What you need to know about the new breed of ‘e-patients’—high-tech, informed, and engaged

I am now seeing a new type of patient—the e-patient. Many of these highly informed, high-tech patients come to my referral clinic from Pune and Bangalore—the Silicon Valley of India.

“E-patients are often experts about their own conditions or illnesses—and they are happy to share their expertise with others.”
-Aniruddha Malpani, MD, medical director of Malpani Infertility Clinic in Mumbai, India

Initially, e-patients referred to those patients who used email and the Web. Today, the e-patient has become much more sophisticated.

E-patients are engaged—with their medical professionals, with their health, and with their healthcare system. They do not just read content—sometimes they even create it. “User-generated content” is a very...