La Maladie du Grand Print Out: A Condition Abetted by Pharma Marketing & "Patient Centricity"

"Of course I was familiar, from my own practice, with the phenomenon of patients making lists, but I'd never known it had a name," says Suzanne Koven, M.D. in a NEJM piece titled "The Disease of the Little Paper".

"I confess that these lists sometimes irritate me, as they do many doctors."

The original term for this condition -- in French -- is "La Maladie du Petit Papier" and is defined as a condition in which “an exhaustive list of purported ailments — [is] carried around by a neurotic patient, often accompanied by extensive documentation of each bowel movement or sip of water.”

Dr. Koven pointed out that in recent years, the diagnosis was expanded to “la maladie du grand print out,” a nod to the indispensability of the Internet to the modern hypochondriac. I would expand it further: "la maladie des mobile et wearables."

I found this interesting because it's possible that online pharmaceutical marketing is a major cause of these maladies. In the pursuit of "patient centricity"pharma also may be driving a wedge between patients and their physicians.

How so?

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