By Dr Irwin Lim, Rheumatologist
Last month, I was interviewed a number of times. This was done over the phone and included chats with journalists, recording some sound bites for radio and even, an email interview.
I was asked to help promote Healthshare, an Australian website hoping to empower people to make better health choices. It's a site that allows you to ask questions and then, receive answers from "experts".
A specific topic page on Rheumatoid Arthritis was set up on that site - check out the link.
When I was told about the site, I was happy to trawl the rheumatology topics. When I read some of the answers provided by "experts", I couldn't help myself and while I was not looking for more work, I started to answer some of the questions, giving my 2-cents worth.
It's early days but Healthshare does have the potential to be a good portal for health information. While I'm obviously biased, for it to be truly useful for patients/people/the public looking for answers to their health questions, it needs specialists to be engaged.
Hopefully, more rheumatologists will chip in.
I was glad to find the interviewers were happy to learn more about Rheumatoid Arthritis. I was more than happy to keep talking about it.
Rheumatoid Arthritis is not a sexy news topic. So, it's a good thing if we can get it into mainstream media to improve awareness.
Some of the sound bites made it onto a couple of small radio stations & 1 article has been picked up by 5 suburban newspapers so far.
A minor victory. But still worth celebrating.
Dr Irwin Lim is a rheumatologist and a director of BJC Health. You should follow him on twitter here. Arthritis requires an integrated approach. We call this, Connected Care. Contact us.