Expect More From Your Enterprise Image Exchange: 5 Questions to Ask About Your Current Solution
April 23, 2024
Read More
NASHUA, NH, July 29, 2020 — PocketHealth, a leading diagnostic image-sharing platform, is thrilled to announce that patient data evangelist Dave deBronkart — best known as “e-Patient Dave” — has joined the company in the newly created role of Chief Patient Officer. While helping guide PocketHealth’s products and policies, Dave will represent the voice and interests of patients and their advocates as PocketHealth expands across the US market. Dave joins PocketHealth at a critical moment, following the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announcement of new rules that will give patients unprecedented safe, secure access to their health data via the FHIR software standard.
“With these regulations, America has entered a new era of patient data access, and I’m thrilled to be able to help PocketHealth expand access to patient medical images and data,” Dave says. “Knowledge is power, and nowhere is that more vital than in healthcare. The more patients know, the better able we are to pursue our health goals, in partnership with our care team.”
A cancer survivor whose advocacy for his own health knowledge played a critical role in his successful treatment, e-Patient Dave is driven by a desire to inform and empower patients. “Real disruption — in the best sense — happens when consumers gain control of their personal assets and information,” Dave says. “When my life was at stake I understood how powerless a patient can feel without access to the very information that could save your life. By facilitating access to full resolution diagnostic imaging, PocketHealth is empowering patients and their advocates to help healthcare achieve its potential.”
In addition to the new HHS regulations, the COVID-19 crisis has put a spotlight on the need to modernize and improve the safety of how medical images are shared, as clinics and hospitals confront the limitations of legacy distribution systems that rely on copying patient images to a physical CD. Requiring patients to travel to healthcare facilities to pick up a CD, as is the case in most hospitals, is inefficient, costly and — given current restrictions on non-essential hospital visits — not possible.
“Right now patients need an advocate for accessing their health data and a technology to deliver it, which is why e-Patient Dave is the perfect fit for PocketHealth,” said Rishi Nayyar, Co-Founder & CEO of PocketHealth.
“Together, we share the same mission: give patients access to their healthcare imaging and data through a secure, simple-to-use platform.”
In April, PocketHealth announced a $6.5 million USD funding round aimed at accelerating its hiring and to meet significant increases in demand for the platform from patients and hospital networks in the U.S.
About “e-Patient Dave”
Facing a near-fatal cancer in 2007, Dave deBronkart was highly engaged in his care, a factor that his oncologist believes helped him survive. Dave then learned that “engaged, empowered” patients are called e-patients, and took the nickname “e-Patient Dave” on social media. A longtime data user in his professional life, he became interested in health data as well. In 2009 a blog post about his health data went to the front page of the Boston Globe, launching him into a second career as a global keynote speaker and policy advisor for health data rights, participating in 600 conferences in 26 countries. His evangelistic rallying cries include “Gimme my DaM data” (Data About Me) and a call for Health Data Spigots.
Dave is the author of the highly rated book Let Patients Help: A Patient Engagement Handbook, co-authored with his PCP, Dr Danny Sands, with introduction by Dr Eric Topol. Dave and Dr Sands are among the 13 co-founders of the Society for Participatory Medicine; Dave’s industry leadership roles include the BMJ Patient Advisory Panel, OpenNotes advisory board, co-founder of the HL7 FHIR Patient Empowerment Workgroup, and he was the Mayo Clinic’s 2015 Visiting Professor in Internal Medicine.
He’s appeared in Time, U.S. News, USA Today, Wired, MIT Technology Review, and the HealthLeaders cover story “Patient of the Future.” His writings have been published in The BMJ, the Patient Experience Journal, iHealthBeat, and numerous peer reviewed journals. HealthLeaders named Dr Sands and him to their annual list of “20 People Who Make Healthcare Better,” and he’s appeared on the cover of Healthcare IT News, Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare, and the Australian GP magazine Good Practice. His TED Talk has been transcribed into 27 languages.
About PocketHealth
PocketHealth is a patient-centric cloud platform that enables imaging providers across North America to share imaging records electronically with patients, instantly and securely. Since its launch in 2016, the platform has grown its functionality to enable direct sharing to hospitals and physicians, as well as instant DICOM retrieval and automated importing capability, creating a unified image management solution for their over 600 hospital and imaging clinic customers across North America. The company believes that by placing patients at the center of the record release process, data moves more ethically, easily and securely throughout the care journey. Learn more at www.pocket.health.
