The quote in the title is from Susan Daniels, PhD, who I was fortunate to serve on a panel at the Consumer Health Informatics Symposium, on the topic of Consumer Health Informatics for Diverse Populations. Susan has extensive experience working with disabled individuals, and spoke eloquently about the needs of the disabled population, beyond managing health, to managing disability determinations, which are critical. I like the statement because it speaks the importance of patient, family, and community involvement in health care and health services.

The image displayed here is from another impressive demonstration, by David Williams from patientslikeme.com. I really liked the feature where patients can document the doses of drugs they are actually taking for various conditions.

There currently isn’t an area dealing with cardiovascular disease, but I would be really interested in an area focusing here, especially when it comes to anti-hypertensives. What if we could have a real sense, across a population, of how well certain drugs work and how long they take to take effect? It is one of those things in primary care where it’s a little unclear exactly when a blood pressure drug will have an impact for a specific patient.