This was a “talk” that I did at the MGFamiliar.net Talks.

I’m just preparing an audio file, so that it can be more understandable.

Every time we interact with a public service we leave a record—a medical report, perhaps, or an exam result. Those records should be the lifeblood our public services. If shared and analysed—securely—they can help services to improve the quality of their performance. They can also help to prevent problems: identifying, for instance, those at risk from diabetes or even child abuse. And the economic downturn brings new urgency: if public services don’t improve productivity they will soon be unaffordable. (…)

If we want to have good public services, we are going to have to trust them with our data; and if our public services want us to pay for them, they will have to show us that they are using our data effectively and securely. But armed with the type of data created by Brian Jarman, and the tools built by Richard Webber, we can build safer, cheaper public services that know their users better.

Leaders and stakeholders all throughout the world should realize that data sharing and analyzing is the next step for the healthcare systems survival and sustainability, from global to local settings. More than never, we need an effective, statistical, secure and responsible interpretation of the information that is being collected by healthcare providers.

In summary, only knowledgeable healthcare systems are capable of becoming true complex adaptive systems. Only then, they will face effectively the increasing needs and demands of the future.

Delta Exchange is a social networking for primary care physicians created by TransforMED, an American Academy of Family Physicians subsidiary. Its main goal is to enhance the family physicians knowledge in the patient centered medical home model.

Transform to a medical home — with a little help from your friends

We learned from the National Demonstration Project (NDP) that transforming to a patient-centered medical home (PCMH) isn’t easy — it actually IS rocket science — and it requires meaningful change throughout all aspects of a practice.

We also learned that medical practices can be lonely places: physicians and staff often feel isolated. What they want and need are opportunities to communicate, collaborate, and learn with other practices in order to maintain the momentum of change.

And lastly, we also learned that some practice leaders have a DIY attitude (Do-It-Yourself). They were not interested in having a consultant or practice coach in the practice; they just wanted useful information, some accountability, and connections with other practices to learn best practices.

TransforMED’s Delta-Exchange provides all of that in an online, social networking platform.

With the cost of 30$/month per user, this is an interesting solution for knowledge sharing and collaborative virtual work among family physicians.

This is an interesting video, makes me think about the possibility of using Virtual Reality for Medical Education in General Practice.

Jay Parkinson, @jayparkinson, author of the jay parkinson + md + mph blog and a health 2.0 revolutionizer, presented hellohealth in June 2008, a social network between patients and doctors that steps aside from the US healthcare insurance companies and their dense billing system. Although a little focused on an economist point of view, this video from Jay presents the way that primary care should be on the 21st century: personalized and citizen centered healthcare based on a high usage of the communication technologies.

Is this is the doctor-patient relationship 2.0 ? Probably yes.

Ladies and gentlemen, Jay Parkinson.

More information:

Scienceroll: Jay Parkinson and Hello Health

Jay Parkinson MD website

During the last Portuguese National GP Meeting, that occurred in Vilamoura from March 18th to 21st, I and Tom Nolan, from doc2doc, organized a 90 minute workshop entitled Social Networking for General Practitioners and Trainees. This was the first time that Portuguese GPs had the opportunity to discuss and try some of the tools that web 2.0 brought to light during the last years.

Tom presenting the “Social network: what’s in it for GPs?”

The workshop main attractions were the social network platforms doc2doc and, of course, Twitter. Participants had the chance to endure on a live tweet discussion between me, @amcunningham, @brownleader and @JRBTrip who kindly accepted to be available on Twitter for 30 minutes on that morning. A lot of tweets were exchanged among Portugal (Vilamoura), UK and Australia during those moments, mainly regarding the use of Twitter by GPs, electronic communication between physicians and patients and also different working conditions for GPs. You can tweetsearch the discussion with the hashtag #26encg.

This conference was particularly interesting, due to high scientific interest, focusing General Practice/Family Medicine and Quality Assessment, but also regarding the fact that it was the first time that a GP conference in Portugal was being live tweeted. Carlos Martins, @mgfamiliarnet, was avidly following the stream during his daily GP activities 600 km away, in a health centre in Porto.

This was a starting kick for Portuguese GPs in social networking 2.0, we hope everyone feels enthusiastic about it.

And Vilamoura… see you next year!

Ted Eytan, a well-known family physician fom the Twittersphere – @tedeytan – was twitterviewed yesterday by Diariomedico.com, a spanish online medical journal, that tweets as @diariomedico.

The twitterview was remarkably interesting. Aspects like health 2.0 and patient empowerment were focused. To read it please click here and start from older to newer posts.

Some highlights:

This twitterview is the fourth in a sequence of twitterviews by @diariomedico to health tweeple, such as:

• Berci Meskó @berci, from Scienceroll and Webicina (click here to read it #DM1)

• Alex Savic @alensa, CEO at Alensa.com (#DM2)

- Jane Sarasohn-Kahn @healthythinker, from Health Populi (#DM3)

and last, but not least…

- Ted Eytan @tedeytan, from Kaiser Permanente Foundation (#DM5)

By the way, have you noticed the gap? What happened to #DM4? Just imagine: if you click #DM4, read a live-surgery tweeted in spanish a week ago.

In my opinion, @tedeytan and @diariomedico are definitely two must-follow twitterers.

Today, the Second Virtual Congress of General Practice and Family Medicine published another newsletter with two interesting articles written by Dr. Luis Pisco, Vice-Chairman of the Second Virtual Congress of GP/FM and President of the Portuguese Association of General Practitioners – APMCG and Dr. Enrique Gavilán Moral, member of the International Advisory Board of the Second Virtual Congress of GP/FM and also of the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine – semFYC.

Dear colleagues,

The Second Virtual Congress of GP/Family Medicine is rolling!

In a World on the verge of a dire financial crisis, this sort of initiative can make the difference. It can only be positive to team up, for three months, with family physicians from all corners of the planet, and share knowledge, experiences, anguishes and emotions.

During the 60th anniversary celebrations of the British National Health Service in July last year, taking place in Wembley stadium, Donald Berwick said: “General Practice is the jewel of the crown of the NHS. Save it. Build it.” I would dare to say that General Practice is the jewel of the crown of any health system.

At a time when more than ever we are in need of effective, equitative and efficient heath care, the more necessary it is for Governments to make enduring investments in proximity and quality healthcare, which only GP/Family Medicine can provide. The greater the crisis and the social and economic depression, the more will citizens need our support.

The motto e-Health – empowering towards operational knowledge meets the requirements of contemporary society. We must take advantage of the potential of Information Technologies to learn, teach, and share at the global scale.

I hope that, like the first one, this Second Virtual Congress proves successful and fulfills the expectations of the participants.

Kind regards, Luís Pisco.

The Human Side of the Virtual Congress

One of the most rewarding aspects of a conference is that it is a place of encounter and exchange of experiences.

I would thus like to highlight some of the most important functions of scientific events.

Firstly, to meet people always ready to show something new and to feel the pleasant thrill of finding partners with whom to share ideas, experiences and forms of professional and personal scopes of work. Second, to go out to confirm that the problems are similar elsewhere, and those solutions can be found in any unexpected detail. Third, to feel that you are not alone in this world.

There are additional ways to enrich the work and develop scientific knowledge. One of them is to provide not only innovative, but sometimes personal experiences. Another is to render resources to other professionals that can be applied in very different situations, and finally to share feelings and intuitions.

So, what does the congress cater for? Well, any little experience, any idea born with a calling to serve and provide new ways to tackle the problems, as well as new solutions to new challenges awaiting us in the future.

The community of Family Physicians knows how to share the best of itself amidst this contemporary global world and in any of the hundreds of scientific events taking place in our specialty in the world.

New technologies allow us to interact in a virtual way from anywhere, with anyone, making the Internet a space without walls or borders to share experiences and knowledge in an almost unlimited way. However, the challenge of e-medicine is to keep alive the excitement of meeting physically, the thrill to receive and to give, the feeling of belonging to a large scientific community. And this is also the great challenge of the Second Virtual Congress of General Practice & Family Medicine. We count on you and you and you and you all, to ensure that this congress will also be a meeting place and a space to share.

Enrique Gavilán Moral

I think it could be useful to list all the family physicians/GPs or GP trainees that are on Twitter.

If you want to add someone, please write your comment below or send me a tweet.

• @amargaridaz – GP trainee

• @amcunningham / www – GP and Clinical Lecturer… interested in everything:)

• @brownleader / www – inner city primary care doctor

• @doc_rob / www – Primary Care Doc, Goofball, Daddy, Hubby

• @doctoranonymous / www – Family Physician, MedBlogger, Internet radio show host, all around nice guy

• @drbonis / www

• @DrHubbard / www – Family physician and publisher of James Hubbard’s My Family Doctor, which is medical information for the general public written by health-care professionals.

• @drottematic / www – Final year med student at UBC, Vancouver. Canadian Family Practice Resident, starting July 1, 2009

• @Dr_Paige / www – Family Practice doc for Family Practice West in Columbus, Ohio

• @GPforhire – Family Doctor, husband, father, geek, gardener, old skool Jedi, um, and loads of other interesting things…

• @holmspun / www – A Family Doc and a Medical Student musing about medicine in the Midwest.

• @japrados

• @jmbhan / www – I am a Family Physician and tech junky, trying to change the world

• @kevinmd / www – Primary care doctor Kevin Pho, M.D. provides commentary on physicians, patients, hospitals, medicine and health care.

• @KittKlaiss –  Small Town Doc, mom of 2, knitter, scifi junkie

• @meducate / www – Global, strategic medical education professional. Interested in clinical practice gaps and outcomes measures. Also humorous speaker/writer globally.

- @mgfamiliarnet / www – MGFamiliar.net

• @rqgb / www – Spanish GP trainee in Madrid

• @ruraldoctoring / www – Rural family doctor, hospitalist, baby catcher, restlessly creative.

• @tedeytan / www – Health Informatics. Patient Empowerment. Washington, DC, Oh, I’m a doctor too.

• @tiagoMGF / www – GP trainee/Family Medicine resident and Freelance Writer

Join the Primary Care Twitter Group, launched by @amcunningham.

Check the full list of medical Twitterers created by @medicalstudent here and take a look at the Twitter Top 100 Health and Medicine rank.

Some days ago, I wrote a newsletter for the Second Virtual Congress of General Practice and Family Medicine, regarding health literacy and the impact of knowledge in healthcare. This is a subject I am very keen on, and it will dramatically change the way health systems organize themselves and also the relationship between healthcare providers and patients.

For an aditional point of view, I’m also posting a video interview to Sir Muir Gray, Director of the UK NHS National Knowledge Service, focusing the importance and goals of mapofmedicine®. Thanks to @amcunningham for the bookmark on the video.

Globalizing Health Knowledge

Tell me, I forget.
Show me, I remember.
Involve me, I understand.
Chinese proverb

The everchanging essence of knowledge and the continuous seek for new discoveries have driven mankind to a tenacious dedication for unveiling the paths and boundaries of the human body. The extent of our knowledge about ourselves has increadibly reached the genetic book of life, allowing in a certain way to forecast the future. But is this immense knowledge leading us to higher levels of health literacy?

Nowadays, citizens are empowered through the fast access to information, and the gap between patients and health information has significantly been curtailed. Health related searches on the internet have increased over the past few years, and online communities of patients, that have physically never met, are flourishing at a fast pace. These current trends of the information and communication technologies are changing the lives of individuals and their families, and also the way that health systems are developing.

We see health consumers rapidly becoming key health players, taking increased responsability for their health status and data, and ultimately gaining critical knowledge about the quality the health care they receive. Patient-centeredness is a new order, and consequently the web 2.0 effect on the patient-doctor relationship is far for being totally understood.

For general practitioners and family physicians, who are at the forefront of health care systems around the world, this represents an exciting challenge. Moreover, this undoubtedly requires an upgrade of skills which entails joining the technological breakthrough and to face a new set of communication channels: instant messaging, electronic mail and virtual reality, just to name a few… Reassuring the important role of primary care providers in promoting health literacy is of crucial importance and can be achieved at a global scale, and not just simply in local settings.

Thirty years after the Declaration of Alma-Ata, primary health care needs once again gather forces in order to help decreasing inequalities around the world. The demands of health care systems require innovative solutions. As such, eHealth now represent the common voice for globalizing health literacy. The main goal for the Second Virtual Congress of General Practice and Family Medicine is to enable the use of eHealth, so as to empower citizens to use health information in an operational way – in other words, working globally for a wiser health.