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"Hop up on the table, Honey." mThat's how an x-ray technician addressed my 89-year-old mother-in-law in 2001, when we took her for knee x-rays. Mom, who had advanced osteoporosis and arthritis as well as confusion and heart problems, had long since given up hopping. When it became obvious that she needed assistance, the technician grabbed her arm -- as if pulling on another sore appendage would magically raise the rest of her onto the table. It didn't. This incident has become our personal mantra for expressing what is wrong with America's health care system. Having helped our four parents during their final years and having both had cancer ourselves as well as other medical problems, we have had experiences with five nursing homes, two personal care facilities and a half dozen hospitals. We've lost count of the doctors, drugstores and health insurance plans. All of us have had health insurance, though some policies were better than others. Nonetheless, we have experienced incident after incident demonstrating the waste, ignorance and apathy which is rampant in the system. Unable to list them all, I have been heretofore reluctant to write about a handful of them lest the reader be persuaded that the problem is with only that hospital, only that nursing home or only that doctor. There is, however, an increasing crisis of confusion, mismanagement and ill-preparedness which is at the core of our healthcare system. We are all familiar at least with the trend line if not the specifics for healthcare costs. According to WhiteHouse.gov, "The United States spends over $2.2 trillion on health care each year-almost $8,000 per person." That's sixteen percent of the economy. Healthcare costs are projected to increase to almost twenty percent ($4 trillion a year) by 2017. Meanwhile forty-six million Americans are without health insurance (14,000 more each day), premiums and co-pays are rising and more reasons are used to refuse coverage both to those willing to pay and thos

"Hop up on the table, Honey." mThat's how an x-ray technician addressed my 89-year-old mother-in-law in 2001, when we took her for knee x-rays. Mom, who had advanced osteoporosis and arthritis as well as confusion and heart problems, had long since given up hopping. When it became obvious that she needed assistance, the technician grabbed her arm -- as if pulling on another sore appendage would magically raise the rest of her onto the table. It didn't. This incident has become our personal mantra for expressing what is wrong with America's health care system. Having helped our four parents during their final years and having both had cancer ourselves as well as other medical problems, we have had experiences with five nursing homes, two personal care facilities and a half dozen hospitals. We've lost count of the doctors, drugstores and health insurance plans. All of us have had health insurance, though some policies were better than others. Nonetheless, we have experienced incident after incident demonstrating the waste, ignorance and apathy which is rampant in the system. Unable to list them all, I have been heretofore reluctant to write about a handful of them lest the reader be persuaded that the problem is with only that hospital, only that nursing home or only that doctor. There is, however, an increasing crisis of confusion, mismanagement and ill-preparedness which is at the core of our healthcare system. We are all familiar at least with the trend line if not the specifics for healthcare costs. According to WhiteHouse.gov, "The United States spends over $2.2 trillion on health care each year-almost $8,000 per person." That's sixteen percent of the economy. Healthcare costs are projected to increase to almost twenty percent ($4 trillion a year) by 2017. Meanwhile forty-six million Americans are without health insurance (14,000 more each day), premiums and co-pays are rising and more reasons are used to refuse coverage both to those willing to pay and thos

Patient Centered Learning: The solution is to permit alternatives to rigid institutions, utilize free internet programs, and have medical students assist practicing physicians by assisting practicing physicians in taking patient histories. These students would offer valuable, free services to doctors. At the same time, they would have a vivid learning experience by spending several hours each day interacting with actual patients. The Cost Of Medical Education Would Be Negligible. The expense of healthcare is directly proportional to the cost of the doctor's education. With the institutional bottleneck gone, there would be a greater number of doctors, and the cost of healthcare would plummet.

A medical student's journey inside genetics and medicine through Web 2.0.

A non-institutional, patient-centered educational plan would produce an abundant supply of compassionate, innovative, prevention-oriented doctors at an extremely low cost. Additionally, the pace of medical research would be sharply accelerated.

David Rothman, academic/medical librarian, created this comprehensive search tool for nonprofessional medical researchers with Google's Custom Search Engine (CSE).

Conservatively speaking, there are thousands of people with chronic illnesses who have educated themselves about their conditions via the internet. They quickly managed to become more familiar with their diseases than the physicians who treat them.

Street Anatomy obsessively covers the use of human anatomy in medicine, art, and design. It began as a blog to educate people about the field of medical illustration and slowly evolved into an exploration of how anatomy is portrayed in everything from fine art to advertising.

Doctors may be particularly vulnerable to shame, since they are self-selected for perfectionism when they choose to enter the profession. Moreover, the use of shaming as punishment for shortcomings and "moral errors" committed by medical students and trainees such as lack of sufficient dedication, hard work, and a proper reverence for role obligations probably contributes further to the extreme sensitivity of doctors to shaming.

Early 1900s illustrations, with accompanying essays, on the history of medicine from the point of view of a 1950s-era medical educator.

Reference portal largely directed at medical professionals and health care providers, this site has articles, clinical guidelines, workups, drug databases, algorithms, CMEs, and other educational tools and resources.

A portal directed at consumers of medicine and health care, this website also has CMEs, references, and databases that any health care provider or medical professional would find useful.

A resource largely for patients and non-professional consumers of medicine and health care, created by the Mayo Clinic as an educational tool to help facilitate delivery of better, more efficient medicine to informed, participatory clients.

Downloadable slideshows from this November 2007 conference. For report PDFs: (1) http://is.gd/3AoNu (2) http://is.gd/3AoXG