All Media is One: Convergence and Accessibility of Medical Knowledge

Jeff Jarvis in his blog Buzz Machine informs us, at least from the perspective of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and its curriculum, that media is becoming singular, which is to say that all media are converging (see: What’s a medium?).

The bigger point is that media is becoming singular. Especially as newspapers die and more people watch what we used to call TV online or on mobile, it will be absurd to separate the forms. In my day (picture me blogging that from a rocking chair), we had to pick our medium once for a career. Now, every time a journalist goes out to cover news, she must be equipped and prepared to gather and share it in any and all media. That’s what we mean when we say convergence.

He's right of course. However, allow me to to extend his point to the convergence and now broad accessibility of medical knowledge. Physicians previously gained new knowledge about their field by reading their medical journals and by attending conferences in their specialty areas which were not available to healthcare consumers. By way of contrast, healthcare consumers acquired watered-down medical information from popular magazines such as the Reader's Digest or other media of this type. In short, the norm was two different medical information streams with little overlap between them.

Today, healthcare consumers have ready access to the same electronic journals as physicians via PubMed and perhaps even more free time to read them. If consumers have a Twitter account, they can follow services such as biotech RSS and receive notice of breaking news about the pharmaceutical industry in near-real-time. They can also read blogs like this one or KevinMD and learn what is going through the minds of physician bloggers. New medical research is almost simultaneously reported in the web and on cable news channels such CNN.

By and large, physicians and healthcare consumers today are feeding at the same information trough. In other words, there is convergence of the media regarding medical knowledge and near-parity in terms of accessibility. Does this convergence and broad accessibility of medical turn medical consumers into astute clinicians? The answer to this rhetorical question is most certainly no. Does it mean that the patient sitting in the doctor's office may have acquired a deep understanding of his disease and perhaps even new research relating to it? The answer to this second question is yes.

I have blogged in the past about the increasing use of the term coach in healthcare (see: "Cancer Coaches" Start to Play Significant Role in Cancer Care, Local Pharmacies Emerge as Centers for Care of Diabetics. It refers to a knowledgeable individual who can provide helpful support in a heath matter to a consumer/patient. Now, I suspect that many physicians would react negatively to being described as a health coach. In a number of examples (e.g., major surgery), the term is not applicable. There is little interaction between surgeon and patient in the operating room. However, in other areas such as preventive medicine and the treatment of chronic diseases by a physician, the term does have broad applicability. With the advent of the health team which is at the core of the medical home model, the use of the term coach for physicians may be increasingly relevant and applicable. Media convergence and medical knowledge is paving the way for the health coach model for the delivery of health services.