Ask the Patient feature, on QuantiaMD

I was thrilled to be engaged by clinician network QuantiaMD to do an “Ask the Patient” feature. (I get a small stipend.) It’s live, and available for public viewing. Free registration is required to view their videos; you can preview the first minute or so of each one without registering.

We often talk (here and on e-patients.net) about patient social networks and how they help spread ideas and information. Well I’ll be darned, it turns out doctors and nurses are doin’ it too, with similar benefits. Who knew? :-) And you know I was thrilled that they’ve added a new feature, “Ask the Patient.” Here’s hoping every clinician community does the same. Let Patients Help!

It works like this:

• The guest records an introduction, and clinician members send in questions.
• QuantiaMD’s editor collects them, gathers them into categories, and asks the guest to record a response to some.
• They produce a response – the audio plus some slides.

Note: only registered clinicians can discuss on their site, but anyone can comment here. :) Go for it!

Here’s mine:

• Home page of their Doctor-Patient Relationship SIG (special interest group)
• My introduction post (1:51). Includes introduction to Doc Tom, e-patients, and participatory medicine.
  • Clinician subscribers submitted questions. They got hundreds. How cool is that?
  • Editor Marta Murcia collected them and selected a few for me to respond to, below.
• Response 1: How did you survive metastatic RCC? (4:33)
  • This will be old hat for people familiar with my story, but this time it’s expressed specifically clinicians in mind who are new to “e” concepts
• Response 2: What can the role of e-patients be in my practice? Why would I need them? (8:40)
  • My best shot in a few minutes at explaining to clinicians where the value is, in a good participatory relationship.
  • I expressed this with the specific intent of encouraging doctors and nurses “on the front lines” to start exploring how to engage patients and welcome ones who are already engaged.
• Response 3: When seeking health information on the internet, how can we separate the gold from the garbage? (7:19)
  • Increasingly in my speaking appearances this is becoming the most important, most action-worthy first question clinicians want to pursue.
  • I branched out into examples of real value I found, and others have found.
  • Note the emphasis on using this new info channel in a context of partnership … and catch the reference to House MD.:)
• Response 4: How can physicians and patients become better partners? (4:48)
  • Talks a lot about the culture shift that’s underway, and the changing roles, the “new dance,” as it’s called.
  • Returns to the Society for Participatory Medicine.

Thanks to QuantiaMD for having an Ask The Patient feature, and thanks to the many clinicians who are participating!  Here’s to more of the same, as we work together through this culture shift.

Here’s a starter list of resources and people mentioned in the talks – I’ll add more:

• Dr. Danny Sands, my primary physician and President of SPM
• Dr. David McDermott, my oncologist at Beth Israel Deaconess
• Othon Iliopoulos MD – renal cancer doctor at Mass General
• ACOR.org – my kidney cancer patient community
• PatientsLikeMe – extraordinary network of patient communities, very advanced scientifically and analytically
• Inspire.com – network of patient communities
• My jazz singer sister, Suede (Facebook), and her song “I like to lead when I dance” :)

(QuantiaMD calls itself a “medical network” or “learning network” for clinicians… to me it’s a social network – Wikipedia says “A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networksor social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities.” I guess QuantiaMD isn’t focused on the relationships, but to me there are two important dynamics:

• valuable information flows more easily than in the offline world
• peer-to-peer dialog takes place. This is a social network just as surely as in a face-to-face elbow-rubbing “networking event.”

(I’m not sure I like the image of face-to-face elbow-rubbing, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.)