The ePatient movement promotes individuals become active participators in their overall health and wellbeing. In light of the debate on how to define ePatients, I probed into CrowdMed to see how it approached the concept.
From the very front page of the website, CrowdMed presents its purpose as to solicit the “wisdom of the crowd” to ultimately help solve medical cases. Once registered, the user may decide to post cases, provide answers to cases, or the combination of the two.
To post cases, the user can go through a step-by-step process to provide a variety of information including symptoms, demographics, personal medical history, family medical history, lifestyle, and any other diagnostic or imaging test attachments pertinent to the case.
To make the case more appealing for the pool of users, the uploader is given the option of attaching a cash prize to the case. Once the case has reached a quota of possible diagnoses, the user is notified, and they are able to take this information to their doctors to choose the best solution. The case owner is then required to award that solution provider the monetary prize.
For those who are looking to diagnose rather than provide cases, one is able to search through the cases by keywords or basic sort. The interface also provides a chat function in which the “medical detectives” can communicate with the case presenter for a more open discussion.
From what I have gathered thus far, the ‘e’ for ePatients carries meaning from electronic to engaged to empowered and more depending on the individual user.
CrowdMed absolutely fits the electronic definition, as it allows for easy sharing of medical imaging and lab results via the Internet; however, the engaged and empowered may be more descriptive of the users already equipped with medical education.
The website certainly allows patients to share their case with the public to explore other possible diagnoses, but the case becomes much more meaningful if you already have a background working as a health care provider. Even the most medically literate patients may have difficulty interpreting such information provided.
CrowdMed may not fit into the open forum type ePatient community that I had imagined when first research; however, the site may have opened another interpretation to the ePatient movement. ePatient as not only the web savvy, but the educated.
By patients being able to share and receive feedback from other healthcare providers, the patient is able to bring in information that may assist or even education their personal physician about new possibilities. This may create more cohesion within the physician-patient interaction and thus bring in the patient as a greater stakeholder in his treatment decisions.
For subsequent posts, I would personally like to continue exploring other ePatient outlets. Next, I will specifically focus on PatientsLikeMe to not only give a comparison, but also provide further insight into the interpretations of ‘e’.
CrowdMed (www.crowdmed.com)
Disclosure: I initially got the idea for looking into the website after talking with a friend who works for the company. All the functions discussed in the post was information I obtained after browsing through the website as both an unregistered and registered user. Permission was obtained to publish this post.
This is an interesting idea but ultimately severely limited by time to arrive at the proper diagnosis as well as quality of peer input. It also fails to capture adequate subjective signs that are encountered in the patient-physician interaction which any seasoned physician knows is extremely important and can often make or break the diagnosis. Yes there is lots of data with this approach, however the ability to have enough QUALITY data along with haveing it come together at the right time in order to problem solve and arrive at the appropriate diagnosis and treatment is difficult to achieve. For example, one could simply crowd source a chest Xray, a history (which may or may not be communicated effectively), a set of vital signs (maybe from a different time than the CXR) and then labs (also may or may not have coincided with the encounter of the CXR). All of these pieces of the puzzle are needed to be assembled and then re-evaluated by the astute clinician so that the diagnosis and treatment be refined. If the crowd source comments are more likely to misdiagnose before arriving at the correct diagnosis. This is exactly why medical students struggle to get to diagnoses that experienced clinicians come to effortlessly. Med students clearly have a much more up to date and comprehensive knowledge base but it how they synthesize the data that limits them. Only by piecing together the clinical picture in the correct order can one come to the correct diagnosis.