Open source healthcare and the empowered patient

Conventional ‘top down’ health care is characterised by the system not really catering for the patient’s needs and often restricting the way patient data - especially for chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease - can be shared and utilised, says patient advocate, Tim Omer. But there is an alternative, bottom up, approach he tells Ian Scales. A range of “community projects are very interesting because we’re freeing the (patient) data. We’re not necessarily saying we know how to use it, [but] we make it available and other community projects take that data and then do interesting things with it,” he says. 

If you think you’ve heard this sort of thing before  (empowerment, open data, community projects etc) you’d be right - this is ‘our’ IT open source principles applied to healthcare. Same problems (rigid, top down, slow moving structures) challenged by openness, agility and community. 

FILMED AT: Internet of Healthcare, 21-22 September, 2016, London