About Dave

• Quick links:
  • For speaker bio’s, jump down to here.
  • For additional information visit Dave’s page on Wikipedia.
  • For other photos see the Photos page.

Cancer survivor “e-Patient Dave” is an international keynote speaker on healthcare who consistently earns extraordinary ratings by understanding each audience and working closely with each client to define their unique “home run.” Audiences have ranged from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to the Danish Patient Safety Association and the Israel Internet Society. His compelling TEDx Talk “Let Patients Help” is in the top half of most-watched TED talks of all time.

Standard Topics:

• Patient Engagement / Patient Empowerment
  • Let Patients Help Heal Healthcare  (book: Let Patients Help: A Patient Engagement Handbook with Dr. Danny Sands; introduction by Eric Topol MD)
• Healthcare Transformation
• Facing Death (book: Facing Death – With Hope)
• Inspiration / Motivation / Attitude / Mind Power
  • Dave’s first cancer book: “Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig: How an Empowered Patient Beat Stage IV Cancer (and what healthcare can learn from it)”
• Meaningful Use (health IT) and personal health records

See videos of past talks, testimonials, and list of past engagements.

New topics coming in 2013:

• Disruptive Innovation: What Fonts  Taught Me About Healthcare
• The Patient Who Published an RFP (and what he learned)

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Dave’s Story

“e-Patient Dave” deBronkart was diagnosed in January 2007 with Stage IV, Grade 4 renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer) at a very late stage. His median survival time at diagnosis was just 24 weeks; with tumors in both lungs, several bones, and muscle tissue, his prognosis was “grim,” as one web site described it.

He received great treatment at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: his surgeon removed the extensive mess (laparoscopically!), and the Biologic Therapy program helped him participate in a clinical trial for the powerful but severe High Dosage Interleukin-2 (HDIL-2). His last treatment was July 23, 2007, and by September it was clear he’d beaten the disease. His remaining lesions have continued to shrink.

Today: Advocate and Activist

An accomplished speaker and writer in his professional life before his illness, today Dave is actively engaged in opening health care information directly to patients on an unprecedented level, thus creating a new dynamic in how information is delivered, accessed and used by the patient. This is revolutionizing the relationship between patient and health care providers, which in turn will impact insurance, careers/jobs, quality of life and the distribution of finances across the entire spectrum of health care.

“What’s an e-Patient?”

A year after the diagnosis Dave was invited by his primary physician, Dr. Danny Sands, to join the annual retreat of the e-Patient Scholars Working Group. Founded by the late Tom Ferguson MD, a true visionary, the group consists of pioneers, both medical and lay, who have been quietly (and not so quietly) altering the balance of power in healthcare, demonstrating that as the internet brings patients together with information and with each other, a new world of Participatory Medicine is evolving, in which patients become potent agents in creating and managing their own health, in partnership with physicians.

Tom Ferguson said e-patients are empowered, engaged, equipped and enabled. Dave immediately saw himself as a match, became an active blogger on e-patients.net, and took on educating himself as much as he could. He went part-time in his day job in 2009, and left industry entirely in 2010 to devote himself full-time to healthcare.

“This is the first time in my life I’ve felt I have a calling,” says Dave, “something I can’t get away from: it’s what I need to do. I’ve had plenty of fulfilling jobs in a great career, but not a calling. This is it.”

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Bio for speaking engagements

Note to clients: In publishing conference materials, or introducing me to your audience at the event, I urge you not to focus primarily on my biographical details below; tell them why you invited me to take up their time at this event. I’m presuming there was a specific reason – that I’m not just a necessary evil to fill your agenda. So, share with your audience what called to you, and why you believe it’ll be relevant to their lives!

Having said that, you’re welcome to select from this formal bio.

Full bio, 232 words, June 2013:

Dave deBronkart, known on the internet as e-Patient Dave, is the author of the highly rated Let Patients Help: A Patient Engagement Handbook. After beating stage IV kidney cancer in 2007 he became a blogger, health policy advisor and international keynote speaker. An accomplished speaker in his professional life before cancer, he is today the best-known spokesman for the patient engagement movement, attending over 200 conferences and policy meetings internationally in the past two years, including testifying in Washington for patient access to the medical record under Meaningful Use.

A co-founder and board member of the Society for Participatory Medicine, e-Patient Dave has appeared in Time, U.S. News, USA Today, Wired, MIT Technology Review, and the HealthLeaders cover story “Patient of the Future,” and his writings have been published in the British Medical Journal, the Society for General Internal Medicine Forum, and the conference journal of the American Society for Clinical Oncology. In 2009 HealthLeaders named him and his doctor to their annual list of “20 People Who Make Healthcare Better.”

Dave’s TED Talk Let Patients Help has gone viral, in the top half of the most viewed TED Talks of all time, approaching a half million views; volunteers have added subtitles in 26 languages, indicating the global appeal of his message, and in 2012 the National Library of Medicine announced that it’s capturing his blog in its History of Medicine Division.