Last week I had the honor of speaking at WHIT 5.0 with Ted Eytan, MD, MPH, e-Patient Dave and Regina Holliday. Together we addressed the topic “Is a Personal Health Record enough in 2009?: Engaging staff, patients and communities through social media.”

In hosting the session, Ted did a great job soliciting audience comments and questions. He has posted the full collection of questions and comments in his blog post Voice of the Audeince: WHIT 5.0 “Beyond the PHR.”

Below, I will begin tackling some of the audience questions that I felt qualified to answer.

1. Social Media Policies (question #5): One member of the audience requested existing policies that balanced transparency and patient privacy. I am happy to share Kaiser Permanente’s policy. It is available at: http://tinyurl.com/kpsocialmediapolicy

2. International NGO’s (question #9): There was a question about whether Kaiser Permanente works with international NGO’s and the answer is YES! Check out kp.org/international for more information.

3. Patient-Friendly Presentation: A member of the audience asks “How could medical information be presented in a patient -friendly format to assure added value to patients?” While I admit I am biased, I think kp.org does a great job linking directly from actual clinical information (e.g., a lab test result) within the PHR to a health encyclopedia with easy-to-read information about what that information means to a non-clinical reader. To see what I mean, check out this demo of My Health Manager.

More answers to come . . . .