Your personal health: Trusera launches and thoughts on participatory medicine.

June 16, 2008

Earlier today I got an email announcing the official launch of Trusera, a site that allows people to share their knowledge of diseases and treatments with their peers and others in the community. I remain fascinated about how sites like Trusera and iMedix will complement PHRs like HealthVault and Google Health (and lets not forget personal genetics). Leroy Hood, in his talks about P4 Medicine says that the future of medicine is participatory. We are still in the early days, with limited patient education, services that aren’t quite there yet, a somewhat ambiguous regulatory scenario and no clear idea of who owns what piece of information.

Over the next few years we will get a better picture of how we will become more direct players into our own healthcare and wellness. We will not only have access to resources and services, but the knowledge and a medical system that actively encourages patients to work with them in a collaborative approach to treat illnesses. Let’s see how many years few ends up being.