Should People With Health Problems Talk About their Conditions?
Do you need to explain to the person on the checkout line or, say, a mother organizing a bake sale, why your back hurts? Or why you need a seat on the bus?
Dr. Edward Shortliffe, on the History and Future of Biomedical Informatics
The goal of biomedical informatics isn’t for computers to replace humans, he said, but for doctors to learn how to use it – as a tool – so that we (human doctors) can practice better medicine.
Image Share Project (Finally) Enables People to Share and Access Radiology Results
Hard to fathom that in 2013 we’re exploring “pilot” sites where patients can enroll in a program that allows them to transmit their electronic health images to doctors in other cities.
Can Anyone Be a Patient Advocate?
Can a good doctor, or a nurse, or a physical therapist, or any other person employed by the health care system, serve as a patient advocate?
What Do We Need Doctors For?
… if doctors are just thinking, and not being the ones to call you back, or putting in intravenous catheters, or even just sitting and taking a thorough history – they’ll know you less well. And if they spend less time with you, a patient with a serious illness, they ….
Contemplating Breast Cancer, Beyond October 2012
I’m optimistic, because it looks as though, in my lifetime, BC treatment will be tailored to each patient. There’ll be less surgery and better drugs.
Three Reasons to Celebrate the Supreme Court’s Decision on Obamacare
Like a good, smart doctor, morally grounded and, perhaps, influenced by compassion (hard to tell), the Chief Justice figured out a legally acceptable way for his court to do the right thing. Bravo!
Reading Between the Lines, and Learning from an Epidemiologist
She writes: “I believe that every educated person must at the very least understand how these interpreters of medical knowledge examine, or should examine, it to arrive at the conclusions.”
How Much Do You Want Your Doctors To Say About Risks of Treatment?
This kind of paternalism, when a doctor assesses the risks and benefits, and spares the patient’s “knowing” seems anachronistic. But it may, still, be what many people are looking for when and if they get a serious illness. Not everyone wants a “tell me everything” kind of physician.
The NBCC Holds Annual Summit and Pushes for Deadline 2020
Last week the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) held its annual summit. The meeting drew over 600 women to its opening rally in a Crystal City ballroom on Saturday, along with students who participated in sessions for Emerging Leaders, and a few men who joined in lectures and panels, and lobbied on Tuesday on Capitol […]
10 Newly-Defined Molecular Types of Breast Cancer in Nature, and a Dream
The 10 molecular BC categories bear prognostic (survival) information and, based on their distinct mutations and gene expression patterns, potential targets for novel drugs….I wonder if, in a few years, some breast cancers might be treated without surgery.
A JAMA Press Briefing on CER, Helicopters and Time for Questions
What’s clear is that depending on how investigators adjust or manipulate or clarify or frame or present data – you choose the verb – they might show differing results. This doesn’t just pertain to data on trauma and helicopters…
Illness is Not Discrete. On Feeling Sick, and Not Knowing What’s Next
A broken arm, a low-stage breast cancer that’s treated and done with, a bout of pneumonia – these are things that a career can afford, an editor can handle, friends can be supportive. But when you have one thing, and then another, and then another, it gets scary, it weighs you down.
Review: Dr. Eric Topol’s Creative Destruction of Medicine
Topol’s comfortable writing about the intersection of science and medicine as few physicians are….One theme that emerges through the book is the capacity for technology – by “knowing” and processing so much real-time information about each person’s condition – to inform more effective, individualized treatments.
The Outlier’s Message, and Evolutionary Science in Breast Cancer
If a drug helps, keep it going; if it hurts, stop. There are so many algorithms in medicine, and molecular tools, but maybe the bottom line is how the, one, your patient is doing.
Why I Support Health Care Reform
Profit is not what medical care is about, or should be about. What we need is a simple, national health plan, available to everyone, with minimal paperwork and, yes, limits to care.
Notes, on Running a Hospital and ‘Goal Play’
“Goal Play!” articulates how positive, team-oriented guidance and genuine concern for employees’ well-being can have a positive impact on the lives and careers of valued health care workers and their patients.
Harsh Words, and Women’s Health at Risk
In this new climate of shame, it’s easy to imagine a girl might feel really, really bad about herself simply for being sexually active.
Counterfeit Drugs, A New Concern for Patients
Counterfeit vials were sold and distributed to more than a dozen offices and medical treatment facilities in the U.S. This event, which seems to have affected a small number of patients and practices, should sound a big alarm.
73 Cents: A Film on Regina Holliday’s Work, and Patient Advocacy Through Art
The unreasonable price of the medical records, combined with the delay in receiving them, exemplifies unnecessary harms patients encounter in an outdated, disjointed health care system.