Everyone should know the power that comes from patient blogs. On a daily basis in our own Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, people are writing, sharing, asking about the things they encounter, experience and feel.

For me the weblog of Maarten was an eye-opener as i wrote earlier, but every day i try to read one or more “patient-blogs” from all over the world. 

Today i read the posting of Gaston, the father of Emilie, his daughter who has cancer and as of today is bold. My heart cries (google translation), he wrote, and reading his post and blog (pointed to by @punkmedia) at that point this “big guy” here is once again with two feet on the ground. Silence, this isn’t supposed to be this way for a little kid. 

Every healthcare professional should read at least once a day an patient-blog, wether or not from his own facility, just to constantly understand what com-passion is al about. Com-passion is not feeling 

As for Emilie; i hope she’ll get well of course. I’m certain her doc’s and other staff are doing all they can.

Her parents Gaston and Cecile : i would like praise you Heroes for the “guts” to share in a weblog, not only for good advices, and helping other patients and their family or informal care. Also for sharing your thoughts and emotions. But also to help Healthcare professionals reading what’s at stake, what’s going on, and what’s important. And yes, many many Healthcare professionals don’t need that, but “some” do, that’s worth it.

Only then we can improve healthcare besides research, and medicine into Participatory Healthcare.

At the start of this year, asked about my opinion about how healthcare will evolve over the next -say- 5 years i mostly answer with my way of pronouncing the year 2.010 as “two-point-o-ten”.

In my honest opinion healthcare will start to migrate towards a more patients’ centered model, and i think in a 2.0 way. I have tried to catch my thoughts in a little graph as shown below. It is the rough sketch of a posting i’m working on that is the follow up on my 15.000th tweet.

Since the demographics are changing, as i also mentioned in my overview-video of healthcare in the Netherlands, the way patients will be acting will change with it. They will expect healthcare to be 24/7, they expect it to be on- & offline just like the internet : anytime, anywhere and most of all full of choices & options, patients and their caregivers will choose from.

Healthcare and internet in the Netherlands from lucien engelen on Vimeo.

I think there will be evidence about the way youth is concentrating, i can see it in our own kids, they get more and more impulses, in a short period of time, make faster choices out of more options at a glance, and what’s most importanty : they will choose !

Up until now (at least in the Netherlands) healthcare hasn’t really become a market, sure there is some freedom of choice but all of the HC-institutions offer more or less the same. And in the rare occasion a HC-institution has something really special, they almost don’t talk about it other than in conferences, scientific literature, so … still different of the way the “new” population of patients is working a way though the bulk of information.

One way or the other the pressure of these freedom of choice, once HC will start to “talk” about their offerings, will start this new generationto choose “with their feet”. Remarkable to add is the difference in gender within social networks, Allthough there are some myths about how the generation which will follow the upcoming will use media as some research shows.

This development will lead HC into a different model i think, as showed in the graph above. Of course; wether the year 2.014 will be the correct one, and if it will be a Evolution rather than a Revolution is to be seen. The way HC will be REshaped from patients’ perspective will be a good “side-effect”.

New Years Wish 2.010 @zorg20 from lucien engelen on Vimeo.

This post originally was posted on my lucienengelen.posterous.com