Participatory Medicine at PdF09: Can we get a do-over?

July 8, 2009 · Filed Under reforming hc, trends & principles · 25 Comments 

The poli-tech tribe gathered in New York last week for the Personal Democracy Forum and, as Craig Newmark put it, welcomed “our new nerd overlords.”

Esther Dyson, Jamie Heywood, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), and I were asked to take on a breakout panel entitled, “From Participatory Politics to Participatory Medicine: The Coming Revolution in Health Care.” Cool, right?

Jerry Nadler joins Esther Dyson, Jamie Heywood and Susannah Fox to talk about "From Participatory Politics to Participatory Medicine" at Personal Democracy Forum 2009

Esther Dyson, Jamie Heywood, Jerry Nadler, and Susannah Fox

Via email, Esther suggested we skip the usual speeches and just tell the audience the questions we’d like to be asked and have a truly participatory session:

  • Jamie was going to talk about PatientsLikeMe, HealthDataRights.org, and the power of patients to take control of their own data.
  • Esther was going to ask how openness, transparency, measurement, and sharing of data affect health care.
  • I was going to talk about which tech trends might forecast higher (or lower) levels of involvement by all Americans in both participatory medicine and participatory democracy.

Then Rep. Nadler arrived and said he’d been told that this was a panel about health care reform. Well, kind of. Not really. But we had to get started.

It didn’t go well. Read more

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