As I said in my post about my 4-year-old’s middle-of-the-night strained breathing a couple weeks ago, it’s true that we’re all patients and caregivers. Those scary (and mundane) encounters with the health care delivery system are critically important for keeping me grounded as to why I do what I do everyday.

It’s also important to observe and listen to patients tell their own stories. That was one of the critical tenets of the Patient-Centered HIT Initiative. It’s also important for consumers to help define what the future of health care looks like, which is part of what’s happening over at the e-patients.net blog, where professionals and lay people are working on refining the Health 2.0 definition.

We always like to include consumer perspectives at our conference, and we anticipate at least two presentations from the patient’s perspective at our 7th Annual Ix Conference, WIxRED: Next-Generation Patient-Centered Care. One will be a a Boeing employee with a chronic condition who will present with Kerry Meyer, PhD, ARNP, RN (Care Manager, Valley Medical Center), about the role Ix plays in a practice where a truly patient-centered medical home project has been implemented.

The other patient perspective will come from David Bradley, Chairman of the Atlantic Monthly:

Twenty years running a health care research company didn’t prepare him for the challenges of dealing with acute health issues. The founder of The Advisory Board Company shares what he learned from an anxious search for just the right health care information and the insights it gave him into the direction of the Ix movement.

David has a powerful story to tell. I hope you’ll join us at the Newseum to hear it.

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