I want to be clear: not all patient communities are great, any more than online communities of any sort. But when a good one gets going, boy is it sweet.

I've been online long enough to know if I don't like the first results I get, I go look for more.

I've been online since 1989; I was sysop on several CompuServe forums.

I advocate for a totally new view of the role of the patient: patient as engaged partner, not passive recipient.

One of the most stubborn barriers to patient empowerment is the cultural assumption that since the way professionals learned was hard, you must need to be really smart, and you need to be taught in a carefully thought out, methodical sequence.

It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.