January 1st, 2012 by Medgadget in News
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The airline industry has long been a paradigm example of safety, but it was not always that way. The transition occurred over the second half of the 20th century and was marked by rigorous equipment testing and procedures, such as the strict incorporation of checklists. Healthcare is an industry that recently has become quite interested in the possibility of implementing airline industry standards to improve patient safety and care delivery (read the books The Checklist Manifesto and Why Hospitals Should Fly if you’d like a solid overview of this phenomenon)
This month Lockheed Martin and Johns Hopkins, two institutional leaders in the fields of aviation and healthcare, respectively, announced a partnership to bring cutting-edge systems integration to the intensive care unit (ICU). According to the press release: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
December 30th, 2011 by Berci in News, Video
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2011 was a very intense and exciting year regarding the developments and new insights of the relationship between medicine/healthcare and social media. Here are my favourite stories from 2011 selected and featured month by month.
January
I had the honour to be included in the Advisory Board of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media; I wrote about how a Samsung Galaxy Tab changed totally my online activities, how Google Translate can be used in medicine and featured HealCam, a medical alternative of ChatRoulette.
February
Facebook diagnosis by surgeon saved a friend; there was a lively discussion whether pharma companies can edit Wikipedia entries about their own products, it turned out Wikipedia can be a key tool for global public health promotion; and Scienceroll won the Best Medical Technology/Informatics Blog category for the third time in a row in the Medgadget’s Weblog Awards.
March Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
December 29th, 2011 by KerriSparling in Opinion
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Back when I was a young bird with type 1 diabetes, insulin cost about $70 dollars per bottle. (And I had to walk uphill both ways to the endocrinologist’s office.) I had no concept of this cost, or how it played into my family’s finances, at the time. I would just open the fridge door, grab the bottle, uncap the orange top to a 1cc syringe, and take the units my mom would yell to me from the kitchen sink.
“Two. Two of Regular should do it. Rotate to your right arm this time, okay?”
“Okay!” (And then I’d proceed to jab it into my left arm because I’m right-handed and also stubborn.)
Now, twenty-five years later, insulin has taken a bit of a price hike. I just ordered a three month supply of Humalog from Medco and the total for the insulin came to six hundred and ninety-seven dollars. For six bottles of Humalog that will be all gobbled up by early March. (And thanks to a high, but manageable-on-paper deductible, we’re responsible for the full cost this round.) Almost seven hundred dollars worth of insulin.
We’re lucky that we’re able to pay for that cost without panicking, but knowing what these bottles cost without the assistance of insurance makes me look at everything through a diabetes lens. When three days are up on my insulin pump site, I am very aware of Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*
December 25th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in News, Opinion
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I admittedly snorted out loud when I read a New York Times article earlier last week regarding increased physician distraction due to electronic devices, especially with the advent of the smartphone with its emails, text messages, calls, and other alerts that ping intermittently throughout a typical work day.
There is no question that electronic devices distract physicians as the article pointed out… But that’s like complaining about a leaky faucet when there’s a flooded basement and a hole in the roof.
The bigger problem that should be mentioned is hospital bureaucracy which probably creates just as much if not more unintended distractions for physicians and nurses.
What many patients and lay public may not realize is that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
December 14th, 2011 by GarySchwitzer in Opinion
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Some months I can’t wait for my new issue of Prevention magazine to arrive, just so I can see how they’ve stretched the envelope this time.
How about this month’s cover, trumpeting a Cancer Vaccine Breakthrough in big yellow font at lower left of the cover?
So I started flipping through the Table of Contents for the big story. Hmmm….nothing there. Odd.
So I started flipping through the pages of tips for “jiggle-proof arms and abs” and such and….voila…on page 13 I found the big story under another “Cancer Breakthrough” heading.
In 16 words in that little box, I learned that a vaccine was Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Health News Review*
