As dedicated patient experts we welcome Ontario Premier Wynne’s Mandate Letter to Health Minister Eric Hoskins. We are encouraged that in an interview with the Globe and Mail Minister Hoskins committed himself to “improving the patient experience” and the Mandate letter leads with a priority to “Putting Patients at the Centre”. In our many patient roles, …
Clinical knowledge has now become easier to obtain than ever. Open-access medical journals that waive subscription fees for readers, electronic medical record systems such as My e-Health in British Columbia that allow patients access to their own lab results, and full subscription to point-of-care tools such as UpToDate by patients have flattened the information hierarchy …
As with any parent whose child has a serious health condition, Amy Gleason is actively involved and ever watchful of her 15-year old daughter, Morgan, who has a life-threatening autoimmune condition called Juvenile Myositis. Amy and I are ePatients – the ‘e’ includes: being engaged, empowered, and most always incorporates gathering information and, often as …
Patient centered healthcare is a term we are hearing more often, and depending on the audience – health professional, policy maker or patient – it appears to have a different meaning. Who is involved in this dialogue and just who are they talking to? If we are ever to achieve true patient centered care, we …
Last week, Lisa Rosenbaum wrote in a New Yorker blog entry about a topic dear to my heart: shared decision making (SDM). SDM refers to doctors empowering patients to make medical decisions based on their values and preferences when there is more than one reasonable path. Many researchers have found that shared decision making (with the help of …
The Scanadu Scout is the forerunner in the race to invent the “Medical Tricorder”, the handheld scanner from Star Trek that space-age doctors use to gather data on a patient. This past May, Scanadu put the device up on Indiegogo, a crowdfunding website, asking for $100,000 for its development. The Scanadu Scout is a small …
Modern health care systems emerged in the late 19th Century from the ascendance of scientific medicine. The major killers at the time of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur were infectious diseases such as anthrax, tuberculosis and typhoid fever. These scientists were among the first to identify the microorganisms that cause such disease and then to …
The Personal Health Navigator is available to all Canadian patients. Questions about your doctor, hospital or how to navigate the health care system can be sent to AskLisa@Sunnybrook.ca The Question: After hip replacement surgery, I was placed on tramadol for pain. It worked moderately well, although in retrospect, I would have probably done better with something …
When I joined the Ambulatory Practice of the Future (APF) as a first-year resident, I learned that the primary care clinic had an open notes policy: whatever we wrote about our patients could be seen by our patients through a secure online portal. It was a startling departure from medicine’s tradition of records shrouded in …
When talking with my family and friends outside of healthcare I get mixed reactions to what eHealth means. Responses can range from simple to sad. “Is that like MRIs and stuff? “Do we have electronic records like at the store?” “My doctor has a Blackberry…. but I can’t email him, so I don’t know.” However, …
In the internet age there is an unprecedented amount of information available to anyone with access to the web. In health care, this is slowly shifting power dynamics, with patients taking increased responsibility and ownership of their health. What needs to be done so a health care system built in the 20th century can address …