A version of this post originally appeared on Ted’s personal blog.

At 3:30 p.m. on Friday, April 19, I received word that Health Foo, an annual unconference about health set in Cambridge, MA, was canceled because Boston and its surrounding areas were on lockdown as the search for one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects continued. Like me, many other attendees were already en route, and we quickly decided that we’d find a way to make Health Foo happen for anyone who was in town and was interested.

There was no mistaking the gravity of the situation on Friday. The decision to cancel was a good one. What happened next, though, was pretty amazing.

Earlier this year, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) embraced OpenNotes, enabling more than 1 million veterans who currently have access to the VA personal health record to view or download their own medical notes along with their health record information via the My HealtheVet Blue Button. In a recently published study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR), the VA's Susan Woods, MD, MPH, a longtime champion of open access and transparency, examined patients’ views and experiences with reading their health records, including clinical notes. The study is the first qualitative look at VA patients’ experiences viewing electronic records that included clinical notes and lab test results. Woods and her colleagues showed that viewing records and notes appeared to empower patients and increase their involvement in their own care but Woods says new communication skills will be needed to optimize the user experience.

In a recent interview, Woods discussed the power of open medical notes for patients and clinicians.   

RWJF has awarded PatientsLikeMe a $1.9 million grant to create the world’s first open-participation research platform to develop patient-centered health outcomes. The new platform will be linked with the PatientsLikeMe network to help researchers develop health outcome measures that better reflect patients’ experiences with a disease, and assess health and quality of life in ways that matter to patients.

Jamie Heywood, co-founder of PatientsLikeMe, and Paul Tarini, senior program officer of the Pioneer Team at RWJF, share their views on why creating an open-access platform to develop measures that matter to patients could advance meaningful treatments that improve health and advance research.

Why is this a pioneering project?  What makes it novel? 

By Jan Walker, RN, MBA, and Suzanne Leveille, RN, PhD, of OpenNotes

This is cross-posted from ADVANCE Perspective: Nurses

 As nurses, we've always been focused on the patient. Teaching patients about their health and advocating for patients are both incredibly important parts of the job. That's why we got involved with OpenNotes-an initiative that invites patients to review the visit notes written by their doctors, nurses, or other clinicians.

Health care is one of life’s most basic needs. It’s so simple. In recent years, though, the subject of health care has also served to polarize our nation. We all need it, but who’s responsible for making sure we get it? How do we ensure it’s safe, high-quality care? What about cost? Vocal, contentious debate over the answers to these questions—and many more—continues unabated in the United States. Meanwhile, in my work as a volunteer nurse at a clinic for the uninsured, I see patients who continue to lack the means to get even the most basic of care, who struggle with chronic disease in a system that seems to throw up obstacles at every turn.

That’s the bad news.

Here’s the good news: Amidst the unproductive noise, countless innovators from all walks of life are quietly going about the work of solving some of the most intractable problems in health and health care.