Health Information Obesity

Today there was an event from CILIP Career Development Group (Yorkshire and Humberside Division) here at Sheffield University. Vicky Grant, Faculty Librarian for Medicine, Dentistry and Health at Sheffield, was talking about Health information obesity: the new epidemic? It was a very interesting presentation, and I'll mention a couple of things she talked about.
One was a new strategy from the Department from Health The power of information. I'm going to put more about that in a separate posting. Secondly, whilst talking about the value of patient networks for health information she showed some of a TED video about e-Patient Dave: http://www.ted.com/talks/dave_debronkart_meet_e_patient_dave.html "When Dave deBronkart learned he had a rare and terminal cancer, he turned to a group of fellow patients online -- and found the medical treatment that saved his life." Dave is also an advocate for libraries. Finally, she showed this video which tells the story of one person becoming empowered to find, evaluate and use information (including stories from fellow patients) to apply to her own illness.