Crowdsource Healthcare

We all know that the medical system in the world is in shambles in so many regards. The third leading cause of death in the United States is medical error. That's pretty fucking significant, if you ask me.. Yet it doesn't really get much media attention. There are occasional commercials on the television for lawyers to advocate for people if they've been a victim of medical malpractice but for the most part, people just accept it as "the way it is". That's not a good mindset!

We've had some health challenges in our lives of late and going to the string of doctors, appointments, blood work and the whole laundry list of things. It's quite tiring and frankly also expensive.

One of the things that we had known was a strength was some of the communities that have popped up on the large social media networks and are frankly the only reason to be on them in many ways.

One of the great things that we stumbled upon was groups dedicated to a particular medical challenge! That was amazing and also completely understandable. There are a lot of people in the world that are sick and tired, literally and figuratively, of the shit that goes on in modern medicine. It's a lot of "take this pill, take that pill" type of shit. They do blood work and give you a pill. There is absolutely minimal research being done, no time spent understanding underlying causes for something. It's largely a factory system and pretty much the antithesis of "health care" in so many ways.

With some of those appointments that lead to other tests and appointments, you get to your wits end with the whole litany of people telling you they don't know what the problem is, maybe get this test and see this other doctor here. You go up and down, round and round to largely drive yourself mad from frustration of it all. In comes the crowd source of people to help though, and holy shit is that like a beacon of light in a foggy maelstrom at sea!

Getting to some of these online groups can be a little tricky, as the social media sites are heavily donated to by the pharmaceutical industry and they largely don't want any of this going on, since it affects their business model and bottom line. That's where it gets a little tricky but where there is a will, there is a way. People figure it out! It's quite remarkable and really an awesome thing.

With the crowd sourcing of hundreds and thousands of people in a group for a specific issue, you feel like you're not going insane. You can discuss these things with people who are sharing similar situations and their journey. It is often a lot of tired and frustrated people but determined to make themselves and their situation better, so they persist. What has been incredible is that the people in these groups rely on each other. They have "X, Y and Z symptoms, here is what my blood work shows, what do you think?" They have lots of experience with the issues, as do we, so we can get pointed or point someone down a specific path because of what they learned from X provider or from X site and damn it, some of this stuff actually works! We've had some breakthroughs and improvements for sure and have a better path forward on a number of things.

I don't know if this was just a lot of rambling but the most important point is that crowd sourcing things like healthcare among thousands of people is one of the most significant improvements in the realm of social media that I can think of! There were certainly websites and forums in the past but those were a little challenging to navigate or find. These can be challenging sometimes but they can also be easy and up front, so you get to where you need to be fairly quickly which is great!

The most frustrating thing a patient can experience is to go somewhere with a number of issues and be told by the providers that they don't know what is going on, try a few more tests and go see somebody else. Everyone is deflective and doesn't want to dig in but it stems back to the system that we are operating in. The more power we take back in the hands of ourselves the better we can make it all become! By demanding change through taking our money where we are getting results, the more we will be able to drive forward success in terms of reforming healthcare to be healthcare not sick care. Prevention and underlying causes are the root of it all!