After 536 days since I started on twitter I have had an experience I never would liked to have missed.
• for 1 year, 5 months, 18 days or
• 46.310.400 seconds or
• 771.840 minutes or
• 12.864 hours or
• 76 weeks
I have been twittering, building a network of friends, colleagues, people with the same cause and just nice people and ... inspirators.
People with great vision, stories, experiences, questions, information, presentations, photographs, videos, links and statements that gave me the spirit to do what I like to do most : making better healthcare possible.
From inside out; from outside in, cross border, national and international, being influenced, influenced others a bit and most of all : interact with all of you.
Over this almost year and a half I have been building knowledge of the possibilities and pitfalls for healthcare (especially for our University Medical Centre) to step into "this 2.0-thing", mostly quickly "tagged" with ICT, Twitter and only for the young ones.
For me it was a time span where I understood more then ever (in 25 years) before what's at stake in healthcare, what change is needed, what is changing and what the challenges for the upcoming era will be.
I have the feeling I’m halfway though, just started getting the catch of what's needed and how to get it:
- It is nothing new, it's old;
- It is not expensive, its cheap;
- it doesn't require innovation, it's there in every-body;
- All of us can do it -yes we can- but some of us have just forgotten how to;
- But may be most of all : it's humane,
In my honest opinion its (com)passion. Both together and separate.
Compassion is needed to get into Participatory Healthcare where both patient and healthcare professional will step into the next episode of changes in healthcare.
Passion is needed for leadership and professionals to create power, vision and strength needed for this (r)evolution.
Don't let anybody tell you it's here already. Of course it is here already, but not everywhere, always and anytime. That IS what is upcoming though.
Because the Generation Y will force healthcare into Participatory Healthcare : 24/7 on- & offline just like the internet : anytime, anywhere and most of all full of choices & options, patients and their caregivers will choose from.
Let's face it from a patient’s perspective : Their health has been taken from them. Their data is being kept away from them, and choices are made for them. Patients' want to be part of their own disease again.
That has to be guided, by great doctors with great dreams and com-passion and leadership with strong vision and com-passion.
It can be done and it will be done, whether we would like it to, or not.
And afterwards -when the dust gets down- we will call it : Healthcare, just participatory healthcare.
It's undoable to thank everybody over the past 15.000 tweets and maybe many more replies. But i would like to spread my special gratitude to Marco Derksen (@marketingfacts) who got me into this "social media-thing", his thorough advices gave me the opportunity to focus on the right spots. Also to Maarten Lens-FitzGerald (@dutchcowboy) who, for me was the first e-patient i have been able to sit down and talk with on how healthcare should be changing and how internet will be changing healthcare. Also he had the guts to tell his story on my first Health 2.0 conference in front of +100 healthcare professionals.
Here he tells it in short to @berci (in English) but in this link the whole story in Dutch.
<p>Interview Maarten Lens-FitzGerald from lucien engelen on Vimeo.</p><p>Interviewed by Bertalan Meskó of Scienceroll.com at the Zorg 2.0 Spring 2009 conference Nijmegen of Acute Zorgregio Oost</p>
Thank you, all of you for helping me understand ! Thank you so much, let us start in 2.010 making Participatory Healthcare our heading.
<p>New Years Wish 2.010 @zorg20 from lucien engelen on Vimeo.</p><p>I Wish the both of us a boost into more Participatory Healthcare in the year 2.010</p>
Lucien Engelen
Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, the Netherlands
@Zorg20 on twitter
