John Moore who is currently a PhD candidate in the New Media Medicine group at the MIT Media Lab, is working to fundamentally change the role that patients can play in their care by empowering them with knowledge, understanding, confidence, and channels for communication.
He is studying the effect that new technology-mediated paradigms for doctor-patient collaboration can have on education, adherence, and behavior change.
In the future of medicine, his goal is to design systems to make the patient help decide what medicine to take, where the doctor acts as the “guide.”
He gives us in the Idea Festival audience a few sad facts. People retain only 15-20% of what they hear from doctors after they leave the office. Very few actually follow through and take their medicine even after picking up the prescription. He says that the reason that the stats look so grim is because the system we have today has been designed so poorly.
As a result, Moore and his team are working on transforming systems and creating programs that are more integrative and effective. For example, with Parkinsons disease, they can monitor patient’s activity by wearing a device and matching that back to the medicine they’re taking. Patients can also correlate their behavior as well so they can take their medicine in a timely manner. This is being done through online video conferencing and games.
Games are being developed so patients can set goals with their physical therapist in real time and then have the game results and feedback sent back to the clinician while they’re playing at home. This feedback can help adjust and re-adjust exercises and medicine that they do so improvement is more dramatic. Much of this can be monitored at home so a lot can be diagnosed without the patient having to come into the doctor’s office, saving both time and money.
Moore wants to empower patients to change how they view their own conditions through experience not through reading or simply doing what a doctor tells them to do. He believes that patients should be able to get interactive feedback in real time.
“The future of medicine is the engaged patient, where they participate in their own ‘care’ program”, ends Moore.
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored nearly 80, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity.
She is also the CEO and founder of Magic Sauce Media, a new media services consultancy focused on viral marketing, social media, branding, events and PR. For over 20 years, she has helped companies from 12 countries get traction in the market. Known for her global and organic approach to product and corporate launches, Renee practices what she pitches and as an active user of social media, she helps clients navigate digital waters from around the world. Renee has been blogging for over 16 years and regularly writes on her personal blog Down the Avenue, Huffington Post, BlogHer, We Blog the World and other sites. She was ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes Magazine and is listed as a new media influencer and game changer on various sites and books on the new media revolution. In 2013, she was listed as the 6th most influential woman in social media by Forbes Magazine on a Top 20 List.
Her passion for art, storytelling and photography led to the launch of Magic Sauce Photography, which is a visual extension of her writing, the result of which has led to producing six photo books: Galapagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome, Urbanization and Ecuador.
Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, an initiative that brings entrepreneurs, thought leaders, bloggers, creators, curators and influencers to other countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public in order to educate, share, evaluate, and promote innovative technologies.
