designed, planned and prioritized from the patient point of view.

I took the liberty of modifying Lucien’s badge. If his university’s lawyers yell at me we’ll deal with it. :)

Newsletter adSaturday: e-Patient Boot Camp

For more than a year, Kathi has wanted to bring my “e‑Patient Boot Camp” to Athens. This year she made it happen.

Saturday morning we’ll have a 3.5 hour training based on Let Patients Help, with plenty of interaction. (At both the Friday conference and the Saturday boot camp there’s simultaneous translation.) I anticipate assistance from the incredible Martha Hayward of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement – a cancer patient, accomplished health improvement executive and their guru of what they call “Public and Patient Engagement.” She’s speaking today, and I’ve been learning a ton, spending time with her.

And that requires, of course, having the book in the local language:

Greek edition of Let Patients HelpLet Patients Help – in Greek:
“Οι Ασθενείς Μπορούν να Βοηθήσουν”

I love that this movement is getting more momentum from individuals than it’s getting from the whole Society for Participatory Medicine – which I co-chair. (Gotta fix that!) In the Netherlands Lucien Engelen has created a Dutch translation of Let Patients Help, and in Budapest Bertalan Mesko created a Hungarian edition.

For this event, Kathi organized a team of volunteers to translate the book into Greek and get it printed – not in a fancy bound “real book” but in a saddle-stitched booklet. When someone translates the book for self-use, I don’t collect a royalty – what they do with it is up to them. (I just require that the message be translated accurately, so the message isn’t spread incorrectly. And if the book is to be sold at retail, we need to talk.)

This is Let Patients Help “on the hoof.” For real.

I have to say, being at this event is a little bit of a cognitive firehose – this is so different from other conferences, which are either managed for commercial purposes (the sponsors get to speak!) or for the benefit of researchers or some other party. For most such events, getting them to engage with patients is like pulling teeth: “Do we HAVE to? And why do they need financial support?? Most of our speaker don’t.”

Well, that issue doesn’t exist here, because this event was created bypatients. Nobody needs to explain to them how to view healthcare from the patient’s point of view.

Congratulations to Kathi and the large network of volunteers and sponsors she has assembled.

 

Filed Under: Events 3 Comments

Comments

  1. Vassilis Kafiris says

    November 13, 2013 at 3:58 am

    When I got the idea for a patient conference *by patients, for all*, I was unaware of Lucien Engelen’s “Patients Included” movement. “Patients in Power” concept is introducing a whole new view on how patients can participate in healthcare decision making. Hopefully our example will inspire other patients to create similar conferences in their countries.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Patients In Power conference: European Charter of Patient Rights « e-Patient Dave says:
    November 8, 2013 at 7:34 am

    […] heads to blog and absorb everything going on at the Patients In Power conference, described in my previous post. (I have immense respect for capable journalists!) But, we do what we […]

    Reply
  2. Patients in Power conference in Athens--e-Patient Dave « Knowledge of MedicineKnowledge of Medicine says:
    November 9, 2013 at 1:26 am

    […] my personal site I’m blogging about the second annual Patients In Power conference happening today and tomorrow in […]

    Reply

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