December 6th, 2011 by iMedicalApps in News
Tags: ABI, Android, Cardiology, Endocrinology, Family Practice, Health Apps, Internal Medicine, iPad, iPhone, mHealth, Mobile Devices, Sports Medicine, Technology
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A recent report by ABI Research, providing a broad overview of the mHealth industry, predicts extraordinary grown in health and fitness apps over the next five years.
The report, Mobile Devices and mHealth, includes forecasts for the next five years on factors such as regional smartphone adoption rates, app downloads, and wearable device usage among others. One major conclusion from the report is that the sports and health mobile application market will grow to over $400 million in 2016 – up from just $120 million in 2010.
Mobile health devices recently received a major boost with the incorporation of Bluetooth 4.0, which is expected to spur the development and launch of devices that will take advantage of the lower energy consumption. While much interest is focused on blood glucose monitors, remote monitoring of cardiac rhythms, and other similar parameters, one conclusion of this report is that some of the most impressive growth will be in health and fitness apps that are more directly consumer-oriented.
The report itself, for a rather hefty price, also addresses other questions like Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
December 5th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in News, Research
Tags: Atrial Fibrillation, Cardiac Electrophysiology, Cardiology, Heart Disease, Risk, Supplements, Vitamin D
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Too much vitamin D can lead to 2.5 times the risk of atrial fibrillation, researchers found.
To determine if there is a correlation between too much vitamin D and increased heart risk, researchers examined blood tests from 132,000 patients in the Intermountain Healthcare Center database. Results were presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in November, and appeared at the Intermountain website.
Patients did not have any known history of atrial fibrillation, and all had previously received a vitamin D assessment as part of their routine care. Patients were then placed into categories to compare levels of vitamin D: low (less than 20 ng/dL), low/normal (21-40 ng/dL), normal (41-80 ng/dL), high/normal (81-100 ng/dL), and excess (more than 100 ng/dL).
Patients with low, low-normal, normal and high-normal levels of vitamin D had no increased risk of atrial fibrillation. However, atrial fibrillation risk Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
December 4th, 2011 by DavedeBronkart in News, Research
Tags: decision-making, EHR, EMR, Evidence Based Medicine, HIT Exchange, Lupus, Medical Records, NEJM, Record Sharing, Similar Patients
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Wow. Todd Park, Chief Technical Officer at HHS, ought to be jumping out of his skin with joy at this one.
This time, House, M.D. fans, it was lupus. The article “Evidence-Based Medicine in the EMR Era” published in the Nov. 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine might have read like a House television script, but it was a real-life glimpse of what the most optimistic health IT advocates are hoping will become commonplace in U.S. health care: Mining EHR data to arrive at treatment decisions.
In a Health IT Exchange piece (on TechTarget) EHR data spurs real-time evidence-based medicine, Don Fluckinger summarizes (and dramatizes, accurately) this early specimen of care being transformed – beyond the literature – by looking at past records. Faced with a 13 year old lupus patient with a complex problem (see article for details)…
In four hours, they did a retrospective study of similar patients in the hospital’s data warehouse…, and decided to move ahead with the treatment based on the previous results of 98 [similar patients] … The authors said they will never know if they made the “correct” decision, but they did know that — in absence of randomized trial research to support their decision — they acted on the evidence of the best data available, coupled with their experience.
“Our case is but one example of a situation in which the existing literature is insufficient to guide the clinical care of a patient,” the authors wrote. …
What are we waiting for, people?? Imagine if Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*
December 4th, 2011 by John Di Saia, M.D. in News, Quackery Exposed, True Stories
Tags: Bad Plastic Surgery, Charlatan, Lumps, Oneal Ron Morris, Plastic Surgery, Transexual, Victim
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We posted previously on Oneal Ron Morris, a transsexual charlatan who has been injecting clients with his own home brew of filler agents resulting in disastrous consequences. A victim of his facial services has surfaced:
The lumpy cheeks, misshapen chin and ballooning upper lip are still visible on Rajee Narinesingh’s face; more than two years after she says she received a backroom cosmetic procedure from a man police say performed numerous, botched, unlicensed procedures. “I had to end up going to surgery, to get me even to this point,” Narinesingh told CBS4′s Gary Nelson Monday, pointing to the disfigurement she still is trying to have reversed. Narinesingh is among multiple alleged victims of Oneal Ron Morris, a transsexual who is alleged to have performed cosmetic procedures in homes and apartments.
Source: miami.cbslocal.com/2011/11/28/new-victim-reveals-fake-docs-alleged-work/
Rajee Narinesingh apparently met Oneal Ron Morris via referral in the transsexual community. She Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Truth in Cosmetic Surgery*
December 4th, 2011 by DrWes in News, Opinion
Tags: Age, Chicago Tribune, Cost, Cost-effectiveness, Elderly, health care, Health Care Reform, Malpractice, Old, Palliative Care, Rationing, Refusal, Seniors, The Hastings Center
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A sure-to-be controversial article appears in the Chicago Tribune earlier this asking the sensitive question of ‘Health care at any age, any cost?:’
“If you want to save all lives, you’re in trouble,” said Callahan, co-founder of The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in New York, and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, in an interview. “And if you want to save all lives at any cost, you’re really in trouble.”
Callahan and co-author Nuland, a retired professor of surgery at Yale School of Medicine who wrote the best-selling “How We Die,” were both 80 when the article was published.
“We need to stop thinking of medicine as an all-out war against death, because death always wins,” said Callahan.
The article goes on the make some bold demands of doctors: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
