Healthcare's Hidden Growth Engine: Patients
Ever feel like you're lost in the healthcare maze, fighting for answers alone? Turns out, you're not. Online patient communities are fueling a revolution that's changing the game. In this episode, Susanna Fox, author of Rebel Health, reveals how patients, survivors, and caregivers are driving innovation that the traditional system can't, or won't, deliver.
We cover:
The Four Patient Archetypes: Seeker, Networker, Solver, and Champion--which one are you?
Why certain populations get ignored, and how to change that
How founders can leverage patient power to build better, more impactful solutions
The debate over whether (and how) patients should be compensated for collaborating with companies
About our guest:
Susannah Fox is a health and technology strategist whose life’s work has been to explore and map the terrain created by patients, survivors, and caregivers. She passionately believes that open access to information, data, and tools can help patients make better decisions and catalyze health care innovation. Her recent book, Rebel Health: A Field Guide to the Patient-Led Revolution in Medical Care (MIT Press, 2024), showcases how consumers are building up our collective capacity for better health and how the health care ecosystem can leverage the power of connection with those they serve.
Susannah is a former Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama Administration, where she led an open data and innovation lab and launched Invent Health, an initiative focused on user-driven innovation for medical and assistive devices. As an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation she built project teams to bring patient and caregiver insights into work of the nation’s largest philanthropy dedicated solely to health. For 14 years she directed the health portfolio at the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project where she researched the intersection of health, social media, and patient engagement and first coined the phrase peer-to-peer health care. Her research has been featured in publications ranging from Pediatrics and the Journal of the American Medical Association to the New York Times and Harvard Business Review.
Fox serves on the boards of Cambia Health Solutions and Smart Check-In. As an Internet Geologist, she also advises organizations — big and small, nonprofit and for-profit — on how to navigate the intersection of health and technology, targeting areas of the health care system that need to work better for patients, survivors, and caregivers.
She is the mother of two children, a caregiver for elders, and lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, Eric Halperin.
Listen