The poli-tech tribe gathered in New York last week for the Personal Democracy Forum and, as Craig Newmark put it, welcomed "our new nerd overlords."

Esther Dyson, Jamie Heywood, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), and I were asked to take on a breakout panel entitled, "From Participatory Politics to Participatory Medicine: The Coming Revolution in Health Care." Cool, right?

Esther Dyson, Jamie Heywood, Jerry Nadler, and Susannah Fox

This session is about a different kind of health care reform that is underway, one that is led by people rather than government. In a word, the internet is fostering a big power shift at the consumer level. More and more, power is shifting to health consumers, or so-called "e-patients"--they are networking with each other and thus nibbling away at the power of doctors, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, insurers, etc.