September 27th, 2011 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in News
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There are a variety of tools available to help Ophthalmologists with eye examinations. A new hardware and medical apps solution turns the iPhone into an ophthalmoscope. Called the iExaminer, this simple iPhone 4 peripheral connects the popular Welch Allyn PanOptic ophthalmoscope to the iPhone 4, and then a native medical app helps you perform a fundus exams and share videos and images right from the iPhone.
Two key applications for this:
1) Teaching: For medical schools that are teaching eye examinations — instead of having to look at static pictures of eye anatomy, this “live view” could be an optimal and innovative way to teach. This could also be a great way for an ophthalmology attendings to save key eye pathology that they visualize in the mobile setting for teaching purposes.
2) Use in mobile clinics: This could be a good screening tool for various eye pathology — Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
September 27th, 2011 by DrWes in Opinion
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I don’t know what I was thinking with my last post about the Health and Human Services’ Million Hearts initiative. I thought the whole point of this program was to save money. At the time, I was less than optimistic that the government could acurately reach their goal given the problems with many of the principles behind their program. For instance, maybe it was just me, but how typing on an electronic medical record system would save those lives was lost on me.
But at the time, I had no idea this whole campaign was based on fear.
Watch this introductory video I found on the brand new Million Hearts website, all paid for (of course) with your tax payer dollars: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
September 27th, 2011 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
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I recently saw a teenage boy with headaches. His father, wringing his hands, said that the headaches had been present for two years; but that the child had never been evaluated for them. No imaging, no neurologist. No insurance, of course.
A family friend, another child, had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. The family of my patient was terrified. Where to turn? They were, reasonably, concerned about cost.
Contrast that with the woman I saw on state assistance. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
September 27th, 2011 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Research
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Turns out there is an unintended consequence of many of the current efforts to standardize the way doctor’s practice medicine. It is called de-skilling. De-skilling can occur when physicians and other providers try to adapt to standardized, new ways of doing things. Examples of such standardization include clinical based care guidelines, electronic medical records (EMRs), Pay for Performance (P4P), Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) requirements and so on.
Examples of physician de-skilling were revealed in a recent study which consisted of in-depth interviews with 78 primary care physicians regarding EMR use. EMRs are all about standardization – what data is captured and recorded, how data is reported, how data is used, and so on.
Over the course of the interviews, physicians in the study described significant examples of de-skilling behavior. Most indicated that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
September 27th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Intranasal insulin stabilized or improved cognition and function and preserved cerebral metabolic rate of glucose in brain regions affected by Alzheimer’s disease, concluded researchers from a phase II trial. But more and larger trials are needed before any conclusions can be drawn, they also cautioned.
Insulin is important to normal brain function, and reduced insulin levels may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease, researchers noted. To examine the effects of intranasal insulin in adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease, researchers conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in a VA medical center.
The intent-to-treat sample consisted of 104 adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (n=64) or mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease (n=40) defined as Clinical Dementia Rating scores of 0.5-1 and Mini-Mental State Examination scores greater than 15.
Participants received Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
There are a variety of tools available to help Ophthalmologists with eye examinations. A new hardware and medical apps solution turns the iPhone into an ophthalmoscope. Called the iExaminer, this simple iPhone 4 peripheral connects the popular Welch Allyn PanOptic ophthalmoscope to the iPhone 4, and then a native medical app helps you perform a fundus exams and share videos and images right from the iPhone.
