One of the California Health Care Foundation’s regular projects is iHealthBeat, “Reporting technology’s impact on healthcare.” Wednesday they released a five minute podcast on patient communities, which are of course a core activity of engaged patients and thus of participatory medicine. I was interviewed for it, as was the highly participatory Dr. Eric Topol, author of the new book The Patient Will See You Now. What I didn’t know is that my own doctor (and SPM co-chair) Danny Sands is also in it! (Good thing our statements didn’t conflict…)

Here’s the podcast page, and here’s a snip describing the participants:

• Dave deBronkart, a patient with kidney cancer who learned about a life-saving drug through an online patient community;
• Sherry Franklin, a pediatric endocrinologist in Encinitas, Calif.;
• Danny Sands, a primary care doctor and professor at Harvard Medical School; and
• Eric Topol, a cardiologist and the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute (Goldberg, iHealthBeat, 1/14).