By ePATIENT DAVE deBRONKART

I’m a supporter of the Society for Participatory Medicine’s second annual conference on Oct. 17 in Boston. This article taken from the SPM “ePatients” blog tells you about just one of the great speakers who’ll be there. Please come join us  Register here.–Matthew Holt

Here’s the latest in our series of posts by and about the outstanding speakers we’ve lined up for the Society for Participatory Medicine’s second annual conference on Oct. 17 in Boston, attached to the prestigious Connected Health conference. Register here. (Our #SPM2018 blog series has more about the speakers and activities.)

Since my earliest days in this work – even before our Society was formed – Dr. Patricia Flatley Brennan RN, PhD, FAAN, FACMI (or “Patti,” as she’s known to her many friends and fans) has been one of the most optimistic voices. She’s always been a dedicated, enlightened researcher, academic (at the University of Wisconsin, Madison) and voice of patient participation. On top of that, she was the director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s terrific Project HealthDesign: Rethinking the Power and Potential of Personal Health Records, which ran from 2006-2014, an absolutely pivotal period in the onset of personal health data. Patti knows that knowledge is power, and that patient power is naturally optimized when patient knowledge is optimized.

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when, in 2016, she was appointed the next Director of America’s National Library of Medicine (NLM). In addition to being extremely participatory, perhaps it’s no coincidence that she’s the first woman nurse and the first nurse in the post.

In a moment I’ll say more about the history of this position, and its significance in the timeline that led to SPM. For now, consider this about her topic at our conference, “the care between the care,” particularly the NLM’s role.Continue reading…