Introduction
"Do you think me a learned, well-read man?"
"Certainly," replied Zi-gong, "Aren’t you?"
"Not at all," said Confucius.
"I have simply grasped one thread which links up the rest."
(Recounted in Sima Qian (145-ca. 89 BC), "Confucius," in Hu Shi, The Development of Logical Methods in Ancient China, Shanghai: Oriental Book Company, 1922; quoted in Qian 1985:125, in Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford: Blackwell.)

Learning schools are redirecting the focus from what has been labeled “traditional computer-based learning environments” towards user-driven learning networks supported by social internet based applications. The assumption that computer-mediated learning will occur in the classroom, managed by a teacher, is now being challenged, not by schools and educational software developers, but by the consumer growth of personal technologies.ⁱ

'User driven learning' is a form of conversational experiential learning between networked users in web space. ‘User-driven healthcare’ is, “improved healthcare achieved with concerted collaborative experiential learning between multiple users and stakeholders, primarily patients, health professionals, and other actors in the care giving collaborative network across a Web interface.” The keyword here is learning.ⁱⁱ

The goal of ‘narrative medicine’ is to make doctors more empathetic by getting them to articulate and deal with what they feel and to develop sophisticated listening skills, ears for the revelations hidden in imagery and subtext. The field—alternatively called literature and medicine, or medical humanities, depending on the approach–began by most accounts about 30 years ago and is now widely reflected in medical school curricula around the U.S.ⁱⁱⁱ

Often in day-to-day practice, both individual patients and health professionals are in situations where the information available is limited and difficult to apply to a given patient.

A gap between the paucity of what is proved to be effective for selected groups of patients and the infinitely complex clinical decisions required for individual patients has been recently recognized and termed ‘the inferential gap.’^iv

Evidence based on average patient data, which occupies most of our present day information databases, does not fulfill the needs of individual patient-centered healthcare. In spite of the unprecedented expansion in medical information, we still do not have the types of information required to allow us to tailor optimal care for a given individual patient. As our current information is chiefly provided in disconnected silos, we need an information system that can seamlessly integrate different types of information to meet diverse user group needs.

Certain groups of individual medical learners, namely patients’ family and intimates, medical students, and involved professionals, share the patient’s need to increasingly interact with and seek knowledge and solutions offered by others (individual medical learners, often the physicians, nurses, and the wider healthcare team) who have the experiences of health and medical care provision that they would benefit to access and learn from.

Web-based user driven, collaborative and conversational narrative based experiential learning is an evolving stepping-stone to address the present problem of information oversupply in medicine that mostly remains underutilized, as it does not meet the needs of the individual patient, their support network, and health professional users including those in training.ⁱ

ⁱSharples, M. (2002) Disruptive Devices: Mobile Technology for Conversational Learning. International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Lifelong Learning 12 (5/6), 504-520.
ⁱⁱBiswas, R., Martin, C., Sturmberg, J., Shankar, R., Umakanth, S., Shanker, & Kasthuri AS. User driven health care - Answering multidimensional information needs in individual patients utilizing post EBM approaches: A conceptual model. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 2008, 14, 742-749.
ⁱⁱⁱHolloway M, When Medicine Meets Literature, Scientific American, May 2005, Web document downloaded June 7 from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=when-medicine-meets-liter
^ivStewart WF, Shah NR, Selna MJ, Bridging The Inferential Gap: The Electronic Health Record and Clinical Evidence, Health Affairs, March/April 2007; 26(2): w181-w191.

Objective of the Book
This book explores various individual user driven strategies that are moving towards solving multiple clinical system problems in healthcare, utilizing real life examples. The first part of the book also examines various user driven learning strategies from the perspective of disciplines other than healthcare.

E-healthcare, Health 2.0, and user driven healthcare are different recent routes to improving healthcare outcomes that are steadily increasing in popularity among patients and healthcare professionals, particularly with the growth of the Internet.

Although there are popular books on e-healthcare that discuss the evolving methodologies and challenges in implementation, there is not a single book which addresses the wealth of information already available on the Web, created by individual healthcare users in terms of their experiential disease narratives and the potential learning generated along with improved healthcare outcomes.

This book would be able to not only fill this gap, but also pioneer a new approach to healthcare, promoting social networking and learning between multiple users and stakeholders, primarily patients, health professionals, and other actors in the care giving collaborative network across a Web interface. Also, as a first on the topic, it is likely to become an important source of reference in the years to come.

Target Audience
The audience for this book is wide, beginning with undergraduate students of many disciplines of healthcare who would find the conversational narratives an immense source of stimulation to delve deeper into clinical system disorders. The book would again serve to instigate innovative teaching learning methods among medical and healthcare teachers who could utilize the patient narratives to stimulate and inspire their students toward patient centered learning.

Beyond the healthcare academic community, this book would be a resource for academics researching social networking with particular reference to healthcare. Last but not least, this book is a potential resource for patients interested in social networking to improve their own healthcare outcomes.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Part 1
Narrative chapters on individual experiences in user driven self directed life long learning:
User driven learning in Math, Natural Sciences, Botany, Ornithology etc.

Part 2
Narratives of illness and experiences of healthcare
The patient journey—a conceptual framework
Electronic collaboration and synergy in user driven healthcare
Medicine is war: and other medical metaphors
Interoperability and open information management in user driven healthcare
Embodied minds and failing bodies—stories of illness and healthcare
Developing community ontologies in user driven healthcare
The social construction of chronicity
Integrating medical education with medical practice: creating community based online, collaborative, learning, healthcare networks
Revitalization of primary healthcare through IT interconnectedness: user driven healthcare in local communities

Part 3
Narratives of disease
Approach to clinical problem solving
Hematology: the river within
Disorders of cardiovascular system: the pump that runs our rivers
Disorders of the respiratory system: inhaling the external and exhaling the internal
Disorders of the kidney and urinary tract: an outlet for our river wastes
Disorders of the gastrointestinal system: energy input portal with an exit route for unutilized resources
Disorders of the immune system: the iron hand that governs
Endocrinology and metabolism: internal chemical communications
Neurological disorders: the internal wiring that goads our muscles

We are at the moment contemplating around 17-25 chapters of 7-8,000 words each.

Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit between June 30, 2009 and September 15, 2009,, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by July 15, 2009 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted between September 15, 2009 and November 30, 2009. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Publisher
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference” and “IGI Publishing” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit http://www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2010.

Important Dates
September 15, 2009: Proposal Submission Deadline
September 30, 2009: Notification of Acceptance
November 30, 2009: Full Chapter Submission
January 31, 2010: Review Results Returned
March 31, 2010: Final Chapter Submission
April 30, 2010: Final Deadline

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