Please tell us a little about your day job.
I’m a health care lawyer, consultant, blogger and speaker. Much of my practice is devoted to online businesses and app developers dealing in user-generated and patient-focused information and health care and the privacy and security issues they face.
I also work with health care facilities, provider groups and related enterprises and entrepreneurs on a wide variety of regulatory and business matters.
What are you passionate about?
I’m passionate about my family, music, bicycling . . . and the ever-changing health care landscape and its denizens. In addition to law, my background is in public health, so I am particularly interested in seeing that the tectonic shifts in the regulatory environment happening these days and the innovation in the health care space all serve the social good of improved access to health care and improved health status on both the individual and societal levels. I am active in social media and work with folks on health care social media issues. I would like to see social media and mHealth applications break the behavior change barrier and motivate people to improve their own health status more consistently.
I’m also passionate about using social media and about bringing people together on line and in real life to have interesting conversations about health care. As my kids never tire of observing: here I am again, “disorganizing” another “unconference.”
You can find me online at http://healthblawg.com and http://twitter.com/healthblawg.
What are you doing (or would like to do) to “hack” health care?
In my spare time, I am active in the Society for Participatory Medicine and I am a member of The Walking Gallery. Through both of these endeavors, I’m trying to wake people up to the issues around patient empowerment, patient engagement and patient data. My day job also touches on a bunch of “hacks” not unrelated to these issues, including payor and provider structures and relationships that can promote patient engagement and improve health outcomes – and I get great satisfaction out doing what I can to help clients’ innovations along. In addition, by promoting the use of health care social media, I hope to help providers and patients break down silos and communicate more effectively.
If you blog, or would like to blog, about current health care issues, please get in touch: I’m on the advisory board of HealthWorks Collective, a group health care blog that syndicates health care blogs and features original content as well, and we’re always looking to add bloggers representing “the world’s best thinkers on health care.”
Why are you attending HealthCamp Boston?
I want to see and hear what’s happening on health care’s cutting edge and meet the folks who are making it happen, and HealthCamps are often the best forum for doing so. I really like the concept, and that’s why I wanted to bring HealthCamp back to Boston again (we’ve run them here in 2009 and 2012). The HealthCamps I’ve been to have been so energizing, and have provided a lot of food for thought. My hope is that every “camper” leaving this HealthCamp will have a to-do list inspired by the day.
If you were to lead a session, what would it be about?
I am focused on privacy and security these days, so it would have to be related to that topic. This fall, I’m speaking at a number of conferences about patient-generated data, the applicable privacy and security protections, and the ways in which they intersect with traditional health care data protections.
What kinds of people do you want to meet at HealthCamp?
Thinkers and doers, old friends and new.
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