Is the Future of Health Patient-Driven?

People often share more about their health and medical experiences on Facebook than they do with their own doctors. They talk about their experiences with illness, their symptoms, the medications they're taking, the side effects, what works, what doesn't, even various treatment options. 

It turns out this online health chatter can be a lifesaver. 

In January 2007, a man named Dave deBronkart was diagnosed with Stage IV, Grade 4 renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer). When his doctor discovered a spot on his lung (tumors that had developed from the metastasized kidney cancer), he told Dave to "go home and have a glass of wine with your wife." He researched his condition on reputable websites, official sources he felt he could trust. And what he learned on those sites was that his "prognosis was poor," his "outlook was bleak." His survival time at diagnosis was just 24 weeks. He had tumors in both lungs, several bones, and muscle tissue.

Looking to his doctor for more information, he was prescribed a patient community, acor.org.

It was on acor.org that Dave realized that patients themselves are the most underutilized resource in healthcare. On this community site Dave learned about an experimental course of treatment using high dosage Interleukin. He learned what providers near him were doing this and their phone numbers, information he wasn't able to find on any of the government-sponsored or approved websites he trusted. He concluded that only patients know best what other patients want to know.