background:

the patient's prescription is organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in the state of north carolina.  the foundation has no assets, aside from the intellectual property rights of the content and software.  these rights, however, are freely granted to any member of the community, or indeed anyone wishing to use them under the terms of version two of the GNU General Public License or version two point five of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike License, as appropriate for the content type.

mission statement:

the patient's prescription is a online community dedicated to leveraging technology, sharing information, and acting with compassion to aid all people in obtaining the best possible medical care.

goals:

• develop, release, maintain, and extend a free software tool to help patients, practitioners, and others to manage their person or professional healthcare information.
• publish a quarterly electronic and print newsletter consisting of personal stories, tips, articles, and other relevant information on receiving the best possible medical care.
• publish a monthly 30 minute audio podcast, with content similar to, but not duplicative of, the newsletter.  additionally, the podcast will be a forum for community members to submit questions and open discussion topics for the larger audience.
• establish online forums via a usenet-style threaded message board allowing community members to directly interact and share knowledge and experiences.
• seed, review, maintain, and update a wiki, consisting of all the relevant and most useful content from the other streams, such as all newsletter articles, transcripts of podcast segments, posts from forums, and more.

organization:

the patient's prescription is a community.  the nonprofit corporation will have no employees and pay no salaries.  all direction for the project will come from three all-volunteer sources.  first, the board of trustees will consist of five to seven community leaders who are not professionals in the medical field.  this board will suggest strategies, generate draft ideas for community vote, oversee the maintenance of the community, and manage any and all assets.  the board will consist of three "lifetime" directors, the project's founders, and two to four elected directors serving two-year terms on the board.  these elected directors will be set so that no more than half are up for election in any one year.  second, the advisory board will consist of five to ten medical professionals.  these positions are served at each member's discretion.  any member of this panel may decide to step down at any time.  this board will review the community's efforts, contribute to the content streams, and provide advice to the board of trustees.  finally and most importantly, will be the community members.  while anyone may access any and all content and software produced by the community, members will need to register (at no cost).  membership implies participation to some degree - in the message boards, on the wiki, during the podcasts, or otherwise.  this is not a requirement, nor will there be any verification or "enforcement" of this ideal, but the purpose being that someone would seek membership to give something to the community.  members will receive access to the newsletters and podcasts one week before the general public, have the right to vote for trustees, have the right to vote on issues of strategy and content as proposed by the trustees, and may contribute to the content streams.  members may be consumers or providers of healthcare services.

contact:

to volunteer:
volunteers@patientsprescription.org
to be kept up to date on new content or software:
community@patientsprescription.org
for assistance, answers to any questions, or other inquiries:
assistance@patientsprescription.org