by Joe Graedon | Jun 25, 2009
Detecting drug complications is too important to leave to doctors or FDA administrators. We have learned the hard way that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) don’t detect all the adverse drug effects that may be important. Far too often, serious side effects...
by Gilles Frydman | Jun 22, 2009
Dedication: This post is dedicated to Regina Holliday and to the memory of her husband, Frederick Allen Holliday, who passed away on June 17. Regina’s story has energized many of us to create the Declaration of Health Data Rights we are asking you to endorse on...
by e-Patient Dave | Jun 19, 2009
This is not going to be easy to absorb, if you really let it sink in. My wife’s a veterinarian, and we sometimes compare notes. So this headline caught my attention. Excerpt from the article: Economic Euthanasia On the Rise Euthanasia can be the last act of love...
by e-Patient Dave | Jun 19, 2009
Next anecdote about poorly managed medical data: Amen! Just had an incident where my SS# was attached to a different patient’s name in the electronic med record. And the health facility will not tell me where the error occured, or how long someone else’s name was...
by Gilles Frydman | Jun 15, 2009
The wonderful Atul Gawande delivered this past Friday a commencement address, titled “Money,” to the graduates of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He touched on and expanded on the theme of his groundbreaking article “The Cost...
by Jon Lebkowsky | Jun 14, 2009
Physician Pauline Chen writes about “Medicine in the Age of Twitter” for the New York Times. The article suggests the need for our upcoming peer-reviewed Journal of Participatory Medicine:…a quick scan through peer-reviewed journals reveals only a...
by Gilles Frydman | Jun 7, 2009
In the last few days the announcement of a proposed NJ state law has made the Internet rounds. “· On or after January 1, 2011, no person or entity is permitted to sell, offer for sale, give, furnish, or otherwise distribute to any person or entity in this State a...
by Gilles Frydman | Jun 4, 2009
“Statistics should be the intellectual sidewalks of a society, and people should be able to build businesses and operate on the side of them” This quote from Hans Rosling is part of a speech where he presented the following: Database-hugging disorder (Dbhd): A...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Jun 4, 2009
It seems somewhere between highly unlikely and impossible for this to happen in this day and age, but Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis had to turn away patients when a power surge took down its electronic medical records system. Yes, that’s right — our...
by Gilles Frydman | May 30, 2009
Background information: The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) is currently in a monopolistic situation since it is, for the last few years, the only entity allowed to certify EHRs. The HITECH act of ARRA mentions specifically the...
by e-Patient Dave | May 28, 2009
As soon as you can, stop what you’re doing and devote 20-30 minutes to reading Atul Gawande’s important new article in the June 1 New Yorker, The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care. I don’t claim to be an expert about...
by Gilles Frydman | May 26, 2009
Scott Shreeve, MD, Senior Health Advisor at The X Prize Foundation and frequent THCB contributor, has asked the health care blogosphere to take part in this blog rally in order to raise awareness about the Healthcare X Prize Foundation competition and encourage public...
by Gilles Frydman | May 19, 2009
Another post about healthcare “creepware” from Opaque, Inc. While reading the Wall Street Journal health blog, I saw this disturbing piece of information: In a new survey conducted by Mercer, the employee benefits consulting shop, nearly half of the 428...
by Gilles Frydman | May 18, 2009
As the meme is now firmly accepted, I thought we ought to have another round of definition crowdsourcing. If you use the term please stop here for a minute and let us know what it means to you. I will summarize the responses and use the results to update the wikipedia...
by Gilles Frydman | May 18, 2009
Comparative Effectiveness: a comparison of the impact of different options that are available for treating a given medical condition for a particular set of patients. Such studies may compare similar treatments, such as competing drugs, or they may analyze very...
by Gilles Frydman | May 12, 2009
Magical thinking: the ability to draw conclusions that are based on a person’s desire for what reality should be, not necessarily upon what reality actually is. Cargo Cult HIT: Concepts in HIT that follow all the apparent precepts and forms of evidence-based...
by Sarah Greene | May 11, 2009
My son graduated from college last year and is now in Nepal, visiting schools and writing about rural education under the Maoist regime. He was excited to tell me, when I visited him recently in India, about how a classic book on education, Pedagogy of the Oppressed...
by e-Patient Dave | May 10, 2009
Last night I posted my own thoughts on the definition of “meaningful use,” a term that will have significant impact on our next-generation medical records systems. To me it’s vital that the term be defined to include full access for you and me...
by Gilles Frydman | May 6, 2009
Clinicians, the Government, and many other groups are working hard to improve health care quality, but it’s a team effort. You can improve your care and the care of your loved ones by taking an active role in your health care. Ask questions. Understand your...
by Gilles Frydman | Apr 30, 2009
As you have seen in my last post I have really enjoyed the conference. Exhilarating is the best way to describe the feeling. But I am a white male in his early 50s. That makes me, statistically, the equivalent of the majority of attendees at the conference. And so I...
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