Tuesday, January 29, 2008

e-patients online

Patient Dave, er e-Patient Dave, led me to the this website, entitled e-patients.net, because health professionals can't do it alone. This is a really fascinating blog about patient empowerment. Among other things, you will find there an "e-patients white paper" explaining their philosophy and approach. Emblematic of the site, you can either read the white paper as a PDF or participate in it as a wiki.

The site apparently began as a follow-on to the work of Dr. Tom Ferguson, who invented the term e-patients to describe individuals who are equipped, enabled, empowered and engaged in their health and health care decisions. He envisioned health care as an equal partnership between e-patients and health professionals and systems that support them.

There is a lot to read and absorb on this site. Please check it out.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another major innovator in this field is eDocAmerica (been around for at least a decade). The CEO and Founder is Dr. Charlie Smith - Past President of the American Board of Family Medicine. He has a blog at Revolution Health, and has some interesting things to say about ePatient empowerment. I highly recommend him.

www.revolutionhealth.com/blogs/charliesmithmd

e-Patient Dave said...

And his eDocAmerica blog.

btw, when I first read the post there about searching for one's own health info on the Internet, little did I know that CMPI (the author of the report he mentions) is basically a PR initiative for pharma - its president is VP of health affairs for a big PR firm. Try googling "cmpi funding" and you'll get an earful. Interesting.

e-Patient Dave said...
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