Direct from ePatients & Doctors 2.0

This May brings about Doctors 2.0 & You, the only international congress devoted to the understanding of how physicians use new technologies, web 2.0 tools, and social media to communicate with other health care professionals, patients, payers, pharmaceutical companies, and public agencies. I am excited to be a part of this conference, held in Paris, as a representative of the ePatient community and participant in a panel addressing patients' motivation to utilize online resources to find health information and connect with others in their disease community.

It is my great privilege to be among the following panelists:

Kathi Apostolidis (@kgapo) is a Voluntary Sector Consultant and a Health Commentator. She is a two-time breast cancer survivor and a believer in the power of the internet and social media, as education and connection tools in healthcare. Kathi is interested in the ethical aspects of breast cancer, health and healthcare, and she speaks, writes and blogs at http://epatientgr.wordpress.com/ about participatory medicine, patient rights, informed shared decision making, health technology assessment, social media in healthcare, e-health, innovation in healthcare, e-patients and health literacy. Κathi is actively involved with cancer patient organizations in Greece and internationally.

Larry Chu (@LarryChu) is a practicing physician who runs the Anesthesia Informatics and Media (AIM) lab at Stanford University. He is an Associate Professor of Anesthesia on the faculty of the Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Chu organized the Fourth World Congress on Social Media and Web 2.0 in Health, Medicine and Biomedical Research (Medicine 2.0 @ Stanford) in 2011. He is the Executive Director of Stanford Medicine X, a conference that aims to explore how emerging technologies will advance the practice of medicine, improve health, and empower patients to be active participants in their own care. When not organizing conferences, Dr. Chu studies how information technologies can be used to improve medical education and collaborates with researchers in simulation and computer science at Stanford to study how cognitive aids can improve health care outcomes. Dr. Chu also has an NIH-funded clinical research laboratory where he studies opioid analgesic tolerance and physical dependence.

Recognized by US News and World Report as one of America's Top Sports Docs, Howard Luks, MD is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon who believes that humans are innately social, health is social, and that health care by nature should be social. He entered the intersection of health care and social media long before the pavement was dry. As an early adopter of Twitter (@hjluks), Dr. Luks also runs a blog, a Facebook Page, a YouTube channel and a personal site to educate, interact and engage with his patients. Aside from seeing patients in his practice, Howard serves as an External Advisory Board Member of the Mayo Clinic Center For Social Media, and has served as the Chief Medical Officer of many fledgling start ups in the health care space. Howard currently serves as a strategic advisor to physicians, hospital systems, healthcare start-ups and the orthopedic industry. He uses his voice as a physician leader in healthcare social media to actively encourage his colleagues to consider participating in the Health 2.0 movement. This passion finds him frequently speaking on social media topics as they relate to healthcare access, quality, HIT and cost transparency and the value propositions of a deep digital presence.

Len Starnes (@LenStarnes) is an internationally recognized pharma thought leader in e-business. With 14 years of experience in this field, Len led global e-business for Bayer Schering Pharma’s Primary Care business unit. Physician communities, social media policy, multi-channel marketing in Europe, Asia, and America are just some of his areas of expertise. Len was previously based in Paris as head of corporate communications for Raychem Corporation and in London with the public affairs department of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry. Len is a physicist and MBA, by training, with degrees from BU, Manchester University, and UCL.

Ian Talmage is a 38-year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry. He is currently Senior Vice President of Marketing at Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, where he has held significant positions in Pharma Development, the Strategic Planning Group and Global Strategic Marketing. Prior to this, Ian has worked with a number of major Pharma organisations, including Astra, Novartis, SmithKline and Yamanouchi, and his experience embraces Strategic Planning, Partnering, Mergers and Acquisitions and Global Marketing. In addition, Ian has worked in many different geographic areas, having been based in the UK, US, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and now Germany. Being a cancer survivor has changed and influenced Ian’s perspective on how the industry must interact with patients. While receiving healthcare he gained an appreciation for the type of support and communication most beneficial to individuals impacted by disease. He became convinced about the importance of creating a dialogue with patients and patient organisations and continues to push for industry to be a central part of the conversation in supporting patients. His dedication to this perspective is part of both his professional actions and personal commitments.

Bart Brandenburg (@bartbrandenburg) is a Dutch MD who has lived, learned and worked on three continents. He has over 25 years of experience as a clinician and researcher in hospital and primary healthcare. At present, he is CMO at Medicinfo, a healthcare innovation company in Tilburg (www.medicinfo.info) and has specialized in e-health. He is in charge of Medicinfo’s knowledge center that cooperates with national and international academic institutions. Brandenburg participates in the Center for eHealth Research at the University of Twente. He is a member of the Social Media Working Group of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). With two colleagues, he is cofounder of @tweetspreekuur, a free primary care service via Twitter. In 2010, this activity won him the Medicine 2.0 Maastricht Award.

Erik Jansen M.D. (@Janszoon) worked in internal medicine and pulmonology but followed his passion and chose to become a general practitioner in a small town in the south-east of the Netherlands. In 2009 he co-founded the @tweetspreekuur primary care service on Twitter, gaining him first-line hands on experience in delivering health care via social media and doing practical research at the same time. Erik is always looking for innovative ways to “hack the healthcare system” as he demonstrated in his REshape Pecha Kucha in Nijmegen. Having been a speaker at the Maastricht and Stanford Medicine 2.0 conferences, he is very much looking forward to sharing some unconventional ideas with the Doctors 2.0 & You crowd in Paris.