“An engaging and illuminating film...Makes a compelling case for medical data collection and its promise.”

—Sharona Hoffman, Professor of Law and Bioethics, Case Western Reserve University School of Law

In Our Own Hands

Produced & Directed by Elizabeth Horn

67 minutes | SDH captions | 5.1 Audio

Scene Selection

In Our Own Hands: How Patients Are Reinventing Medicine opens with an urgent question posed by desperate patients and their families: can new technologies help us treat and prevent the most alarming and perhaps understated health threat that we face?

Through the stories of the impassioned, often defiant struggles of the film’s three central characters—all with complex, unresolved medical issues— In Our Own Hands explores the emergence of “participatory medicine”, enabled by a host of groundbreaking technologies that put more data about our own biological, behavioral and environmental ecosystems into our hands (and often onto our phones) than ever before possible.

Viewers will meet families who are single-handedly shifting long-standing medical paradigms, revolutionizing established treatment protocols, building social medicine networks, and supporting new open clinical and research systems— all to find answers for themselves and their children now. The film also features interviews with a fascinating group of experts in the field who help explain how personal genomics, a staggering list of environmental influences, and our own personal life choices combine to create health and illness.

In Our Own Hands is available on DVD with public performance rights for school and library purchase or rental. Academic streaming can be licensed from Docuseek. Campus and community groups interested in hosting a community screening can book now through Bullfrog Communities.

“An engaging introduction into the rapidly changing landscape of personalized healthcare that puts the patient in the center of discovery. Well-researched and featuring many leading academic clinical scientists sharing their insights alongside patients and caregivers in highly approachable ways."

—Ted Smith, PhD, Associate Professor of Environmental Medicine, Director of Center for Healthy Air, Water and Soil, University of Louisville, Board Member, Citizen Science Association

“This is an engaging and illuminating film that is anchored by the powerful stories of several patients and their families. It makes a compelling case for medical data collection and its promise. It also demonstrates what progress is possible when patients and caregivers become citizen scientists and health care advocates."

—Sharona Hoffman, Professor of Law and Bioethics, Co-Director, Law-Medicine Center, Case Western Reserve University School of Law

To order In Our Own Hands on DVD with public performance rights for educational use,

visit the Bullfrog Films online catalog.

Order by phone at (610) 779-8226

or email us at info@bullfrogfilms.com

Bullfrog Films is the oldest and largest publisher of documentary films about the environment in the United States. We define "environment" broadly, and our catalog includes programs on ecology, energy, agriculture, indigenous peoples, women's studies, environmental justice, international relations, sustainable development, anthropology, economics, ethics, and conflict resolution.