Posts Tagged ‘prevention’
11 Emerging Chronic Disease Technologies To Watch
06/20/2012
NEHI Identifies 11 Emerging Chronic Disease Technologies To Watch
Cites Potential to Improve Care, Lower Costs for At-Risk Populations
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (June 13, 2012) – NEHI, a national health policy institute dedicated to finding innovative solutions to health care problems, today identified eleven emerging technologies that have the potential to improve care and lower costs for chronic disease patients, especially those in at-risk populations.
The “technologies to watch” target a range of chronic illnesses, including diabetes, asthma, stroke and heart disease, and reflect the growing emphasis on empowering patients to monitor their own care through the use of mobile platforms, social networking and home-based telehealth technologies. The technologies include web-based platforms that enable patients to connect virtually to their physician through their smartphone or personal computer, cell phone apps for medication reminders and asthma control, and in-car wireless systems that monitor patients’ health while they are driving. According to NEHI’s selection criteria, the technologies are under-used but have high future potential and align to the safety net population with low cost and easy access. Read the rest of this entry »
Donuts Don’t Grow On Trees (music video)
06/15/2012
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To promote healthy eating and address America’s Obesity Epidemic, health advocate Barry David Butler wrote a Pop Song called “DONUTS DON’T GROW ON TREES“.
The song is up on YouTube already, but I’m embedding it here to further promote it. If you like it, add your comments or use the social media links at the bottom to share with friends.
Song Lyrics:
| Donuts don’t grow on trees; don’t you wonder why. Cause all the foods that are good for you
Living foods they give us life, Keep away from foods that are dead. |
| God created man, and he gave us food to eat. Eat it in its natural state,
He gave us fingers to pick and eyes to see Living foods are easy to find. |
Fruit juice and soda can make us sick if we drink it to excess. Too much sugar can make us fat.
We don’t drink enough pure water We all need to get moving |
America’s Obesity Epidemic – a BIG Problem (UPDATED)
06/08/2012
Now that all four episodes of The Weight of the Nation have aired on HBO, I’m updating this article with new information, important statistics, and embedded versions of the trailer and each episode.
Obesity is a really BIG problem (excuse the pun), and with over two thirds (69%) of us overweight or obese, it’s now the largest threat to the health, wellness and future survival of our nation. Obesity has become an epidemic that needs swift action and an unprecedented public health campaign. Otherwise, we’ll end up like those fat Axiom characters in Pixar’s movie, Wall-E, and we’ll bankrupt America.
I hope everyone young & old will watch HBO’s The Weight of the Nation. It’s a four-part documentary that premiered on Monday, May 14 to explore our uphill battle with obesity. If you prefer to watch on your TV or want to learn more, you can visit the link above to buy the CD or the book that it’s based on. (An online version of the book is free.)
The Trailer
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America’s Obesity Epidemic – a BIG Problem
05/10/2012
Obesity is a really BIG problem (excuse the pun), and with over two thirds (69%) of us overweight or obese, it’s now the largest threat to the health, wellness and future of America. Obesity is an epidemic that needs swift action and an unprecedented public health campaign. Otherwise, we’ll end up like those fat Axiom characters in Pixar’s movie, Wall-E, and we’ll bankrupt the nation.
I hope everyone young & old will watch HBO’s The Weight of the Nation. It’s a four-part documentary that starts this campaign by exploring America’s uphill battle with obesity. The series premiers at 8pm central time on Monday, May 14. If you miss it and can’t find a repeat, you can visit the link above to buy the CD or the book that it’s based on. (An online version of the book is free.)
The Trailer
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What do Patients Really Want?
03/16/2012
What do Patients Really Want? PART 1
By Joseph Kvedar, MD
I recently wrote about an innovator’s dilemma of sorts – or call it a paradox – in healthcare. The paradox is that as we look to innovate in healthcare, the very authority figures we must turn to for fact-checking our innovative ideas are conflicted and highly motivated to support the status quo. I’m talking about physicians of course.
Dr Kvedar shares his view of what patients want from an out-patient physician’s perspective. See how closely his views match your own and then join the discussion below.
In a fee-for-service world, physicians are both the fountain of relevant knowledge and the source of all revenue. So we have built our workflows, systems and processes around their comfort and success. As physicians succeed, so does the rest of the healthcare juggernaut. I know other industries fall victim to these kind of MC Escher-like business models, but it seems particularly acute in healthcare.
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Your doctor is overwhelmed, and you can help
03/08/2012
According to Dr. Soon-Shiong, your doctor is overwhelmed and forced to specialize, just to keep up with the amount of published information from medical and scientific discovery. Just last year more new scientific information was created than in all of previous history combined.
What does that mean for us as patients? It means we must help them out and become a partner in our own health care. It means we must take a much more active role in maintaining our own wellness and understanding what’s going on with our bodies so we can together identify the most appropriate treatment plans for any ills and injuries. It also means we can help research new drugs, procedures, technologies, and preventive measures, even if we lack the medical training of a doctor. After all, we have much more at stake than they do and are more in touch with how we feel. It is, after all, our lives at stake.
The recorded interview below discusses healthcare reform and how to provide quality patient-centric health care from a cost standpoint. Read the rest of this entry »
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The “Experts” view of a Sustainable Healthcare System
02/06/2012
As reported in How Can Health IT Lead to a More Sustainable Health Care System?,
On October 28, 2011, the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) convened a small group of national experts—economists, actuaries, and health IT experts from the private sector and government—to discuss common approaches for understanding the financial impact of clinical interventions that make use of health IT.
I’m always interested in new ways to lower healthcare costs, but this article struck a nerve and caused me to post the following response, and I’m pleased that the moderator didn’t reject it.
Wayne Caswell, Modern Health Talk says:
No wonder health consumers lack confidence in government- or industry-led solutions to our healthcare problems and are forming an Occupy Healthcare movement. Convening a group of “national experts” (economists, actuaries, and health IT experts), without a much broader perspective that includes healthcare consumers themselves, is sure to ignore the many other issues affecting the health of our nation and the cost of delivering care. Read the rest of this entry »
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The End of Illness
01/20/2012
Today’s article is adapted from The End of Illness by Dr. David B. Agus and an ABC News story about his book. (video below)
“The end of illness is closer than you might think,” says Agus, a professor of medicine at USC. But to achieve that, people must look at their bodies in a whole new way. He and many others like him are challenging long-held beliefs about what “health” means and are promoting health & wellness as ways to extend life, improve vitality, and lower the cost of medical care.
As a cancer doctor and researcher on the front lines, Dr. Agus became infuriated by the statistics and lack of progress within the medical profession, and that got him thinking about alternative approaches. He likens it to “having to go to war to understand peace,” since the goal should be to avoid war in the first place. And shouldn’t the same apply to health – striving for ways to eliminate illness rather than just treat its symptoms? Read the rest of this entry »
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The Future of Health Care Delivery
01/16/2012
Author’s summary by Stephen C Schimpff, MD
Health Care in the United States is a paradox. We are the most abundant, highly advanced market in the world, where research, commitment of providers, and dollars spent are unmatched. And yet… medical care is not uniformly available, is much too expensive and the quality of care is all too often less than satisfactory and not nearly safe enough. It is time for a different approach. .
There are many disruptive, often transformational changes coming, which will further complicate matters for the average patient. These changes are being driven by an aging population, our adverse lifestyles and behaviors, an increasing shortage of providers, our attitudes about the end of life, and a nascent rise in consumerism.
One of the most important changes is a shift from acute illness (e.g. pneumonia, appendicitis) to chronic diseases (e.g., diabetes with complications, heart failure and cancer) which are lifelong once developed, difficult to manage and very expensive to treat – yet mostly preventable.
There are also many misconceptions about what medical care delivery is and what it could and should be. For example, Read the rest of this entry »
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Do We Need Doctors Or Algorithms?
01/16/2012
Image credit: Shutterstock/koya979
By Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures
(original on TechCrunch.com)
I was asked about a year ago at a talk about energy what I was doing about the other large social problems, namely health care and education. Surprised, I flippantly responded that the best solution was to get rid of doctors and teachers and let your computers do the work, 24/7 and with consistent quality.
Later, I got to cogitating about what I had said and why, and how embarrassingly wrong that might be. But the more I think about it the more I feel my gut reaction was probably right. The beginnings of “Doctor Algorithm” or Dr. A for short, most likely (and that does not mean “certainly” or “maybe”) will be much criticized. We’ll see all sorts of press wisdom decrying “they don’t work” or “look at all the silly things they come up with.” But Dr A. will get better and better and will go from providing “bionic assistance” to second opinions to assisting doctors to providing first opinions and as referral computers (with complete and accurate synopses and all possible hypotheses of the hardest cases) to the best 20% of the human breed doctors. And who knows what will happen beyond that?
Read the rest of this entry »
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