As a precursor to the 2011 e-Patient Connections conference, a group of 30 patients, industry thought leaders, and health activists gathered in a Philadelphia meeting room on September 19, 2011 to discuss the future of a healthcare system where empowered, engaged, and educated electronically-connected patients take control of their health. Fuelled by access to the latest health and medical content online, mobile technologies to facilitate access and control, and the ability to engage with other patients on a global scale, these e-patients are rapidly becoming an integrated part of the health and treatment continuum and refuse to sit quietly as bystanders waiting for instructions from the medical and health professionals around them. Attendees represented a wide range of therapeutic conditions and disease states, including ADHD, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, lupus, cerebral palsy, Crohn’s disease, and rheumatoid arthritis.
The group was assembled by leading digital marketing agency Klick Pharma, top online healthcare publisher HealthCentral, the newly formed nonprofit think tank the Digital Health Coalition, and with support from WEGO Health. “Digital will forever change healthcare with the same transformative and democratizing forces that have disrupted the entertainment and communication industries,” said Jay Goldman, Vice President of Strategy for Klick Pharma. “We brought this group together and facilitated the conversation because we are all patients and all patients will soon be E-Patients. The rise of digital technologies is just speeding the pace of that change.”
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