November 17th, 2011 by Felasfa Wodajo, M.D. in Expert Interviews
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Dr. Eric Topol
It is hard to easily comprehend the depth and breadth of Dr. Topol’s career. He has been a major figure in cardiology, genomics and wireless health while also assuming leadership positions in landmark institutions such as the Cleveland Clinic and the Scripps Institute in La Jolla.
As chairman of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, he led the program to become number one for heart care. He was lead investigator on numerous national & worldwide cardiovascular clinical trials and started a medical school at the Clinic. He was also among the first physicians nationwide to call attention to the potential cardiac dangers of Vioxx. His very public criticism of Merck and the FDA brought to light the intimate but not always visible connections between the pharmaceutical industry and academic medicine.
Later he moved to San Diego, where he currently serves as director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, Chief Academic Officer for Scripps Health and Professor of Translational Genomics. He has been a leading proponent of wireless medicine for more than a decade. He co-founded the West Wireless Health Institute with Gary and Mary West who contributed the initial $45m gift to start the Institute and have since committed an additional $100m to found a not-for-profit venture fund for wireless health companies. He currently serves as Vice Chairman of the Institute which is dedicated to “innovating, validating, and advocating for the use of technologies including wireless medical devices to transform medicine.” Be sure to check out our recent interview of WWHI chief executive Don Casey.
Dr. Topol is delivering the opening keynote for the mHealth Summit on December 5. His new book “The Creative Destruction of Medicine” is also making its debut at the Summit as an e-book, available to meeting attendees. Read below to hear his thoughts on the mHealth Summit and wireless platforms’ potential to improve health & transform the practice of medicine.
Why are you participating in the mHealth Summit? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
November 14th, 2011 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Opinion
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I always loved to type. It started in high school with typing class. We were told that typing was critical for college term papers. I liked it so much that I took advanced typing. It was myself and 12 girls with Farrah Fawcett hair. Heaven.
Fast forward to 2011. My interface with the medical record is my fingers. Most of my communication flows through my hands. I complete the core of my documentation in the exam room. Fast documentation of information at the outset of an encounter allows for meaningful, eye-to-eye dialog during the latter part of the visit.
Those who can’t type have a different experience with their EHR. Sure there’s voice recognition but when pressed they wish they could make a sentence instantly flow onto the screen. Two colleagues this week, one from Barbados and another from the UK, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
November 6th, 2011 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Opinion
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I saw it begin to happen in the ’90′s. Residents came to rounds with their daily notes produced on a word processor. The notes were impressive. Legible, lengthy and meticulously detailed at first glance.
Then I started to notice a pattern. The impressive notes began to look very much alike. The thorough exam varied little from patient to patient. And problems that occurred on previous days seemed to persist in the medical record, even when it had resolved. In some cases the previous day’s note was printed only to have one or two additional elements added by hand. It was never really clear what was worse: the lack of effort or the illegible writing.
Our electronic health records (EHR) offer similar options. We can smart text our way to clinical efficiency. Some doctors have entire impressions and elements of the history pre-generated for common conditions. These are advertised features of the most common EHRs. Technology can make us look Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
November 5th, 2011 by MuinKhouryMDPhD in Opinion, Research
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The popular proverbial saying “you cannot have your cake and eat it too” implies that one cannot consume something and preserve it at the same time–in other words, we cannot have it both ways. Well, for once, maybe we can have our cake–our whole genome sequence (WGS)–and eat it too. I believe having our WGS and consuming it in small bite sizes over a lifetime may be the only way to integrate it into medicine and public health.
Rapid advances in genomic sequencing technologies are making the possibility of reliable and affordable whole genome sequencing (WGS) a reality in the next few years. We all carry about 6 billion base pairs of DNA in each of our cells, with 5-10 million inherited variants that are different among us. This genetic variation along with environmental influences provides a blueprint for health throughout the life span, and is related to virtually every disease of public health significance. There is definite interest among the public and scientists about the personal utility of this information. In a recent survey by Nature, attitudes towards genome sequencing were explored among a sample dominated by scientists and professionals from medicine and public health. Although only 18.2% of respondents had had their genome sequenced or analyzed, 2/3 of those who had not reported they would take the opportunity should it arise. Curiosity was reported as the main single factor influencing respondents.
Can this information be useful today in improving medical care and preventing disease? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Genomics and Health Impact Blog*
November 5th, 2011 by Berci in Announcements
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There is a new social campaign being launched right now on Webicina.com that curates the medical resources of social media in 80 topics in 18 languages:
We receive hundreds of suggestions from empowered patients and medical professionals every week about which social media resources should be included in our selections, and we thought we must find a way to let them know how much we appreciate their help.
So now we kindly ask you to tell us your story about how social media helped you improve your health management or helped you get better in your specialty in order to win grand prizes.
As we curate resources in basically all the social media platforms, you can tell your story in any platforms from Twitter and Facebook to blogs and Youtube. Your submissions will be Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
