April 8th, 2010 by DavidHarlow in Better Health Network, Interviews, Opinion, Research
Tags: Clinical Care, Communication Across Healthcare IT Systems, Earl Jones, GE Centricity, GE Healthcare IT, HITECH, Intermountain, Interoperability, Mayo, Medical IT Support, Medical Technology, Population Health Improvements, Qualibria, Technology-Agnostic Bridge of Information
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GE Healthcare IT has been working in the years leading up to the HITECH Act on a number of initiatives to enable meaningful use of healthcare IT — or as Senior VP and General Manager of eHealth Earl Jones puts it, building the “connected healthcare ecosystem.”
In what may be seen as either a pragmatic move or a revolutionary one, GE is developing tools that allow for communication across healthcare IT systems — not just connecting one GE Centricity installation with another — but acting as a technology-agnostic bridge for information across healthcare IT systems and across health systems.
While Jones notes that we’re in the early stages of linking isolated lilypads across the surface of a pond, GE is developing tools that not only facilitate interoperability, but also facilitate the dissemination of medical knowledge and the use of clinical decision rules developed locally or by pacesetting health systems (e.g. Mayo, Intermountain). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg*
April 8th, 2010 by David H. Gorski, M.D., Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion, Research
Tags: American College of Surgeons, Controlled Trials, Double-Blinded Trials, General Surgery, Human Subject Research, Modalities, Randomized Clinical Trials, Research, Science Based Medicine, Scientific Techniques, SCOS, Society Of University Surgeons, Surgery, Surgical Innovation, Surgical Procedures, Surgical Science
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One of the things about science-based medicine that makes it so fascinating is that it encompasses such a wide variety of modalities that it takes a similarly wide variety of science and scientific techniques to investigate various diseases. Some medical disciplines consist of mainly of problems that are relatively straightforward to study. Don’t get me wrong, though. By “straightforward” I don’t mean that they’re easy, simply that the experimental design of a clinical trial to test a treatment is fairly easily encompassed by the paradigm of randomized clinical trials.
Medical oncology is just one example, where new drugs can be tested in randomized, double-blinded trials against or in addition to the standard of care without having to account for many difficulties that arise from difficulties blinding. We’ve discussed such difficulties before, for instance, in the context of constructing adequate placebos for acupuncture trials.
Indeed, this topic is critical to the application of science-based medicine to various “complementary and alternative medicine” modalities, which do not as easily lend themselves to randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials, although I would hasten to point out that, just because it can be very difficult to do such trials is not an excuse for not doing them. The development of various “sham acupuncture” controls, one of which consisted even of just twirling a toothpick gently poked onto the skin, shows that.
One area of medicine where it is difficult to construct randomized controlled trials is surgery. The reasons are multiple. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
April 7th, 2010 by Berci in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Research
Tags: Barriers To Free Exchange Of Ideas, Breast Cancer Gene, Gene Therapy, Genetics, Hereditary, Heredity, Human Gene Patents, Human Genome, Intellectual Property, Internal Medicine, Law, New York Times, Onocology, Ovarian Cancer Gene
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It was just time to end the era of gene patents. About 20 percent of human genes have patents, which is unacceptable. Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times story:
A federal judge on Monday struck down patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The decision, if upheld, could throw into doubt the patents covering thousands of human genes and reshape the law of intellectual property.
One of the individual plaintiffs in the suit, Genae Girard, who has breast cancer and has been tested for ovarian cancer, applauded the decision as “a big turning point for all women in the country that may have breast cancer that runs in their family.”
Chris Hansen, an A.C.L.U. staff lawyer, said: “The human genome, like the structure of blood, air or water, was discovered, not created. There is an endless amount of information on genes that begs for further discovery, and gene patents put up unacceptable barriers to the free exchange of ideas.”
I’m curious how Myriad will respond to it.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
April 7th, 2010 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, True Stories
Tags: BCBS, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, Cardiology, Children's Health Insurance, Congenital Heart Defect, Corporate Hall of Shame, Denied Care, Healthcare Coverage, Healthcare reform, Newborn, Pediatrics, Pre-existing Condition
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Thanks to reader “m.scott” for alerting me to the latest Corporate Hall of Shame award. Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) of Texas is the winner for it’s egregious denial of care for a 10-day-old baby who was born with a congenital heart defect. Coverage for surgery to treat transposition of the great arteries was denied for — are you ready for this — a “pre-existing condition.” The baby’s parents had previously purchased coverage for their two other children, but were denied coverage for their newborn baby.
Denial of care for children will not be allowed when the new healthcare reform laws go into effect. Until then, it’s business as usual for the likes of BCBS of Texas.
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
April 7th, 2010 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Primary Care Wednesdays
Tags: 35 Million New Patients, Emergency Department, Emergency Medicine, ER, ER Visits, General Medicine, Lack of Primary Care, Overuse, Primary Care Shortage, Slate, Unnecessary ER Use
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Overuse of the emergency department is commonly discussed during the healthcare conversation, especially with the lack of primary care access shunting patients with seemingly routine symptoms to the ER. But is this a myth? That’s what two emergency physicians contend in a piece from Slate.
The emergency department is functioning just fine, they say: “Just 12 percent of ER visits are not urgent. People also tend to think ER visits cost far more than primary care, but even this is disputable. In fact, the marginal cost of treating less acute patients in the ER is lower than paying off-hours primary care doctors, as ERs are already open 24/7 to handle life-threatening emergencies.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
