In my book, 'Let Patients Help,' one chapter is titled 'Let patients vote on what's worth the cost.' That's sensible, right? In other industries, consumer preference is a key determinant in prices.

In other industries, value is defined by the ultimate stakeholder - the one who benefits, or not, from the service. We should do the same in medicine.

Please, let patients help improve healthcare. Let patients help steer our decisions, strategic and practical. Let patients help define what value in medicine is.

Value in medicine depends on information - as I said in 'Let Patients Help,' 'People perform better when they're informed better.' It follows that to make patients and families more effective in care, they need to know more.

There is a recession already in some industries. And I think the key driver is going to be the consumer and how bad the unemployment rate is going to be, considering that layoffs are starting to pick up.

I'm an e-patient: equipped, enabled, empowered, engaged. I'm no clinician, but I do everything in my power to help them, to play an active role in my own care, and even in the design of care.