Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent, is here to talk about her book & CNN.com column – The Empowered Patient
Big idea: It’s about taking our medical care into our own hands when we need to. Her goal is to teach people the skills they need to do just that. Cohen says, “I’m not in the business of changing systems; I’m in the business of helping people use the system as it is.”
Her hallmark story is about a woman who cut off the tip of her finger. She put it on ice (wrong strategy) and ran to the hospital. The doctors said not only could they not reattach it, but they needed to cut off more of her finger to help it heal correctly. She said that wasn’t acceptable and spent the next two weeks looking online for other options. She found them and then launched into a personal campaign to find a local doctor who would do it.
Case Study: Safety, Surveys & Recruitment: Why 2 Million+ People Engage with iGuard
Dr. Hugo Stephenson, iGuard
iGuard.org was created by Quintiles – one of the biggest clinical research companies in the world
Goal in creating it was both improving safety and building a community of patients for clinical research
iGuard is the largest medication monitoring service and largest patient-centric research platform in the world
2.4 million members today
For example: 152,140 patients with migraines; 20,090 epilepsy; 212,190, depression; 169,452, diabetes; 9877, MS
Tried 60+ methods to seed community participation
What worked: lots of value + light touch
“If we want to create a pool of patients for research, we have to offer them something first” – do something good for patients: Free medication checks + rapid safety alerts + access to feedback from thousands of patients
Today, iGuard has registries for hundreds of products
11-25% of patients iGuard reaches out to for research activity respond within 24 hours
The the keynote this morning is about how Novartis used a fictitious character and the power of storytelling to create a film that engaged the 34,000 Americans who have cystic fibrosis and their loved ones. Let’s hear it …
Becoming Christopher: How to Connect with the Power of Storytelling
Maureen Byrne, Novartis and Andy Phelan, Actor
This program was actually created with one of GSW’s sister agencies – Chandler Chicco
CF is a disease state I’ve personally had the chance to work on … incredible time in the history of CF treatment. Patients are living much longer and getting to experience lifestages they would have never had the chance to a decade ago.
When Novartis entered the CF community, there were a lot of questions – how would they market TOBI? Would they really be part of the community?
They knew they needed to make an impact. Becoming Christopher is a one act play, created with the CF community, written by a professional playwright, designed to inspire discussion
