My good friend Andrew Spong posted something today on his blog that I took one look at and said, “STEALING THIS!”
It’s not really theft if you give 100% credit, though, is it?
Andrew talks about his “I have” project, and uses this image to drive the point home:
thank you Andrew Spong!
What is the “I have” project, exactly? It’s crowd-sourcing health information in a way that makes it accessible and understandable to someone who’s just heard their name and [insert diagnosis here] in the same sentence. Patients, clinicians, experts of all stripes.
That he’s kicking this off with “I have breast cancer” has high impact for me, because I just marked my 4-year breast-cancer-versary yesterday.
That original diagnosis day – and before, and since – have been in turn marked by more Google searches than a human could count about breast cancer, oncology, radiation, lymphedema, lymphoma, lumpectomy, hormone suppression therapy, and a partridge in a pear tree.
This is incredibly important. I’m not a PhD (Andrew is), so I trust him to kick this off and make it fly. Really. Here are the goals for the project, as he states them:
What are the ‘I have’ project’s goals?
- To offer definitive answers to the question ‘I have [disease state]. What should I do?’
- To produce 1 page signpost summaries of the most reliable, relevant, patient-focused, outcomes-oriented, evidence-informed health information available for a wide range of diseases.
- To publish outputs compiled with SEO best practice in mind to be promoted through social networks and communities in an effective way with the intention that they should appear above the fold on the first page of Google results for the disease they address. Even the best health information is useless if it isn’t discoverable.
- To harness the expertise of healthcare professionals, patients and curators in co-creating and sharing the very best health information available for the disease states addressed by each document concerning treating and/or managing of the disease, living with the disease, and learning about the disease.
Let’s crowd-source the Cancer Troll right outta business.
GO!
