A colleague out in Seattle posted a great story, Information Therapy on the Go, about his experience in despensing information therapy (Ix) in taxis. The end of his post raised some questions: What is an information therapist? Who can be an information therapist? How can we train people to be information therapists in order to meet the great need that’s out there for them?

I, too, get asked to prescribe Ix to family, friends and randome people with considerable frequency (and I’m more than happy to help if I can). Even though I’m not a physician like Ted, as my at-the-time, 3-year-old Ben said, I am a “question doctor,” perhaps a colloquial version of information therapist.

The colleague I mention above is Ted Eytan, MD (Medical Director, Health Informatics & Web Services, Group Health Cooperative), who is on his way to Washington next week for a sabbatical. He’ll be spending quite a bit of his time serving as a Visiting Senior Fellow here at the Center for Information Therapy (IxCenter), and we’re thrilled to have him working with us more closely. Since he’s been one of the greatest Ix champions in the country, we’ve been working with him ad hoc since the birth of the IxCenter six years ago, but having a greater mindshare is going to be a fantastic opportunity for the IxCenter.

Stay tuned for much more on this in the near future…

–Josh

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 1:31 am and is filed under PHRs, Patient-Centered HIT Initiative, Patient-Clinician Relationship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.