Principles

New Media Medicine’s work is rich and varied, but all projects are based on the following principles:

• Principle #1: Patients are the most underutilized resource in health care.

Patients are highly motivated to solve their own health-care problems, and they possess the richest insight into their own health conditions and histories. But they receive limited guidance from the medical establishment and often have difficulty expressing themselves. To fill this gap, patients are increasingly turning to the Internet and to each other via search engines, social networks, discussion lists, and medical information sites – but this often results in "information overload" and confusion from contradictory information. New models can help patients express themselves more effectively and bring their unique insights and enthusiasm into the health-care process.

• Principle #2: The revolution must take place in our everyday lives, not in the doctor’s office or the lab.

Everyday life is an experiment. Many patients try various lifestyle choices to improve their conditions: diets, exercise, alternative therapies, off-label drug use and so on. But the existing medical system is surprisingly disconnected from the everyday life of the patient, and thus can’t take advantage of this self-knowledge and behavior. This disconnect is particularly true for patients with rare diseases, who have been largely deserted or ill-treated by the medical establishment. The results of patients' "everyday experiments" are an invaluable and virtually untapped source of data for the medical community that could promote better decision-making at home and in the office.

• Principle #3: Information transparency, not just information access, is the solution.

Health-care professionals and patients bring different data sets to the health-care transaction. We need to provide new models – a common language – that let doctors and patients aggregate, relate, and view all of this information for making better clinical decisions, better lifestyle decisions, and better self-care. We need new models that enable doctors and field clinicians to spot disease outbreaks earlier and treat endemic diseases most effectively, as well as to cost-effectively treat patients in poor and developing nations.

To learn more, download The New Media Medicine Manifesto. pdf