Weekly Roundup: The Latest & Greatest Paradigm Shifters in Health

This week’s Weekly Roundup is focused on the best thinking from health thought leaders that are focused on new paradigms in health: Integrative Health, Focus on Prevention and Patient Participation and Empowerment. Read on as we discuss these key micro-trends that reflect the future of health care–evolving in front of our eyes, as we speak, today.

Integrative Medicine and Driving Adoption

The Economic Potential of Integrative Medicine by Glenn Sabin

A strong proponent and leader in integrative medicine, Glenn Sabin is a 20-year cancer “thriver” who beat his cancer by creating a comprehensive, integrative oncology approach to managing his disease. In this article he discusses the big question about how we can enable Integrative Medicine to become the standard of care. The growth in the industry, projected to reach $50B, is currently driven by a “combination of consumer demand, clinical outcomes and emerging literature supportive of a whole person integrative approach to medicine”. However, in discussing the next phase of growth, Glenn highlights key strategies to making integrative care into a sustainable economic model: Integrative Care has to be proven to be cost-effective AND Providers of Integrative care must become sophisticated marketers and communicators.

Chronic disease care: Focus on prevention and away from costly intervention

How to Save a Trillion Dollars by Mark Bittman

Mark Bittman, “on food and all things related”, passionately discusses a world in which billions are spent on improving lifestyle choices, particularly food, and its positive impact on chronic diseases. The savings to the system could be in the trillions of dollars as posited by several studies in the US and UK. He suggests, “if we can put a man on the moon we can create an environment in which an apple is a better and more accessible choice than a Pop-Tart”. If we can shift our federal and societal dollars rolex replica watches and other resources to the job of educating and improving people’s diets and choices, we could ensure a healthier population. The result is a shifting of costs towards of prevention rather than treatment of disease, often done when its chronic and much tougher and more expensive to impact.

Patient participation impacting Patient Empowerment

Meredith Gould: Why Go Public Now About My Fibro?

This e-patient blog post gets to the heart of the issues around patients sharing their information, the perceived downsides and benefits. The biggest downside is obvious: privacy. Other extended issues are the stigma and loss of identity associated as a patient that is strongly associated with a health condition. But here is the turning point for today’s generation of patients that are choosing to share their experiences, including those on FoundHealth: “Active involvement with healthcare social media communities has me convinced that patient participation leads to patient empowerment. Patient empowerment, in turn, leads to patient engagement.”. Meredith Gould’s choice to step out publicly and talk about her Fibromyalgia condition represented a shift in her belief. By sharing her personal information, she could benefit the larger intelligence equation around her condition. She could, in turn, benefit others like herself and perhaps, improve her own prognosis.