What are patients saying on their blogs about hypertension treatment?

I decided to start recruiting the patient voice by seeing what patients are already writing about their condition on their blogs, using blood pressure as an example. I have set up a link cloud with all of these:

tedeytan’s bookmarks tagged with “patient_voice” on del.icio.us

I have also posted the last several below this. There are several impressive things about this review:

1. Patients are writing about their conditions – we don’t have to go far anymore to listen
2. Even for a condition that some medical providers might consider “not as significant,” there are significant feelings – fear of being diagnosed, fear of treatment, fear of being out of control
3. People are interested in knowing what they can about their conditions so that they can manage them confidently, and they may be asking each other as much (if not more) than their doctor.

Read the links attached to this cloud…and if you have others, post them or direct them to my del.icio.us account.

Ted Eytan, MD