What new doctors don’t realize. And it’s holding them back.

Education
June 22, 2015

A new doctor, fresh out of a top residency and fellowship, wants all the right things at the wrong time.

She wants to be busy, with lots of patients, operating every day. In fact, it is better not be busy, and instead to think long and hard about each patient, listening, pausing, recommending non-operative treatments and being patient. Doctors learn the most from the patients they take the time to truly …

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What new doctors don’t realize. And it’s holding them back.

Failure is part of advancing health care

Conditions
February 17, 2015

“Failure is not an option,” people sometimes say. I don’t agree.

I certainly have failed far more often than I have succeeded when I sought to do novel risky business adventures and/or create new products.  Without failure, I would never have learned the lessons of life or the lessons of business necessary to succeed in these spaces. As a physician and surgeon, I can tell you that failure is part of …

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Failure is part of advancing health care

Relax the rules for approving medical devices

Physician
January 23, 2015

How informed are doctors? The answer is not obvious. Doctors know enormous amounts of data and have years of clinical experience. Many have solid science backgrounds and some conduct research keeping them at the top of their field.  Most rely on published studies to make their decisions on which products to use.

However, only a small percentage of all published studies are level 1 studies: the studies with data that is …

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Relax the rules for approving medical devices

Quantified health and the great digital divide

Physician
October 21, 2014

Go into any hospital today and notice that between every great nurse and patient sits a computer terminal. The quantified health movement has created the great digital divide, between the patient and everyone else.

The nurse of old used to actually touch the patient. No more. Now, they wheel in a computer console, sit down and record the digital output of the wired up patient, every vital sign, every drug order or …

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Quantified health and the great digital divide