 Provided by ReachMD
Can Social Networking Revolutionize Disease Management?
on Clinician's Roundtable
For over a decade, patients have been turning to the Internet for health information and support. At least one new online venture gives patients the opportunity to access data about medications and therapies and their effects and outcomes. But this isn't clinical trial data. This is detailed, highly quantified, "real-world" data that patients put on the social networking site Patients Like Me about themselves, in order to connect with others who share their disease and learn from their experiences. Co-founder and chairman Jamie Heywood, a graduate of MIT, talks to host Bruce Japsen about privacy, doctor-patient communication, conflict of interest, and the potential effect on pharmaceutical development of giving patients the opportunity to review their treatments.
James Allen Heywood is co-founder and chairman of Patients Like Me, a health information website patients use to share personalized medical information. An engineering graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Heywood entered the field of translational research in 1998 when his then just 29-year-old brother Stephen was diagnosed with ALS. Since that time, he has pursued scientific and business innovations to advance patient care and the field of personalized medicine. In 1999, Mr. Heywood founded the ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI), the world's first non-profit biotechnology company, where he served as CEO until 2007. He is a published author, speaker and investment advisor whose efforts have been profiled in publications ranging from The New Yorker to the New York Times, Science magazine and the television news magazine "60 Minutes." Mr. Heywood and his brother Stephen were also the subjects of Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Wiener's biography, His Brother's Keeper: A Story From the Edge of Medicine and the Sundance award-winning documentary "So Much So Fast."
 Bruce Japsen has been a healthcare business reporter for the Chicago Tribune since May of 1998. Mr. Japsen covers pharmaceutical and device makers, economic issues, managed-care companies, doctor practices and other physician issues. He has covered everything from the Vioxx-product liability trials and controversies involving the foray of Walgreens and Wal-Mart into retail medicine, to bird flu vaccine production and stem cell research. In addition to the regular healthcare business stories he writes, he has a regular Thursday column in the Tribune business section and is a regular on WGN radio and television, CBS-owned WBBM-News radio 780 and Tribune-owned CLTV. Reach his work at chicagotribune.com or follow him on Twitter. Prior to joining the Tribune, Mr. Japsen was a reporter with Crain Communications’ Chicago-based Modern Healthcare magazine, where he covered the Chicago healthcare marketplace. He also followed national healthcare companies like Columbia/HCA Healthcare, HealthSouth, not-for-profit healthcare systems and areas of healthcare finance. He worked for Modern Healthcare from October 1993 to May 1998. Before moving to Chicago in the fall of 1993, Mr. Japsen was a reporter for the Des Moines Register, the Dubuque Telegraph Herald and the Burlington Hawk Eye. His Iowa newspaper assignments included everything from Presidential campaigns to Big Ten football and basketball and professional minor league baseball. Mr. Japsen is a graduate of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication and sits on the journalism school’s advisory board. He also teaches writing, editing and communications to medical professionals at the University of Chicago’s Graham School of General Studies and is an adjunct reporting and writing professor at Loyola University of Chicago. He lives with his wife and daughter on Chicago’s North Side.
ReachMD, an innovative communications company, provides thought-provoking medical news and information to healthcare practitioners. Established to help increasingly time-constrained medical providers stay abreast of new research, treatment protocols and continuing education requirements, ReachMD delivers innovative and informative radio programming via XM Satellite Radio Channel 160 and online streaming developed by healthcare professionals for healthcare professionals.
The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.
RECOMMEND THIS ARTICLE
You must be logged in
to recommend articles
|
