I shared this during tonight’s MedX Live, part of Stanford’s “Engage and Empower Me” course.

If you’ll excuse the typo, I think there’s still something worth considering here.

I’m a firm believer in the power of “me too”, I believe in the value of connecting with other patients (in my case, mostly people with diabetes) through shared experiences and storytelling. Luckily for all of us, those stories can be shared through a variety of platforms. Blogs, Tweets, Status Updates on Facebook (or Google+), Instagram filters, Tumbles, YouTube, and countless other options are available to share, connect, learn, and grow.

But our community isn’t just a composition of the people visibly active on these platforms. Effective communication is a two-way street, and there needs to be someone listening on the other side for any of this stuff to work as well as it does. For all the great work that is done by the vocal minority, we are a vocal minority. And that’s okay.

I’m all for patient engagement, however you want to define it. But that definition most certainly includes reading/listening/lurking/whatever.