e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

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Medicine is flipping. Join Eric Topol and me at MedCity ENGAGE to discuss

Click to register with FOUR hundred dollars off (better price than early-bird) with promotion code EPDAVE
Click to register with FOUR hundred dollars off using promotion code EPDAVE.

If you’re, frankly, a visionary who sees that the power structure in medicine is flipping, I urge you to come to La Jolla next month.

MedCity News, one of the best health IT publishers, is hosting its annual “ENGAGE” conference. The mighty Eric Topol is speaking the first morning, and I’m doing the closing keynote on day 2. (I call him mighty because that’s what I think about his vision. So sue me.:-)

Register with promotion code SpeakerReferral and get $500 off, so your cost is only $395. That’s a heck of a good price for this list of speakers – even better than the $300 early-bird discount shown above.

Here’s why this event is unusual: [Read more…]

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Join us for #HCLDR Tweetchat “Emergence of e-Patients” Tuesday 8:30pm ET

HCLDR blog post screen capture
Click to visit the original post on the #HCDLR blog

If you’re a fan of healthcare improvement, or of the e-patient movement, or social movements in general, and if you know anything about tweetchats in general or the #HCLDR tweetchat in specific, mark your calendar for next Tuesday night, 8:30-9:30 ET.  I’ll be that week’s guest, and it’s going to be wild and wooly and intentionally mind-bending.

In short, ten years ago the e-patient movement was getting born – well, it already existed, but it was beginning to get noticed, and with social movements getting noticed makes all  the difference.

What’s this “emergence” thing?

Emergence is a scientific principle that I’ll say more about over the weekend. Click the photo above to go to the HCLDR blog post to learn more about it in this context. In short, ten years ago the e-patient movement was like individual birds, and emergence is when new behaviors emerge in flocks of something.

Things are changing. Please click and learn. We’ll have more to say afterward.

 

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Patient and family engagement event August 8 in Concord NH

On Monday, August 8, my state’s Foundation for Healthy Communities (HealthyNH.com) is hosting an event where I’ll be speaking, titled “Improving Care at the Bedside through Effective Patient and Family Engagement.” It’s mostly intended for New Hampshire people, but organizer Tanya Lord says “I don’t think we would turn anyone away.”:-)

So come on down! Or up, or over, or whatever. Here’s a very short video introduction. (Email subscribers, if you can’t see the video, click the headline to come online.)
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Speaker Academy #28: “It’s my job to be more interesting than your email” (@TedEytan)

Phreesia webinar screen capture
Click to watch replay on Vimeo

This post is part brag, part teach, part challenge.

Last summer I did a webinar about patient engagement (here’s the replay) for Phreesia, a company that makes an iPad-like tablet that integrates a lot of steps to get you (the patient) into the provider’s computer system. Afterward, they said they “monitor the attention level of the attendees (it’s a GoToWebinar feature) … and it was the highest I’ve ever seen it.”

Really? GoToWebinar feature?  Yep, the system keeps track of how long attendees stay, whether they ask questions, and even whether they listen but stop watching by switching to another window while listening to the audio.

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Geneva, Monday June 27: evening keynote open to the public!

Click to visit press release page
Click to visit press release page

Next Monday, June 27, I’ll be doing something really fun: an evening keynote at a medical conference in Geneva, Switzerland, open to the public. If you know anyone who can get there, please invite them! It’s just 20 Swiss francs (about US$21), and simultaneous translation will be offered.

The conference is NI2016 (Nursing Informatics 2016), whose theme this year is “eHealth For All.” My talk is from 6:20 to 7:20 pm, followed at 8 by a fashion show featuring wearable technology.

The conference will provide simultaneous translation into German and French, and a delegation from China will have its own simultaneous translator.

I’ll take a moment here to mention four international editions of my signature book Let Patients Help, because of the international nature of this event – and because three translators will be present:

French, German and Chinese editions
(and Spanish)

Let Patients Help is available in eight languages, a real sign that participatory medicine is not just an American thing – it’s becoming a global movement. In addition to English, four languages are relevant to this event:

  • Christine Bienvenu
    Christine Bienvenu

    French: Impliquons les Patients!
    Christine Bienvenu (right), translator of the French Kindle edition, would love to find a publisher or sponsor for a print edition. Come meet her!

  • German: Lasst Patienten mithelfen! is Part 1 of the German e-patient textbook Gesundheit 2.0.
  • Chinese: 请患者参与 (available only in China … this may be of interest to the Chinese delegation)
  • Spanish: ¡Dejad que los pacientes ayuden! I mention this because its translators, Elia Gabarron and Luis Fernandez Luque, will also be present.

Again, if you know anyone in the area, please do invite them. Thanks!

 

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Perceptive new work on diabetes stigma. Well done!

Diabetes misconception slideI haven’t had occasion to talk much about it yet, but in November 2014 Dr. Danny Sands said routine blood work showed my hemoglobin A1C was slightly elevated. That’s what they call “pre-diabetic,” so woohoo, I get the privilege(?!) of pivoting from the cancer world to learn about diabetes in its many forms.

Man, it’s complicated – I did everything right, lost 40 pounds, became a runner, and my A1C went up! That’s how it goes sometimes, according to my friends in “the DOC” – the “diabetes online community.” Managing diabetes is complex – lots of work to do every single day. That’s one reason I’ve always said a healthy PWD (person with diabetes) is the archetypical e-patient (engaged patient).

I’m at a diabetes conference (more on that below), and last night I saw what may be the most perceptive, smart, patient-centered presentation I’ve ever seen. Ever seen. Anywhere.

I’m new to this field, so maybe this kind of thinking is commonplace here, but not from what I’ve seen. Lots to say about it, but for today here’s a starter post.

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