A white paper entitled: “e-Patients: How they can help us heal healthcare” authored by Dr. Tom Ferguson with the e-patients scholars working group is now available on-line in both a wiki and PDF format.
The basis of the paper is that e-Patients are beginning to drive a healthcare revolution tantamount to the changes the manufacturing industry experienced during the industrial revolution yet very much in the spirit of the Open Source movement. The underlying premise is that access to medical knowledge and wisdom is no longer the exclusive territory of healthcare professionals as a world in which information and content is easily accessed and created by the patients themselves transforms the way healthcare is to be delivered and perceived in the coming years.
More and more e-Patients want not only access to information regarding their health, but also the right and the tools to manage their own personal health records, collaborate with clinicians on treatment and support others that may have similar conditions or diseases. Self managed care and patient initiated research will also become part of this Open Source Healthcare system.
The preference of the paper states “We offer this White Paper as a series of preliminary notes on this new operating system” which further hints at the open source theme to the research and presentation. Furthermore, the white paper is not only available in a standard PDF format, but also in an editable Wiki format.
Very cool and worthwhile reading.
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