Dave deBronkart

Richard Davies deBronkart Jr (born February 18, 1950), widely known as e-Patient Dave, is a cancer patient and blogger who, in 2009, became a noted activist for healthcare transformation through participatory medicine and personal health data rights.

In January 2007, a routine shoulder x-ray incidentally disclosed a shadow in the lung, which turned out to be metastasized kidney cancer (stage IV, grade 4 renal cell carcinoma).

[1][2][3][4] His kidney was removed laparoscopically and he was treated in a clinical trial of high-dose interleukin-2 (HDIL-2), ending 7/23/07, which was effective in reducing the cancer, although his femur ultimately broke from damage caused by the disease.

In January 2008 he learned of the so-called "e-Patient White Paper" by Dr. Thomas William Ferguson, which described how patients are using the Internet to participate actively in their care.

In February 2009, Ferguson's e-Patient Scholars Working Group elected him founding co-chair (with his physician, Dr. Danny Sands) of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

Referring to the 2009 ARRA economic stimulus package, the Globe said: Within days the hospital announced it would no longer use billing data as a proxy for clinically valid information.

[10] The following week deBronkart, Google, and the hospital were scheduled to speak at a major industry conference "Health 2.0 Meets Ix,"[11] and the PHR story became one of the main topics.

Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig:[25] How an empowered patient beat Stage IV cancer (and what healthcare can learn from it), published in 2010 by Changing Outlook Press.

After a career in high tech marketing outside Boston, these events led to healthcare transformation and policy issues taking an increasingly large part of his time.

Portrait by Roger Ramirez
deBronkart at the Medicine 2.0 Conference
Gunther Eysenbach MD MPH (right), founder and producer of the Medicine 2.0 conference series, and chair/director of the Medicine 2.0'09 congress in Toronto, thanks Dave Debronkart for his keynote address.