Susannah Fox will be the closing keynote speaker of the 4th annual Chronic Care and Prevention Congress in Alexandria, VA.

Highlights of her remarks:

• A national telephone survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project finds that one-third of U.S. adults live with at least one of the follow conditions: high blood pressure, heart conditions, lung conditions, diabetes and cancer
• 62% of adults living with chronic disease have access to the internet, compared with 81% of adults who report none of the conditions named in the survey
• Once online, however, people living with chronic disease tap into an ever-widening pool of information including blogs, podcasts, doctor-rating sites and social network sites
• The internet does not replace health professionals, but rather provides a way for people to gather and share information in a rapid-learning system that can best be described as “participatory medicine”