Educational Media Reviews Online

In Our Own Hands: How Patients Are Reinventing Medicine presents viewers with compelling stories from actual patients and their loved ones as they channel their frustrations and feelings of helplessness into actionable approaches toward enhanced integrative healthcare.

Many of the patients and their loved ones in this film, inspired by their challenges, seek new and inventive ways to gather quantifiable data needed for their individualized care.

The advancement of healthcare information technology (Healthcare IT), primarily fueled by the proliferation of Internet access and social engagement, allows these patients to access reliable health data from consumer-facing products, including wearable devices, health applications on smartphones and tablets, and others. Collecting this health data fosters profound and meaningful collaboration between patient and provider, allowing providers to view and treat the patient individually rather than at the population level.

The success of this approach is the impetus for many of these patients to become entrepreneurs themselves, developing and creating tools and devices that can expand opportunities in participatory medicine to the world at large. As one interviewee says in the film, “The digital revolution could be the cure that modern healthcare needs to improve.”

This film highlights integrative and participatory medicine during a unique time in history as technology continues to pervade our world and citizen science gains traction. It can provide insight into the future of the patient/provider interaction for healthcare professionals and inspire patients who have long felt unheard to use their voices.

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