A report on the future of health was presented to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) by PSFK, a trends research and innovation company. It features a wide range to topics including distant learning, diagnostics, gaming for health, offline web, DIY checkup, and many others:
(Hat Tip: iMedicalApps)
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
“Live the questions now. Perhaps then, without hardly noticing, you will live along some distant day into the answers.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
With the tectonic shifts underway in America’s healthcare delivery model, doctors influence in shaping the forces ahead seems to be dwindling.
It started with the entire healthcare bill drafted by a team of some undisclosed, very influential academics, lawyers and policy wonks adept at social security and tax laws and was morphed by corporate and hospital interests with huge political and financial influence. Before the legislation was even read, the American Medical Association had stamped their seal of approval, worried that “they’d be eaten if they weren’t at the table.” As a result, a significant number, no, I’ll stick my neck out here and say a majority of doctors, had little to do with shaping healthcare in America as we will come to know it.
But I would also bet that most of Americans want doctors with their best interests at heart to be integral participants in shaping our new healthcare system.
So now, as doctors align themselves with a single health system employer so they can beg for a portion of the government’s soon-to-be-implemented “bundled” (bungled?) payment scheme to healthcare systems for episodes of care, how will doctors have any meaningful voice at improving healthcare for our patients and ourselves? Enter social media. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
It is summer camp season for kids and well-run camps require a medical history and record of prescription medications that the child is taking. One prestigious camp for teens (ages 11 to 19 — average camper is 16) in Southern California recently had 153 residential teenagers. These kids come from California and other states across the U.S. Fifty percent come from out of state and a number of campers each week are international.
Okay, so far so good. Healthy teens getting together for a week of learning and fun. Here is the shocker! I was amazed to learn that almost 25 percent of these kids are on prescription medication. Can it be that we are overmedicating teens?
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
I’ve internalized all the dogma of medicine, for good and bad.
When I was an EMT, green as a twig in an ER, I learned the basics: For any wound with hair employ the razor, and get the hair away from the laceration so the doc could do a good closure.
So, employment week #3: Eyebrow laceration? Shaved that sucker clean off. ER doc freaked out, and I learned some medical dogma: Don’t shave eyebrows, they don’t grow back. Heard it later, too — all the way through training, in fact. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
If I was Surgeon General, I would follow the lead of our country’s first Mom, Michelle Obama. This is serious folks. We as an American society need to solve the obesity crisis, not just for our physical health, but for our country’s financial stability.
Reducing the spiraling costs of healthcare is wanted by all. So far, prevention of the diseases which contribute most to our healthcare costs, (heart disease, cancer and orthopedic issues, to name just a few) has been given only lip service, by our future supplier of healthcare — the American government.
It turns out that the mechanisms to reduce our most costly ailments are the same as those that mitigate obesity. It is like simple math. (If a=b, and b=c, than a=c.) If lifestyle choices reduce obesity, and less obesity means less consumption of healthcare for heart disease and cancer, than better lifestyle choices means less healthcare consumption. Bunches less. (See, simple math was not so useless.) It is for this reason that I believe the most productive way to reduce health care expenditures is to reduce obesity. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
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