October 6th, 2011 by KerriSparling in Opinion
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Two weeks ago, I attended my third year at Kru Research’s ePatient Connections conference, and every year, I’m amazed at how many different industry people show up and showcase their impressive efforts … but how few patients. But this year, there were a lot of patients. Lots as in “more than five.”
For a conference with “ePatient” in the title, it was good to finally see more than just a handful of ePatients in the audience. (And this is thanks, largely in part, to the ePatient Bill of Rights project that took place on September 19th, across the hall from the SXSH event). And it wasn’t just a handful of diabetes patients – there were many health conditions well-represented at these events. For me, it was nice to talk about the universal issues that people with chronic illnesses face, instead of drifting around in the bubble of diabetes. I like stepping outside of our comfortable space and learning about what others are living with. I need that exposure to other types of patients … keeps me thinking globally.
Part of the panel discussion Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*
May 14th, 2011 by Mary Knudson in Opinion
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I’ve been working for a couple of months on an in-depth article on personal defibrillators that are implanted beneath the skin of a person’s chest to shock a heart that starts shaking, thereby restoring its normal beating and preventing sudden death. Discussing these defibrillators is extremely complex, which is why I am spending so much time on researching and writing the article intended to help patients and their families make an informed decision by learning the truth about the devices known as implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) — the good and the bad, your life saved vs nothing happening or the accompanying risks and harm you may receive. So when I heard that a new study would be presented at the annual scientific meeting this week of the Heart Rhythm Society, a professional organization of cardiologists and electrophysiologists who use cardiac devices in their patients, I made sure to get an advance copy of what would be presented and interview the lead author.
Potentially such a study would be of interest to physicians and to patients considering getting an ICD because it looked at all shocks the defibrillators gave the heart in patients who took part in the clinical trial, including those sent for life-threatening rhythms and in error. For several reasons, I felt the study is not ready to report to the public. It is only an abstract. The full study has not yet been written, let alone published in a peer-reviewed journal or even accepted for publication. Patients with defibrillators who received shocks were matched to only one other patient who was not shocked, but the two patients were not matched for what other illnesses or poor quality of health they had. Yet they were matched to see who lived the longest and the study looked at death for all causes, not just heart-related. One critical question the study sought to answer was this: Do the shocks themselves cause a shortened life (even if they temporarily save it) or is a shortened life the result of the types of heart rhythms a person experiences? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HeartSense*
March 19th, 2010 by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion
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The tobacco industry and its products (primarily cigarettes) has caused the premature deaths of over 13 million people in the United States since the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report which concluded that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. Those health professionals, who are familiar with these statistics, and with the great lengths the industry has gone to to try to cover them up, have little sympathy for the industry’s current decline in the U.S. Many want nothing more than the annihilation of the tobacco industry. This is all the more understandable for those people who have seen patients and loved ones suffer and die from a smoking-caused illness. Some may feel that the tobacco industry and those in it do not deserve to continue to make money from such a deadly business. Read more »
This post, How To Get The Tobacco Industry To Stop Selling Cigarettes, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..
March 15th, 2010 by EvanFalchukJD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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Why has health care reform run into so much trouble?
Well, it could be because people think reform plans will affect them in ways they aren’t going to like. Or because people don’t believe politicians in Washington who say that spending huge amounts of money will actually save money. Or because confusing mixed messages and ever-shifting sales pitches create a lot of anxiety about what’s really going on. It could be all of those things.
Or, it could be something more….sinister…. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
February 9th, 2010 by PhilBaumannRN in Better Health Network, Opinion
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- Image via Wikipedia
Was your company blogging ten years ago? If not then why? Google made it easy for you and now you’ve lost ten years of priceless link juice. Given the fragmentation of media in the last ten years, it’s clear now just how relatively little work you actually had to do back then. But that’s in the past. Still, I have bad news for you: what you have to do now is far harder than it was ten years ago. Let me explain.
CONTENT FRAGMENTATION AND SOCIAL DISTORTION
As the Web expands and proliferates novel media, messaging becomes increasingly diffuse and fragmented. The Web creates new opportunities and destroys old standards. It disrupts communication patterns, rattles social structures and ruptures attention spans. Ten years ago, you could leverage your audience-building skills for acquiring and retaining customers. You could even have learned and mastered a skill which traditional marketing didn’t really demand: conversational aptitude. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*
