More Patient Travel Scholarships!

What does the “Cinderblocks2: The Partnership with PatientsContinues” conference (in Grantsville, MD pop. 825) and Doctors 2.0 & You conference (in Paris, France pop. 2 million) have in common?

Both events are focused on innovation and better communication within healthcare. 

Doctors 2.0 has the over arching goal of identifying the ways in which the inclusion of health 2.0 tools and social media platforms can improve care.

Cinderblocks2 is a mash up of art, activism, medicine, social media, HIT, patient rights and fire-dancing.  It is sort of like if Burning Man met healthcare.

Both events were founded and are organized by two powerful women:

Denise Silber is the founder of the Doctors 2.0 & You conference series. She is a healthcare social media influencer, keynote speaker, and valued strategic advisor. 

Denise was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 2011 for her work in promotingeHealth trans-Atlantically. A Smith College graduate in Government, Denise wasa US Foreign Service Officer before getting her MBA from Harvard BusinessSchool. She then spent 9 years in the pharma industry before creating her own medical communications companies and helping to found digital health start-ups. 

As for Cinderblocks, I am Regina Holliday.  Sometimes called the Rosa Parks of Healthcare.  I graduated Sapulpa high school in Oklahoma. (GO Chieftains!) I worked retail for 16 years before my loving husband Fred died of cancer in 2009; then I became a patient rights activist and artist. I am a keynote speaker, a health information technology change agent and am currently creating The Walking Gallery Center for Arts and Healing in Grantsville, MD.   

Both events are on the same days!!!

Doctors 2.0 is on June 4-5, 2015.  Cinderblocks2 is on June 4-6,2015.  Now some conference planners would be shooting eye daggers at each other over that, not Denise and I.  We are all about spreading the love.

The most important thing both events have in common is that they will benefit from Patient Travel Scholarships issued by the Society for Participatory Medicine!

In 2012, The Society for Participatory Medicine created a patient travel fund so they could award ten $500.00 patient travel scholarships. These were issued to patients so they could afford to attend Cinderblocks1 in Kansas City.  We crowdfunded the money and we asked for direct donation to the site.  We were successful thanks to many kind donors.

When Denise pointed out that our events were on the same days she said it would be great if we could connect them in some way, so we decided we are going do some live streamed interviews between the two conferences. But why stop there?  I said that the Society for Participatory Medicine (#S4PM ) was going to provide patient travel scholarships once again for Cinderblocks, would she like to include Doctors 2.0 in the competition?  She said yes!  #S4PM said yes, they could issue awards for either event!!!

SO…. One day after I announce that HIStalk is epically cool and issuing travel scholarships for HIMSS,

I am announcing that the Society for Participatory Medicine will issue $500.00 Patient Travel Scholarships to attendees of Doctors 2.0 or #Cinderblocks2.

How do you enter?

You must post a blog entry by March 31, 2015 NOW EXTENDED to April 20, 2015 explaining why you want to go to either Doctors 2.0 or Cinderblocks2 and why a patient travel scholarship is needed. 

You must send a link to the post to me by either twitter or facebook prior to  March 31, 2015 NOW EXTENDED to April 20, 2015 If you do not have a blog, please send me your post as an attachment and I will find a blog you can post on as a guest blogger.  

You must also encourage people to donate to the travel fund. These scholarships will come from donations to the fund. I will do my best to encourage companies to sponsor folks but I have found when it comes to patients many small donations add up. (Below is just a screen shot you must go here to donate.) 

How will you be judged?

We will judge entries based on writing ability and need.  We will announce the winners on March 31, 2015 April 24, 2015. Payments will be issued after the conference events.

Responsibilities of the winners: 

You will need to attend the conference of your choice.  We encourage you to use social media during the conference.  We will need you to post a report of your experience on a blog.  After these responsibilities are fulfilled, the Society for Participatory Medicine will issue the $500.00 scholarships.

It is sure a great time to be a patient activist! Spread the word and good luck!

The Walking Wall

Did you know that you could help patients by purchasing an art book?  For every copy sold of The Walking Wall: 73 Cents to the Walking Gallery $10 is donated to the PatientTravel Fund of the Society for Participatory Medicine a 501c3 non-profit.

Yep.  10 dollars.  Now you might not think ten dollars is a lot, but it is all the proceeds on the book after costs are covered.  HISA (Health Informatics Society of Australia) published the book with additional help from the Cerner Corporation.  I wrote the text and created the art depicted in the book.  We make no profit from it.  We want those funds to go to the society so patients will be able to attend more conferences and events.  

This book was the wonderful idea of Louise Schaper, CEO of HISA. When she asked me where I would like to donate the proceeds, I told her I could think of no better choice than The Society for Participatory Medicine.

The book begins by explaining the mural 73 Cents and then shows the story jackets of 40 amazing people who have dedicated their lives to helping others.

You will see the stories of:

Jen McCabe, Lygeia Ricciardi, Cindy Throop, Valarie Barnes, Danielle Cass, Susannah Fox, Amy Romano, Christine Kraft, Keith Boone, John O’Brien, Lindsey Hoggle

Clay Patterson, Kait B. Roe, Brian Ahier, Richard Payne,  Paulo Machado, Helen Haskell, Louise Schaper, Dave DeBronkart, Eunita Winkey, Mary Anne Sterling,

Andre Blackman, Craig Lipset,, Kathi  Apostolidis, David Harlow, Alex Albin, David Collins, Sherry Reynolds, Tiffany Peterson, Ben Miller, Jenny Pettit, Wendy Sue Swanson, Ted Eytan, Marsha Goodman, Trisha Torrey, Kathy Nicholls, Matthew Holt, Wen Dombrowski, David Lee Scher

These are only 40 members of The Walking Gallery of healthcare.  There are currently 195 members walking around the world wearing patient stories painted on their back.  I hope there are future books to come that highlight the work of these other wonderful individuals.  Meanwhile, I will keep blogging about them.

The book is a lovely full color book and retails in the US for $40.00 plus shipping. By my count there are 260 books currently at the US distributor.  If all of those books are purchased, The Society for Participatory Medicine would receive $2,600.00 for patient travel!

That would be a lovely gift to the Society this holiday season.

The Conference That Felt Like a Hug.

So was Partnership With Patients September 21-23, 2012 in Kansas City a success?

We proved it was possible for a loose confederation of patients to gather and organize with little time and little funding.  We were nimble. 

It was a great gathering of lovely people from all over the nation.  Patients worked hand in hand with partners.  Each benefited from the expertise of the other.  Most of all we proved this could be done.

Remember where this saga began?  On May 22nd , we were told there was no funding to gather patients to talk about goals of the Partnership for Patients campaign.  Pat Mastors and I thought we had to do something to change this.  Kathy Nicholls helped create a website and we began to plan.   In the months hence we worked with the team from Weber-Shandwick and the Partnership for Patients team from CMS to open up communication between an ever larger group of patients.  Representatives were able to come to our Kansas City summit from both Weber-Shandwick and CMS.

Crowd-funding

HealthTech Hatch: Patient Travel Scholarships

Thank you to Patricia Salber and the entire HealthTechHatch team for their dedication to go live as soon as possible, thereby ensuring we had a chance to raise the needed funds.  Thank you to all the 34 amazing people who donated to HealthTechHatch Patient Travel Fund at the Society for Participatory Medicine.  We raised $6,085.00 in approximately 2 weeks during the first weeks of public beta. 

THANK YOU! Josh Kimberg, Pat Salber, Chris Selecky, John Sullivan, Juliet Oberding, Dov Michaeli, Marty Diamond, Amy Salber, Elaine Waples, Bryan Beck, Laurie Nirenberg, Lisa Fields, Josh Krakauer, Susan Hull, Mee Elizabeth, Scot and Mitch, Megan Grangoff, Jon Mertz, Wayne Pan, Lorrie Eigles, Peter Boland, Grey Miller, Daniel van Leeuween, Ian Eslick, Kathy Nieder, Colin Hung, Maureen Bisognano, Jim Hansen, Helen Haskell, Steven Davidson, Amanda Griffith and Jamie Inman

This allowed the Society to issue 9 scholarships of 500 for e-patients to attend the event.  As we received over the required amount and as some individuals donated directly to the Society there was money left over to seed a permanent fund for patient travel at the Society for Participatory Medicine.

Thank you to our scholarship award winners for being the first e-patient travel scholars!

Amanda Greene, Richard Anderson, Evelyn McKnight, Alicia Staley, Bart Windrum, Michael Weiss, Nikolai Kirienko, Steven Baker, Winnie Tobin

Medstartr: Travel Funding for the Walking Gallery and Partnership With Patients

Thank You to Alex Fair and the entire Medstartr team for their hard work supporting us to meet our funding goal and thank you to the 90 funders who helped us go far beyond our original funding goal.  This project was funded at 219% raising $10,948.00 and broke the record for most funders and most money raised on Medstartr at the time of the project close.

THANK YOU to our amazing funders! Alex Fair, Nick Dawson, Gregg Masters, Kim Whittemore, Alexandra Yperifanos, Abby Prestin, Howard Luks, Ileana Balcu, Donna Scott, Deidre Bonnycastle, Alan Greene, Theresa Willett, Steve Sisko, Martine Ehrenclou, Benjamin Miller, Jerry Matczak, Pat Mastors, Lisa Fields, Patricia Salber, Mary Cattolico Camp, Mindy Brown, Kavita Patel, Clay Patterson, Janice McCallum, Jess Jacobs, Anette McKinnon, Roni Zeiger, Loring Day, Linda Brady, Marilyn Mann, Heather Leslie, Jon Mertz, Kristen Andrews, Sarah Kucharski, Carolyn Thomas, Sue Woods, Fred Trotter, Matthew Holt, Chiara Bell, P. F. Anderson, Phoebe Browning, Ted Eytan, Ronan Kavanagh, Nicole Dettmar, Andrew J. Rosenthal, Brian Ahier, Matthew Browning, Andre Blackman, John Moehrke, Symplur, Sherry Reynolds, Pat Mastors, Matthew Katz, Gangadhar Sulkunte, Bruce Ramshaw, Ann Becker-Schutte, Michelle Litchman, S. Turner Dean, Lisa Fields, Julia Halisy, Andrew Spong, Peter Levin, Brian Carter, Colin Hung, Kourtney Govro, Ruth Ann Crystal, Marianne Venitti, Emily Hackel, Devon Scanlon, Helen Hadley, Mike Sevilla, Joshua Rubin, Noel Eldridge, Phydian Systems, Alexandra Drance, Susan Eller, Ross Martin, Elin Silveous, Qpid.me, Joltdude

Thank you to everyone who supported Partnership with Patients on Eventbrite.  Many of you purchased tickets at sponsorship levels, which enabled us to pay for food, staffing and shuttles.  

Thank You! Susan Hull, Scott Strange, Francie Grace, Howard Luks, Joleen Chambers, Steven Baker, Alexandra Yperifanos, Mark Scrimshire, Maumi Cannell Chatterton, Dean Sellis, Amy Keil, Bunny Ellerin, Katrina Huckabay, Carolyn Capern, Trisha Torrey, Lisa Fields, Michael Millenson, Diane Stollenwerk, Jen McCabe, Pat Mastors, Ryan Neuhofel, Karen MacDonald, Casey Quinlan, Jerry Matczak, W. Joseph Ketcherside, Gary Takher, Jody Schoger, Gayle Sulik, Dave DeBronkart, Douglas Wager, Ken Burke, Eunita Winkey, Bridget Searles Andi Neuhofel, Marcia j. Corbett, Lesa Mitchell, Sarah Barr,  Winnie Tobin, David Voran, Roy Foster, Tiffany Peterson, Amanda Greene, Alicia Staley, Richard Anderson, Michael Weiss, Nancy Imber, Robin Miles-McLean, Karen Oliver, Linda Ketcherside, Ross Martin,  Colby Meier, Jim Hansen, Peggy Zuckerman, Evelyn McKnight, Amy Burgess, Ann Becker-Schutte, Bart Windrum, Steve Daviss, Joshua Rubin, Diana Lee, Brian Carter, Sarah Kucharski, Kait B. Roe, Olga Pierce, Erin Gilmer, Dan Ford, Erika Hanson Brown





Thank you to our many sponsors
Cerner graciously hosted us in their educational facility as well as helped with coordination  and audio visual equipment and staff.  Cerner also gave tours of their experience theater to patient groups to better explain HIT policy in real life.  Intouch Solutions helped fund patients, promoted the event and and helped pay for food.  Pocket Health helped promote the event and paid for food during the weekend conference.  Mark Scrimshire and Maumi J Cannell Chatterton with Health Camp added one more weekend to their busy schedule and hosted our unconference day.  We owe a great deal of thanks to all the partners listed above that made this event a reality.

The Kansas City Marroitt Downtown was our conference hotel.  Even though our contingent was small, four members of the upper management of the hotel came down to thank us during The Walking Gallery.  They were honored that we chose their hotel.     

Thank You to our Bloggers and Social Media Mavens 
Many of the attendees in person or online are wonderful bloggers and here are some of their reflections on the event.  I will post other accounts as I become aware of them.

Partners: Ann Becker-Schutte who wrote about the Walking Gallery, Why Your Voice Matters and Transforming Pain Into Purpose. 
Joe Ketcherside: Voices Found
Mike Sevilla Partnership with patients Summit
Mark Scrimshire HCKC Recap
Bunny Ellerin Partnership With Patients: A Conference Like No Other
Gary Takher Patients Connected Like Legos
Whitney Bowman-Zatskin Regina Holliday and the Partnership with Patients

Patients:
Bart Windrum Be Ahead of All Partings
Kathi Apostolidis Partnership With Patients Goes Global
Amanda Greene Nothing is Impossible
Michael Weiss Video Summary of Partnership With Patients
Erin Gilmer Partnership With Patients
Scott Strange On Feeling Centered and the Unconference
AfternoonNapper The Ethics of Pharma-Patient Relationship 
Corinna West I met the 1000 mile swimmer and Five Things I learned at Partnership with Patients Conference
Alicia Staley Cerner Showcases the Future of Healthcare
Carolyn Capern The Partnership with Patients Summit

Quite a few people wondered at our long hashtag.  I told them to read the blog #Cinderblocks and patient Summits. We trended on twitter for the Kansas City region during the conference.  Our symplur analytics show over 3k in tweets leading to 9 million potential impressions.

We also had an unexpected guest.  On Sunday swimmer Dave Cornthwaite and his support team joined our group as he swam down the lower Missouri to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer.  Thank you to Corinna for introducing us.

Thank you to all of our speakers!

We really packed in a lot of content in very few hours thank you to all of our veteran and novice speaker that made that possible.  Cerner will post these videos in the months to come and I will link to them here.

Our Partner Speakers:
Ryan Neuhofel, Tobias Gilk, Anne Becker-Schutte, Joe Ketcherside, Josh Rubin, Doug Weinbrenner, Katherine Cartwright Knodel, Jim Hansen, Roy Foster, Olga Pierce, Michael Millenson, Lesa Mitchell,  Susan Hull, Bunny Ellerin, Brian Carter

Our Patient Speakers:

Thank you Lisa Fields, Bart Windrum, Joleen Chambers, Tiffany Peterson, Kait B. Roe, Eunita Winkey, Amanda Greene, Carolyn Capern, Jari Holland Buck, Pat Mastors, Erin Gilmer, Casey Quinlan Michael Weiss, Dave de Bronkart, Evelyn McKnight

Reflections
 “Was it a success? Was Partnership With Patients in Kansas City Sept 21-23, 2012 all that you had hoped it would be?"

How do you answer that?  Maybe the answer is an economic one, "Yes! We raised the money needed to fund it and found a venue to host us."  Perhaps answer is and organizational one, "Yes! Patients and Partners flew from all over the nation and locals gave up their weekend to attend this event in Kansas City."  Or should we answer in another way? "This event was a moment to recharge the soul and renew the will to fight for others."

Maybe success was having the event in the first place.  Maybe success is the willingness to try even if we fail.

At this event I was a moderator and an organizer.  I did not deliver a keynote speech; I left that to the many other attendees.  I did deliver some closing remarks.

I spoke to crowd about the day, July 21^st, 2007, I stood upon the sales counter at the toy store Barstons Child’s Play.  It was 11:45 at night and I was cloaked in a witches robe.  I was performing a dramatic interpretation of  J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth installment in the series.  As I performed the dialog between Professors Snape and Dumbledore, I looked into the glittering eyes of the hundred plus customers who crowded every isle of our store.  Then it was midnight, my performance ended, and the crowd grabbed the new book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

My husband Fred and I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows very rapidly, mostly reading for plot.  Years later after Fred’s death, I would read it again.  It dealt so well with immense journey one undertakes after the death of a loved one.   I suppose that is very understandable as J.K Rowling based a lot of Harry’s journey on her own experience with grief after her mother’s death in 1990.  I told those assembled that one line from the book spoke deeply to me in my grief.

"I open at the close."

I told them this line was such a powerful one.  This is the moment that Harry embraces the greatest failure life has to offer: to die.  This is the moment we go on no matter our fate; we will strive, we will try to help others even if our own success is forfeit.  In this moment we accept that we can fail, and thereby create an opportunity to vanquish our foe.  

That is the close I gave those brave partners and patients who met in Kansas City.

I open at the close; or in this end, exists a new beginning.

Calling all Patient Advocates

Calling all Patient Advocates!!!

Want to come to the Partnership with Patients Summit in KC September 21-23, 2012?  Need help with funding to get there?  The Society for Participatory Medicine a 501c3 non-profit is creating a scholarship fund and Pat Salber, MD decided to help.  She is currently launching a crowdfunding site called Health Tech Hatch that will enter public beta on Sept. 4.  It is currently in private beta and people are already pledging to support the fund.  She writes about the program here. 

You can register for the Partnership With Patients conference here.

Please spread the word!  This is a conference that is being designed with patients in full partnership with providers and venders and I really hope you can attend. 

So to make this super clear (with a little help from the amazing Trisha Torrey on editing)

Are you a patient who would like to apply for a travel scholarship to the Partnership With Patients Summit?

The Society of Participatory Medicine will be awarding 10 scholarships of $500 each.  Here are details and how to apply:

Write a (no more than) 500 word essay of why you should be granted a travel scholarship to attend the Partnership With Patients Summit.  Why should you be the person who receives the scholarship?  What can you offer to the people you connect with?  What can they offer you? What do you hope to do with what you learn? 

If you have your own blog, then post your essay on your blog, and tweet the link to Regina Holliday ( @ReginaHolliday) or post the link on her Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/regina.holliday )

If you do not have your own blog, then send the post, contained in an email (not attached) to Regina at  reggieart123@yahoo.com  She will post your essay here on the Partnership with Patients website.

Deadline for submission is midnight, pacific time, September 8, 2012.

The essays will be reviewed by the committee at the Society for Participatory Medicine and winners will be notified by September 16.

Good luck!

Questions?  Contact  Regina Holliday at Partnership with Patients

Painting at Microsoft

If you were to enter my small kitchen, you would see paint, brushes, and a canvas upon my counter leaning ever so slightly onto the cabinets above. If you opened one of those cabinet doors, you would see a birthday card taped inside.  My husband Fred gave me that card almost 2 years ago on May 10, 2009.  My mother-in-law Joan picked it out, as Fred could no longer leave his bed.  And being well-meaning and an always dedicated mother, she even signed it for him.  In her lovely penmanship, she wrote his name upon this card as she had on scores of childhood Golden Books and pile upon pile of school photos.  She wrote it here as she had done many times before, but this would be one of the very last times she would write for him: “Love, Fred.”  But my Fred was not represented well within his mother’s elegant cursive signature. So, scrawled in Fred’s uneven hand was his added comment, “Love, (Forever), Fred…" And beside that were three symbols: Alpha Omega Infinity. 

For that is what I was to Fred.  I was his Alpha and Omega, his everything.  He signed cards to me this way during our 16 years together.  I look at this card every day when I open up my cabinet.  Taped beside it is the last hospice nurse instruction from 6-16-09.  I can give Fred Atropine every four hours… until he dies 12 hours later.  Both the card and the note await my glance in silence.  I have never taken them down, and daily they remind me of why I paint and why I speak.

Last week I had the honor of painting at the Microsoft Connected Health Conference 2011 in Chicago.  The experience was a little unusual for a conference painting, because I was not in the main hall where I could hear the speeches.  Instead my easel was placed in the very back of the exhibition hall.  This was as close as I could get to the speakers.  And it would have to do.

I was at this event because Mathew Holt introduced me to Luisa Monge, Director, Business Development and Strategy Health Solutions Group, Microsoft HealthVault , prior to Health 2.0 in San Francisco.  Luisa is a kind and charming woman.  She and Garrett G. Clarke, Business Development Manager, Health Solutions Group, even came to DC and saw the December show of my work in Politics and Prose Bookstore.  We had a lovely evening together, and they asked me if I would like to attend a Health Partner Summit in February and speak at the Connected Health event in April (full disclosure: they would pay me an honorarium for my speaking at this event.)

In February, I listened to some amazing folks say some amazing things about what is possible in a PHR.  After two days of listening, I was able to tell the staff at HealthVault my takeaways.  I was very concerned about their use of faceless avatars.  I was disturbed that one of the only graphics representing HealthVault in the many slide sets was a closed lock.  I remarked, “When I hear HealthVault I do not want to see locks.  I want to see the vaulted ceilings of sacred spaces.  I want to be uplifted.”  Finally, I wondered at the meaning of the purple, blue and green ribbons that scrolled across each frame.  What did they represent?  Well, they meant nothing really, just branding, just …decoration. 

I told Luisa I would love to come and paint at Connected Health.   And it really did not matter all that much that I would not get to be within the conference hall, because I had come to paint what HealthVault could mean to the people who would use it.  

Prior to attending Microsoft Connected Health, I had a few conversations with Chuck Denham, MD from TMIT.  I talked with him about his new program CareMoms on SafetyLeaders.org.  According to the site,  “More than 70% of healthcare decisions are made by women in our communities. One in four Americans is a caregiver of someone else, and 80% of the caregivers are women.”   Inspired by this information, I decided to depict HealthVault with an empowered female image.

This is Alpha and Omega: The A to Z of Me.  It is a powerful piece.  The woman here is dynamic.  Her head is thrown backward; her eyes stare at the expanse above.  Her chest is thrust forward and she is positioned like Clark Kent changing into Superman.  The Clark Kent/Superman image applies mostly to the left side of her body, and this is in direct reference to the one speech I listened to that morning.  Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft, talked about the need some patients have for an avatar.   These patients desperately want to use the Internet for research and support, but only if they can have a secret identity or an avatar to protect their privacy.  The right side of her body represents the patients who have “come out” online; they use their own name and are metaphorically bearing their naked self before the world.  Both types of patients would like to access and share data, but their paths toward a health exchange are slightly different. 

The right and left arms of this woman appear to be pulling open the vault of her chest.  As I was painting this part of the picture, many of the men who walked by seemed a bit perturbed by this graphic imagery.  One gentleman even asked me if I was painting the chest-bursting alien from the film Aliens.  I said no.  I am painting a living healthvault.   This is the vault of her chest--here the major organs should reside.  Within this vault, the ribs curve round behind to reveal the vaulted ceiling of a church.  Upon this ceiling is a modified image from the Sistine Chapel.  This is unfinished depiction of a doctor sending the spark of life through the computer to a patient.  It mimics the positioning of God and Adam in The Creation of Adam.  The doctor is God, and the patient is Adam, and both are faceless avatars.  Other than this vignette. the vaulted ceiling is empty; the composition is unfinished.

Soon after I was painting this element, Archie Galbraith from Calance Corporation walked over to talked to me.  As we looked at the painting of a woman craning her neck, Archie shared a tale of his evening at the Sistine Chapel a few years ago.  The company he was working with at the time had a private viewing for two hours (I have never personally seen the Sistine Chapel, but I was speaking about it with a fellow pre-k teacher/artist Courtney Mazza a few days ago.  She bemoaned how much there was to see and how little time she could stop and stare when the crowds of people poured through the space.).  Archie got two hours to look up, and that sparked an idea that it really should be viewed while being pushed on a lying upon a gurney.   As his neck began to ache more and more from the strain, he thought of a better way.  I think Archie is right.  We need to support people as they try to stare upwards.

Below the empowered woman stand two daughters.  They represent the future generations.  They are the reason to work toward better health.  Each of the girls stares out at us with a serious expression as if asking, ”What are you doing to create a better world?”.  Each of the girls and the woman hold a gymnastic ribbon.  These are the Microsoft HealthVault ribbons, and they mean something.   Each awareness ribbon represents various diseases, treatments, or problems. 

Green is labeled: with terms like Childhood depression, open records, and kidney cancer.  Light blue is childhood cancer, prostrate cancer, and Trisomy 18. Purple is pancreatic Cancer, testicular cancer, ADD, and domestic violence.  Have you ever played with a gymnastic ribbon?  They are fun, and you want to play with them.  The key to people utilizing a PHR is to make it fun yet meaningful.  I am glad I got a chance to paint this vision of a PHR, and I am glad Microsoft purchased this painting via a charitable donation to the Society for Participatory Medicine. 

As the conference wrapped up,  Liza Sisler came over to speak with me as she had many times throughout the day.  She is a friend of mine on Twitter and is Microsoft National Sales director at Perficient.


She is an amazing lady whose accent rambles back and forth from an Irish lilt to an American flat nasal tone.  She works at a company that tries to help providers use the Microsoft technologies already at their disposal to create a better working environment.

As I stood before the painting, I said, “Do you see it?  Do you see how her body forms the Alpha and Omega?  See how her hair is blown back to form the omega sign.  See how her shoulders, arms and chin form the Alpha?”  This patient stands before us reminding us, “I am the first and I am the last.”  That is a vital lesson as we look at the PHR within the scope of a health information exchange.  And coupled with that other saying, “Nothing about with me, without me.”  It makes quite a powerful point.