I’m starting 2016 with a series of posts that lay out “the arriving future” of health and care. Previous entries:
- Careful and kind care, part 2: Slides & video from Maine Quality Counts (January 5) (Already cross-posted on the Minimally Disruptive blog)
Technological advances are making new things possible, and our deepening conception of what medicine is about (and how best to achieve care) are changing our thinking about the nature of the work. We are truly shifting from “the doctor knows everything that needs to be known” to patients as potentially capable partners.
This is real culture change. Predictably, the establishment fights back: some people don’t believe it, some just don’t like change (especially change in their work), and some don’t like what they perceive to be a challenge to their authority.
Everyone in the “health 2.0” world knows that the Health 2.0 conference is the conference in the health 2.0 world. It’s where everybody has to be, if they want to be known in that high-powered innovator world. Proof got even deeper when, a couple of years ago, they shifted venue from downtown San Francisco to the belly of the beast: Silicon Valley.
It’s 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Hacker Lab, 1715 I Street. 
Regular readers know that a large part of my becoming a global advocate has been the vision and influence of Lucien Engelen at Radboud University Medical Center (RUMC) in the town of Nijmegen, on The Netherlands’ eastern border. Way back in 2010 he announced that his upcoming TEDx would be primarily about patients; the TED Talk I did there put my speaking career into a catapult; then he put his own money where his mouth is by launching the 
#PatientsIncluded initiative, saying he would not attend any event where patients weren’t actively encouraged to participate; and he has continued to lead in thoughts and actions, every year since (including 3D-printing my lung metastases last year, below). Lucien is the standard, the exemplar of the “pay me with action” clause of 
For that reason, when he asked me this summer to participate in something even newer – something brand new – I immediately said yes. What was it? A three day event, “Inaugural Grand Rounds,” launching a completely redesigned curriculum at RUMC – redesigned with patients participating in the process. Yes, patients – people with no medical experience – except as “the ultimate stakeholders”; as patients, helping guide how we teach students.