The Connected Patient

When in 1992 Laura Landro, a journalist at the Wall Street Journal, was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia, she decided to gather as much information as possible about her disease and to become an informed patient. At this time, the use of the Internet was still not sufficiently widespread, and physicians were not accustomed to patients bringing documents and medical data to the medical encounter. As a result, challenging doctors “was no picnic, " and to find the “accessible, wonderful, caring doctors” she deserved, Laura had to sever ties with a few more “impersonal physicians and medical workers who were simply annoyed at a patient who was trying to be her own best advocate” (Landro, 1999, p. 56).