The Explosion of Health and Medical Information: Are Patients Any Better Off?

Date: Monday,  March 7th
Location: AOL, 770 Broadway – 6th Floor (Wanamaker Building, on 9th Street) NYC 10003
Time: 6:00 – 9:00 PM
Fee: $35 (through March 1st); $40 (thereafter); $50 at the door

Pew reports that 8 in 10 Internet users have looked online for health information. Med Ad News heralded 2011 as the “Year of the Empowered Patient.” Manhattan Research considers 99 millions U.S. adults “Empowered Consumers” – people who have challenged a doctor’s treatment/diagnosis, asked a physician to change a treatment, discussed information found online with a physician, used the Internet instead of seeing a doctor or made a healthcare decision because of online information.

Today, Americans have access to an abundance of information related to diseases, conditions, drugs, devices, alternative therapies and scientific studies. But what are they doing with all of this information? Has this explosion led to empowerment or to confusion and information overload? Has access encouraged better communication between physicians and patients? Or is it leading to a breakdown between the two?

To discuss and debate these issues, NYC Health Business Leaders have assembled a panel of experts, true thought leaders in this area.

  • Dr. Lisa Sanders, the renowned New York Times writer whose “Diagnosis” column was the inspiration for Fox TV’s House MD. Dr. Sanders is the author of several books including Every Patient Tells a Story, a practicing physician, and a Yale Medical School professor.
  • Dr. Scott Haig, an orthopedic surgeon and TIME contributor, who wrote the seminal piece “When The Patient is a Googler.”
  • Dr. Ivan Oransky, the executive editor of Reuters Health, who founded Embargo Watch to “keep an eye on how scientific information embargoes affect news coverage” and recently launched Retraction Watch to “track retractions as a window into the scientific process.” Dr. Oransky also teaches medical journalism at NYU.
  • Mitchel Rothschild, CEO of Vitals.com, a site that has aggregated data on 720,000 doctors nationwide and gives patients a chance to rate medical providers.
  • Bill Silberg, whose career has included senior editor roles at Medscape and JAMA, as well as executive level positions at New York Academy of Sciences and The Commonwealth Fund.