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Category: Engaged Patients

Multiple Miscarriage, MTHFR and Pharmacogenomics: Our Story

Multiple Miscarriage, MTHFR and Pharmacogenomics: Our Story

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… this raises a huge question… How many other drugs are we prescribing to patients, without understanding their genome, that not only won’t help them, but might cause harm?  Pharmacogenomics (the study of how drugs interact with specific genomes) isn’t some nebulous idea that might become useful to medicine in 10+ years time.  Clinicians desperately need to start taking account of patient’s genetics as they prescribe medications right now.  How many adverse drugs events and hospital admissions could be averted by…

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Digital Health = Globalised Healthcare

Digital Health = Globalised Healthcare

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Why does my GP or specialist need to be in the same country as me, the patient?  If I’m already paying out-of-pocket to see a GP (which some of us are) or a specialist (which most of us are), and I can undertake that appointment online, why wouldn’t I go with a service that has high quality, immediate availability, is easily accessible and affordable?  If that happens to be in another country, does that really matter?   Much is made by…

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Patient Reported Outcomes vs Consumer Health Device Data

Patient Reported Outcomes vs Consumer Health Device Data

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… Through the work that I’ve been doing on gathering data from patients, it is becoming apparent that Patient Reported Outcomes (PRO) data is often of significantly greater clinical value than consumer health device data.   When most people think of digital health, they immediately think of consumer health devices.  Fitbits.  Blood pressure monitors.  Heart rate monitors.  Wi-fi enabled scales.  All of the things that allow us to remotely monitor patient vital signs, either in the home or on the…

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Activating the Caregiver – The Overlooked Lever in Healthcare

Activating the Caregiver – The Overlooked Lever in Healthcare

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The intrinsically motivated caregiver (or circle of care) is one of the most powerful tools we have in the digital health toolbox.  And yet it has little or no focus.   As you may have noticed in previous blog entries, I’m a huge supporter of engaged patients and have posted previously on my (and my wife’s) epic journey through the health system in Australia. @ePatientDave is absolutely right when he says that ‘the patient is the most under-used resource in…

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Elevating the Role of Patient-Curated Med Lists in Meds Rec Processes

Elevating the Role of Patient-Curated Med Lists in Meds Rec Processes

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… based on data that I have recently been studying, patient-curated medication lists are more likely to be accurate than clinically-curated medication lists.   In my experience, the majority of clinicians don’t have a lot of respect for patient-curated medication lists.  I believe that a growing evidence base shows that this view is unfounded, and I want to explain why. First let me say that I understand that many (perhaps most) patients aren’t interested in or don’t need to keep their…

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New Models of Care, Not Just Mobile Health Apps

New Models of Care, Not Just Mobile Health Apps

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In order to envisage a better (i.e. more transparent, safe, accessible, sustainable and efficient) health system than we have today, we must lift our vision above the siloed mobile health app as the building block of future improvement.  Seen correctly, mobile apps are the current delivery channel of choice for new, digitally-enabled models of care, but not the solution on their own.   If today’s vast pile of overwhelming, under-regulated, piecemeal mobile health apps is our vision for a future health system then something…

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The Rise of the Expert Patient

The Rise of the Expert Patient

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Our model of distributing medical knowledge to the front line of healthcare delivery is broken.  Completely broken. Through my work I’m fortunate to meet a lot a patients and carers, and to hear their often powerful and moving stories. As I listen to these stories, a number of key themes run through many of them, particularly with respect to people’s experience with General Practitioners in Australia.  I want to explore one of these themes in this post. It never ceases to…

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Our Journey: How Digital Health Communities Got Us Through Tough Times

Our Journey: How Digital Health Communities Got Us Through Tough Times

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So I want to take you back to 2007, and tell you about the epic journey that my wife and I had through the health system… Now the stereotype of pregnancy is that it is a wonderful, happy time, and of healthy, glowing expectant mothers.  Well, not so much. When my wife was pregnant with our two beautiful children, she suffered from a terrible condition called hyperemesis gravidarum.  Severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy.  But this wasn’t just morning sickness.  She was…

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Patient as Aggregator: The Logical Conclusion of Patient Owned Health Data?

Patient as Aggregator: The Logical Conclusion of Patient Owned Health Data?

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The recent announcement that HealthKit in iOS 10 will support the storing and viewing of CCD / CDA documents has got me thinking.  Are Personal Health Records on a path to possible disruption of health system operated Electronic Health Records? More specifically, if we believe the growing rhetoric of the health system that “patients own their data”, then we need to stop and ask some further questions.  If I own my own health information as a patient, why is it…

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The Healthcare Reformation

The Healthcare Reformation

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What sits behind the rise of Digital Health is not ultimately about technology.  It goes far deeper.  Fundamentally, we’re seeing a significant cultural shift in healthcare, driven by patients and carers.  Through the internet, mobile devices and Digital Health Communities we’re seeing the democratisation of medical knowledge. Knowledge that was previously only available to and understandable by health providers (an educated elite) is increasingly being opened up to health consumers, many of whom are capable of understanding and synthesising large…

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