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Tag: DIY healthcare

Direct Access to Lab Results: Helpful or Harmful?

I am a big fan of DIY (do-it-yourself) healthcare, at least for the bulk relatively minor issues that plague people.  I think the days when doctors were needed to control, interpret and dole out health data and information are waning.  There are simply too many ways, primarily via the internet, to get good, reliable, easy-to-understand information about our own health.

The Quantified Self (QS)people who use sensors, mobile apps, and other devices to collect data on themselves may be taking it to what some would consider extreme, but I think it is the wave of the future.

Now, no one would question who “owns” the data collected in this manner, but how about data collected via a medical laboratory?  Is that somehow different and something we, the patients, should not be allowed direct access to lest we harm ourselves by misinterpretation.  Interesting question!

The issue is explored in a commentary in the December 14, 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).  Traber Davis Giardina, MA, MSW and Hardeep Singh MD, MPH, ask the question:  “Should Patients Get Direct Access to their Laboratory Test Results?”  They find that it is “An Answer with Many Questions.”

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How to Write Your Own Obituary

As a proponent of responsible DIY medicine, I love the idea put forth by Alex Beam in a column he wrote exploring the idea of writing your own obituary.

[The cynics chime in: “That’s where you’ll wind up if you try to “do” medicine yourself.”]

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who died in February, had his obituary in the NY Times initially inked in 1996, more than a decade before he actually died.** Since he was a figure of historic importance, we can’t blame the paper for being well-prepared.

Folks interested in the do-it-yourself approach won’t likely need to go to such lengths to create their own obituaries. Columnist Beam gives a couple of great examples of folks that have made good on such efforts:

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Safe Skyping: The Evolving Doctor-Patient Relationship


Skype and videoconferencing have surpassed the tipping point of consumer adoption. Grandparents Skype with grandchildren living far, far away. Soldiers converse daily with families from Afghanistan and Iraq war theatres. Workers streamline telecommuting by videoconferencing with colleagues in geographically distributed offices.

In the era of DIY’ing all aspects of life, more health citizens are taking to DIY’ing health — and, increasingly, looking beyond physical health for convenient access to mental and behavioral health services.

The Online Couch: Mental Health Care on the Web is my latest paper for the California HealthCare Foundation. Among a range of emerging tech-enabled mental health services is videoconferencing, for which there is a growing roster of choices for platforms that market a variety of features beyond pure communications.

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