Search engines and the Internet are impacting patient behavior—eight out of 10 people use the Internet to look for health information, but only 25 percent of those people verify the credibility of their information source before self-diagnosing. It gets even more complicated when patients order drugs directly over the Web.
The debate among physicians about the credibility of online information is as old as the Internet itself. As a caregiver, …
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Manage malpractice risks with self-diagnosed patients
Things have been a bit tough of late, the bad economy is starting to bite, and you’re feeling the pressure. To top it all, your body has been acting strangely in ways it never has before. Your muscles twitch in funny areas for hours at a time, you tire easily, and you have fleeting pins and needles in your limbs. Over the weeks these symptoms have become worse. The last …
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The trouble with Dr. Google
Within in five years primary care providers will begin being replaced by sociable humanoid robots, avatars, and computer programs. Within ten years you will no longer hear any complaints about medical students choosing specialty residencies over family practice because the role of the physician will be completely redefined to complement a rules based approach to the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. This transformation is inevitable because of demographics, economics, and …
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Will patients trust sociable humanoid robots?
Today, healthcare is criticized by the public as too high on technology and too low in touch. Computers take patients histories, provide differential diagnoses, and even supply educational materials to patients. A new specialty, tele-medicine, offers healthcare services to rural areas that were previously underserved or couldn’t afford the latest diagnostic technology.
A humorous story about technology occurred when a patient’s secretary called to say that her boss was too …
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Why technology should never takeover the patient encounter
Clinical content refers to the various checklists, documents, and forms that address an area of medicine when using an EHR. For example, a pediatric practice would be interested in documentation tools for a newborn visit. Not all EHRs have clinical content for all areas of medicine. For example, some EHRs have clinical content for internal medicine, but lack the details needed for dermatology or cardiology.
A disturbing number of practices …
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Practices have failed to analyze the clinical content of their EHR
The conundrum continued behind conference doors at the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) conference in Tampa about the efficacy of mobile phone usage to improve patient health.
Lively discussions followed about the ROI for chronic disease management through mobile health and outcomes for remote patient monitoring focusing on whether telemedicine is excluded from meaningful use and reasons why telehealth should be a key component in Accountable Care Organizations (ACO).
As the debate …
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Chronic disease management through mobile health
I was asked recently to predict the practice of medicine in 20 years. After stating that any such prediction is massively speculative, I indulged because it is massively fun.
I am persuaded by Clayton Christensen’s arguments in The Innovator’s Prescription that healthcare will go the way of other massively disrupted industries, wherein healthcare will follow the arc of decentralization.
Using the music industry as an example, the arc begins …
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What medicine will be like 20 years from now
As a nurse, I spend a lot of time with other nurses. When they ask me to explain why I think the iPad is great, I respond with the following metaphor: imagine that you are a nurse who has been asked to design a new hospital from scratch. You are free to question every prior assumption, to throw out old ideas that no longer fit, to redesign everything according …
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Why is the iPad be revolutionary for doctors and nurses?
Ok, imagine this.
You take a video of your little girl’s soccer practice with your iPhone. Within moments it’s posted on YouTube for the grandparents to see.
Minutes later search engines called spiders begin to crawl across the data set of images on your upload. Face recognition technology identifies a face on the video and, with some assistance from the geo-tagging of the built in GPS metadata that accompanied the upload, …
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Are our privacy rules robust enough to protect our patients?
From helping you wake up rested to getting couch potatoes ready for a 5K, there really is an app for everything.
But when it comes to health apps, many don’t get the job done.
Companies are often in such a hurry to sell their app that they don’t conduct a study to see if users will adopt real, lasting change. And, app stores don’t have medical reviewers who make sure health …
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How to choose a better health app
I interviewed about 150 medical leaders just a few years ago for my book The Future of Medicine – Megatrends in Healthcare. Not one mentioned wireless devices as a coming megatrend. How fast the world changes! Nowadays everyone has a cell phone and we rarely stop to think that just two decades ago almost no one had them. We have a laptop or tablet computer that can access information from the web …
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Wireless devices will dramatically change how medicine is practiced
There seems to be an inverse relationship between the amount of spin one hears about “the next big thing” and reality. First it was EMRs and virtual e-visits, then social media, and now patient portals seem poised to be next big thing. The drumbeat of vendors and pundits is unmistakable: physician that don’t adapt will be toast. It can all sound pretty convincing until you ask to see the evidence. …
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Unintended consequences of patient portals
The variety of new technology coming into the market can sometime make one’s head spin. Physicians are especially vulnerable to the call of the latest, greatest gadget. The Apple iPad certainly fits the bill when it comes to the consumer – entertainment, apps, great design. But can that translate to the environment of the medical practice? A lot of experts seem to think so, although none of them are actually …
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What to consider when adding the Apple iPad to your medical practice
So I have a Droid. I purchased it in July, not long after taking my old flip-phone for an oceanic bath at Hilton Head, SC. I waffled for a long time. In fact, I almost purchased a Casio phone that was marketed as water and impact resistant. “Mil-spec,” was the phrase used … a phrase which appeals to me as a one-time Air-Guard flight surgeon. What it meant to me …
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The free market of smartphone apps can teach medicine a lesson
The iPad has been a mind-blowing success, and we’ve been regularly covering the excitement about the potential it offers to doctors and hospitals.
However, it’s important to continue innovating, and I propose that a 7 or 8 inch iPad Mini (Or Nano, if you prefer) would be the next logical step for Apple, as it offers an ideal blend of screen real estate and portability that both the iPhone and …
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Is the iPad too big for medicine?
Much has been made of the downside of the increasing use of EMR systems by physicians. But I am not going to dwell on those pervasive complaints concerning the cost and complexity of setting up the systems. Nor shall I rehash the well known issue of what I call “doc blocking” … wherein a computer (or other entity) stands between the patient and physician, slowing the exchange of information to however many words can be typed per …
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The loss of eloquence in EMR notes
It’s time that we rethink the doctor’s office encounter. It’s inefficient for doctor and patient, and doesn’t optimize care for those that need it most. Everyone is treated the same, even though not every illness or medical need has the same urgency.
To get to see a doctor I have to make an appointment days or even weeks in advance. I have to drive over to the complex, find parking or …
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Using technology to completely rethink the patient encounter
