Medicine & Health

Not content to stand by and let other people innovate for them, participant-entrepreneurs are creating the services, devices, and communities they need.

The internet does not replace health professionals, but rather provides a way for people to gather and share information in a rapid-learning system that can best be described as "participatory medicine."

As I've written before, I love questions. It's an honor to be handed someone's nascent idea and to help them shape it (which is what I think a question really is). But this time I'm asking for YOUR input.

If someone is motivated enough to dig, interested enough to analyze, and knowledgeable enough about their chosen topic to see data with fresh eyes, they can start a revolution...

Highlights from some of the key presentations made at a National Institutes of Health workshop held in November 2009.

A conversation with Susannah Fox and Thomas Goetz, executive editor of Wired Magazine, at the Pew Research Center in Washington DC.

What does the internationalization of information mean for patients and health professionals? What are the strengths - and weaknesses - of online patient communities?

Overview With a growing number of states moving to legalize medical marijuana, nearly three-quarters of Americans (73%) say they favor their state allowing the sale and use of marijuana for medical purposes if it is prescribed by a doctor, while 23% are opposed. Support for legalizing medical marijuana spans all major political and demographic groups, […]

The back-story on the report, "Chronic Disease and the Internet," including answers to questions about probability vs. causality and why we included quotes from patients throughout the analysis.

People living with chronic disease are disproportionately offline. And yet, those who are online have a trump card: They have each other. They gather and share information; they learn from their peers; and they just keep going.