Are you ready to punch the next healthcare professional you see who asks, 'Tell me your story'? Are you sick of asking for your health information, searching for it, collating it, or sending bits and pieces of yourself all over the place?
Soula Mantalvanos (me!) as a guest contributor on MoreGoodDays. If you're living with fibromyalgia, you'll know first-hand how the experience forces you into constant symptom tracking. What’s this niggle? Is this [...]
Woohooo! The startup world is beginning to thrive with people who want to impact healthcare using their negative experiences. These people want to help others, change the quality of care and make sure you get better faster. One of these great people is Neala Fulia, and I am excited to have the chance to introduce More Good Days (MGD), a new online digital healthcare company Neala founded dedicated to helping individuals find relief from chronic pain - specifically fibromyalgia. I'm also excited that MGD has become a Friend of My Health Story (MHS), which signifies a shared commitment to improving the quality of care for all of us. It's what we all deserve and what has been so slow in coming.
Self-management is hard, chronic illness is overwhelming. Chronic illness robs you of your independence and control, leaving you feeling defeated and mentally and physically drained. Add to the endless appointments required; now, we also have to be considerate of healthcare systems under pressure. Guess who gets the short end of the stick? We pay with our lives. Perhaps healthcare systems were destined to burst their stitches because healthCARE was never built to care for people; it was made to keep people relying on it. That's not care. Can taking more ownership of our health make a difference?
(Image: Soula Mantalvanos, founder My Health Story features in Women in Business, Bellarine Times International Women’s Day special edition 2023) Feature, Women in Business, Bellarine Times International [...]
Can visualising the personal health experience lead to better care and understanding? You all know what I think and believe about this. But now, I'm aiming to inform the rest of [...]
I, Soula, the way I live and the type of person I am, and my story were fundamental to appointments and essential to my treatment. In addition, I realised my health experience was unique and needed to be understood. Professionals are understanding this a lot more now. On educational health networks, I see this 'tip' all the time now: People with invisible illnesses are more than their diseases And on professional forums, I read how lost practitioners are as to how to help people living with ongoing illnesses (which also explains why so many of us are enduring long-term illnesses!). So are you ready to navigate? Are you ready to put your unique experience forward and be better understood? Then, your story is the most essential part of this change. And if you need some guidance, I'm happy to zoom in if you need online training sessions, or you can email me a 'how do I...' question, and I'll film the answer for you.
My Health Story is now live and has totally replaced PainTrain My Health Summary. My Health Story goes beyond helping people communicate their stories of living with chronic pain. It now presents a way for more individuals enduring chronic and complex health issues to communicate their health stories and manage their healthcare better. For healthcare practitioners, it presents an opportunity to diversify your care offering and influence positive behaviour in the overall patient journey. My Health Story takes a holistic view of each unique lived experience and understands that patients are more than their disease.
Congratulate me! I have been awarded expert mentoring with Buzz Web Media and Women With Wit’s – Lee Ussher under the Australian Government’s Boosting Female Founders Initiative (BFFI) for PainTrain [...]
I was so close to throwing the PainTrain My Health Summary idea out the window when COVID-19 hit. There was no way I could be positive about pushing on with my little train startup while a pandemic was approaching. But as it turned out COVID-19 catapulted telehealth behaviour and with that came increased interest in health tech and a newborn... the digital patient! My creative communication experience always encouraged me down this complex path – I found healthcare primitive! The way people manage their health and the way appointments are managed has not changed for eons. If you live with an ongoing medical condition, we know now that it takes teamwork to manage it and you have to be responsible for your own health information (or it all gets documented incorrectly!). Clearly, I believe that we need to step up and manage our health and all things relating to it. We especially need to do this because we all have such lengthy stories to tell! So on that note, here's my big news from my humble little train which is now planning to go way beyond its destination... if you help me, there's a lifetime subscription in it for you!
