e-Patient Infiltrates Medical Professional Assessment Organization
by Amber Montanano
On January 11, we had a guest come in and shake things up a bit here. Jen McCabe Gorman gave a really engaging talk (which can be found here if you’ve got an hour to kill and feel like you could use some stimulation) about medicine, social media, and how the two can be mashed together to help you become a participant in your care as opposed to simply the object of your doctor’s care.
We had a record turnout for her morning session – literally, I think we set a record for attendance! – and then she took the rest of her day to brainstorm with smaller groups of us about topics like patient safety and communication skills (See inset pictures of the white boards... it's okay if you don't understand them. I don't think I do anymore, either. But while she was drawing them, they really made sense!). It was really interesting to see the crowd really start trying to see things from a different perspective, that of the "expert patient" or e-Patient. Even a youngster like me (almost 3 years here which is a drop in the bucket for some folks) has been indoctrinated into thinking that an “expert" must have a bunch of letters after his or her name and run a medical school or a hospital. Jen’s perspective was, in a word used by many folks at the presentation, refreshing!
And now for a non-solicited plug: You should really follow Jen on twitter for awesome scouting tidbits, and get involved in her #getupandmove initiative. It’s a way to challenge your friends to improve their health by making microchoices about their activities. Also, you should check Jen out on LinkedIn to see the many projects she has and is working on currently.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll look at Jen’s profile and think, “She’s just about the same age as me… what the heck have I been doing with my life?!” Yeah. She’s that awesome. And productive. And hopefully a collaborator for many moons to come!
Relatedly, there are now hundreds of hospitals who are finally "getting it" as far as utilizing social media tools to create better strategies for caring for their patients. See if your local hospital is on the list!
Will the public “buy” Blippy?
by Jillian Ketterer
Today I stumbled upon a really strong example of how certain subsets of consumers are willing to sacrifice privacy in exchange for what I'll call "social convenience". Blippy, which is just in beta and was recently highlighted in a New York Times article, is an online social network that lets you share your recent credit card purchases with your friends. I haven't actually used the service, but from the description, it seems to do this automatically in a "Twitter-like" microblogging fashion - a type of passive, social information-sharing. There are, of course, ways to restrict what is shared with whom, but in general I think this is a step in the direction of transparency. The question is: will people find benefit in sharing where they are and what they are buying (and for how much) with their friends?
My guess is yes, but I am very curious about what the early adopters will look like, since users of this service will need to have, for example, (a) access to the internet, (b) a credit card, (c) available funds on their credit card, (d) an interest in shopping and purchase-related information, and (e) friends who possess characteristics "a" through "e". I look forward to seeing how this one pans out!
Hey, Miss Manners, welcome to 2009.
by Amber Montanano
I heard a segment on NPR the other day about mobile device technology etiquette. (As a side note, I notice that most of my posts are inspired by things I hear on NPR. What would I do without you, public radio?) It basically laid out some ground rules for when and how it's appropriate to use mobile devices when you're dating someone. In this new and strange age of technology, I suppose rules about this kind of thing were bound to happen. For me, this is a really interesting area to get into.
Slides
by Jillian Ketterer
A few notes to the viewer:
- Please feel free to use and share these slides. If you do use them, give us some "props" via citation or attribution. It doesn't have to be fancy. We appreciate it!
- These slides and the content within them only represent the thoughts of the listed author, and do not reflect the beliefs of any overarching organization or entity. Or, if they do, it we didn't do it on purpose. Boy, this is getting complicated.
- Just one more thing: While each of the ambassadors certainly strives to fact-check our research and ensure the accuracy of the information in our slides, none of us is claiming to be an expert. These slides are as much a documentation of our learning as they are (hopefully) informative for others.
Have at it!
Remember the Milk, and other things
by Jillian Ketterer
I spent the last I-don't-know-how-many years of my life in a seemingly constant rainfall of post-it notes and napkins, each with some number of my own reminders scrawled on them. If I had no paper, well, my own left hand would do for taking down a reminder (which could be anything from, "Buy milk" to "Find that post-it you lost, or try to remember what was on it.") [Aside: I'm going to skip making a joke about the left hand knowing what the right hand is up to, because that would just be bad.]
Anyway, I tried all sorts of non-paper-and-pencil task-organization systems, but they were all platform-dependent and just really didn't suit my needs: multiple inputs, multiple outputs, always in my face, easy, convenient, simple, sharable.
Enter Remember the Milk. This is basically To-Do in the age of Web 2.0.
Then take that, and put it on your Active Desktop (if you're a Windows user) with this nifty tip from Third Error.
Then, go throw away all those stupid lists. Or set them on fire. It's really up to you. You can get your task list texted to you each morning via Twitter, check it out on your Desktop and update it via email/Twitter/text/etc.
For someone with a brain chock full of both useful and useless information, this is Big, and not in the Tom Hanks sort of way.
I’m all a’twitter or am I a tweeter?
by Kathleen Rose
Because of my interest in social media, especially as it relates to healthcare and medical education, I’ve heard about Twitter. I’ve even tweeted on occasion. I tweeted twice before today, and have found Twitter useful for keeping track of my favorite medical blogger, Berci Mesko of Scienceroll. I have two followers, a coworker and my son's friend. In my wildest imagination, I never thought I’d be tweeting through the entire first day of the Medicine 2.0 Conference.
During the opening address this morning, there were two different display screens. One to show presentation slides and the other a steady stream of Twitter posts--or Tweets. I was busy scribbling notes with my trusty low tech #2 pencil (pictured above) and noticed that many of my scribblings were flashing by on the Twitter feed. It was one of those moments that makes you go hmmm...
I turned on my laptop and logged in to my Twitter account, and started taking notes. I mimicked the other tweets by adding what they called a “hash tag.” I prefaced other people’s Twitter usernames with @, although I wasn’t sure at first why I was doing that. Soon I was tweeting with the pros, and a funny thing happened. Someone referenced one of my tweets in their tweet. Is that a retweet? OMG my name in lights @r0wsbud! While I was using Twitter as a note taking tool, for my own selfish purposes, someone found one of my tweets worthy of note. Hey, I thought, what if other people found my tweets useful?
So, I tweeted and I tweeted and I tweeted, and another funny thing happened. The counter showing my followers changed to 3, then 4, then 5, and so on. I had this Twitter account with 2 followers for a year, and in a matter of hours, 19 people were following my tweets. Maybe these folks will wander on to our blog on occasion; maybe I’ll make connections with some “people in motion” with whom we might brainstorm or collaborate on a project. Maybe I’ll get a raise this year--okay I am asking for a little too much.
Anyhow, today I shared my notes with the entire Medicine 2.0 Community, and they shared theirs with me. Later I’ll review the feed using that #med2 hash tag I mentioned earlier and use all of my notes and about a million others to write a new post about the conference itself. But for now I think I’ll reflect on what happened to me today and perhaps consider retiring my #2 pencil.
Scouting Themes
Research
- Content analysis of patient complaints
- Changing physicians' competence and performance: Finding the balance between the individual and the organization
- Individual Differences and the Development of Perceived Control
Bookmarks
- Pre-Grade Your Paper!
- Doctor Leads Quest for Safer Ways to Care for Patients - NYT Interview with Dr. Peter J. Pronovost
- Popular Science puts its archives online for free - awesome!
- amednews: National Practitioner Data Bank expanded beyond physicians to other healthcare professionals
- Bloggasm » New study shows some correlation between free ebooks and higher print sales