Pharmacoinformatics Feed From Poikonen's Evernote

Steve Jobs and why technology doesn’t matter By Mathew Ingram Oct. 21, 2011, 3:11pm PT 48 Comments inShare 292 There’s been an awful lot written about Steve Jobs in the wake of the Apple co-founder’s death, and that has only increased in the wake of the new biography from Walter Isaacson, which a number of media outlets have been running excerpts from. In addition to Jobs’ opinion about topics like Google, the book also includes some comments from famous tech-industry players about Jobs, and one of them is from Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates — a man who was Apple’s nemesis in many ways. Gates says he liked Jobs, but that the Apple CEO “never really understood much about technology.” The Microsoft billionaire no doubt saw that as a put-down, but looked at another way, it was one of Jobs’ biggest strengths. Although the two men apparently gained a grudging respect for each other, they couldn’t really be any more different, both as people and as CEO...

Silicon Valley Uncovered: Dave McClure on why design is more important than technology 1st March 2011 by Hermione Way

FOUR NEW VIDEOS FROM TEDMED2011 DEAN KAMEN How is a chainsaw safer than a bionic arm? The Segway inventor tells of his funny-but-not adventures in trying to get his company’s new DARPA Luke prosthetic arm approved by the FDA. View Video ALEXANDER TSIARAS Thevisualmd.com, which Tsiaras created with partner Deepak Chopra, uses videos and stunning, detailed art to give us a virtual peek inside our body -- in wellness, in disease and as it reacts to how we treat it. View Video JOHN WYNN How much of your will to succeed comes from the knowledge that you will, someday, die? A provocative talk by psychiatrist Wynn, who suggests that status-seeking might ultimately be a waste of time. View Video ANDREW DAWSON At age 19, Ian Waterman lost all sense of his physical orientation below his neck. Choreographer Dawson portrays the experience of moving through the world when all sense of movement is lost. V

Why T-Sheets Work Disclosure: I have no financial interest in T-System, Inc. There is nothing particularly high-tech about a T-Sheet. A T-Sheet (designed by T-System, Inc.) is a particular design for a double-sided, single-page printed paper form used to chart patient visits. T-Sheets are extremely popular and have been widely adopted by emergency department and urgent care physicians. Why do many physicians prefer using T-sheets to the more technologically advanced EHR solutions that they are increasingly being required to adopt? There are of course many reasons. One is so basic — and is such a defining property of the paper form in general — that we tend not to even notice it: T-Sheets assign each category of data to a box of fixed size and fixed location on the page. A second reason T-Sheets are popular is that each presenting problem (chest pain, abdominal pain, headache, and so forth) has its own customized T-Sheet template. But regardless of the specific problem and the specific data collected, t...

PRINT| E-MAIL| RESPOND| REPRINTS| SHARE COMMENTARY Observations on the state of medical practice and medical life SEE ARCHIVES New York City's Health and Hospitals Corp., the nation's largest municipal hospital system, is going paperless. In doing so it is going with the flow. The electronic medical record is touted as a cure for all that ails the paper record: illegibility, inaccuracy, inaccessibility and incompleteness. Beyond that it offers decision-support systems and facilitates population medicine via its databases. It has become an essential technology. Yet as a primary care physician in one of HHC's largest facilities, I have serious misgivings. So do many of my colleagues. See related content The EMR has become an essential technology for health care and can be an immensely valuable tool, but going paperless is crossing the Rubicon, a critical boundary, a line which may be that of diminishing returns. The problems have to do with the limitations of how data can be enter...

Futuristic Clinical Decision Support Tool Catches On IndiGO healthcare software, which predicts which patients will develop chronic conditions and the best interventions to head off disease, signs users. 5 Key Elements For Clinical Decision Support Systems (click image for larger view and for slideshow) After being tested successfully at Kaiser Permanente, a futuristic decision support tool from San Francisco-based Archimedes is beginning to build traction elsewhere. Archimedes' application, known as IndiGO, applies algorithms to clinical databases to predict the chances of patients developing a serious chronic condition. It also shows patients and doctors which interventions have the best chance of heading off a heart attack, a stroke, or another adverse health event. The MyAccess Health Network in Tulsa, Okla., one of the 17 Beacon Communities that have received health IT grants from the Department of Health and Human Services, last week agreed to use IndiGO. Physicians could ultimately use I...

AHRQ Pharmacy Health Literacy Center This site provides pharmacists with recently released health literacy tools and other resources from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). These include Four health literacy tools for pharmacy. Curricular modules for pharmacy faculty. Resources for pharmacists interested in understanding more about health literacy. What is Pharmacy Health Literacy? Pharmacy health literacy is the degree to which individuals are able to obtain, process, and understand basic health and medication information and pharmacy services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Only 12% of adults have proficient health literacy (e.g., can interpret the prescription label correctly). Medication errors are likely higher with patients with limited health literacy, as they are more likely to misinterpret the prescription label information and auxiliary labels. Studies document an association between low lit...

Monday, February 06, 2012 Meaningful Use in Year Two and Beyond: Informing the Efforts of RECs by Christopher Harle and Nir Menachemi Physicians and other eligible health care professionals have shown broad interest in the meaningful use incentive program. As we enter year two of the program, it is informative to look back at first-year participation to inform efforts aimed at increasing electronic health record adoption in future years. According to CMS, in 2011, 29,344 eligible professionals received a total of $570,350,910 in incentive payments through either the Medicare or Medicaid incentive programs. Participation ramped up at the end of the year, with 50% of all eligible professionals receiving their payments in November and December of 2011. Of note in the CMS statistics is that nearly 173,000 providers registered for the program, indicating far more interest than actual participation thus far. This is not necessarily surprising given the many known obstacles to s...

Privacy Statement Last modified: 03/30/11 What is this Document? We value your privacy, and this Privacy Statement describes how we will protect and handle the personal information that you provide to us through our HealthTap Web-based and mobile based service, and related web sites. Among other things, the HealthTap Privacy Statement explains: If you choose to sign up for HealthTap, what information we ask you for during registration. That we do not include any Personally Identifiable Information in your HealthTap Public Profile. That we do not use or share your Personally Identifiable Information, other than as described in our Privacy Statement. How we secure the information we collect by meeting or exceeding generally accepted industry standards and by using SSL encryption. To help you understand how our Site works, and to help you quickly find information you care about, we’ve written the Privacy Statement as a series of questions and answers, and included our privacy policies in the answers to the questio...

HealthTap Terms of Use These Terms of Use are an Agreement with HealthTap What is this Document? This Terms of Use (or “TOU”) is an agreement between you and HealthTap, laying out the rules of using HealthTap Site (http://www.healthtap.com). Among other things, this TOU specifies what's permitted and what's not allowed when using the Site, including when you ask questions and view answers and tips, or view and input other data and information on or into HealthTap. The HealthTap Privacy Statement is incorporated into this TOU, which is another way of saying that it's officially part of the TOU even though it’s a separate document. Why Should I Read It? When you sign up for HealthTap you verify that you’ve read and agree to our Terms of Use. Since you are agreeing to what’s contained in this document when using the Site, it’s a good idea to make sure you both read and understand it. These terms of use are an agreement. This agreement governs your use of http://www.healthtap.com and related web sites (“HealthT...

More answers from 9,000 Physicians Sign Up! Already a member? Log in Overview Jobs Our Interns Medical Expert Network Smile Join us! We're growing and looking to expand our exceptional team. This is a great time to join us. We're driven by the common goal of helping improve peoples' lives, and you should be too. As a tight-knit group, we're looking for experienced candidates who are eager to work in a growing start up environment, and who are ready to hit the ground running. If you're driven by helping people, a passionate about and what you do, and you do it very, very well, let us know! View current openings What it takes We're looking for more of the "best and brightest" to help us change the world. We are looking for you if you're a talented doer who's also truly passionate about improving people's lives. If you are capable, positive, creative, driven, efficient, and a team player, and you also resonate with our culture and values, let's connect today. View current openi...

February 4, 2012 Advice for the Ill, and Points for the Doctors By RANDALL STROSS EVERY sphere of life, it seems, can be turned into a game — including the way physicians offer medical advice and build a public reputation. HealthTap, a start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., has brought the vocabulary and mechanics of games to medicine. At the company’s Web site, users post questions and doctors post brief answers. The service is free, and the doctors aren’t paid. Instead, they engage in gamelike competitions, earning points and climbing numbered levels. They can also receive nonmonetary awards — many of them whimsically named, like the “It’s Not Brain Surgery” prize, earned for answering 21 questions at the site. Fellow physicians can show that they concur with the advice offered by clicking “Agree,” and users can show their appreciation with a “Thank” button. These clicks bring recognition to the contributors, too. Receiving 25 thanks gives a doctor a “Doogie Howser Award”; ...

I had performed this procedure dozens of times before. It was routine. I stand under the bright lights, I take a deep breath, I wait for my hands to stop shaking, and then, I begin. This time was different, though. The lights were blinding, there were lots of people watching, and there were TV cameras. Oh, and the guy performing before me was a Grammy winner. This was one of many talks I’ve given, but this was different because it was my first TEDx talk. TEDx is a spin-off of the popular TED talks series. Both provide a stage for anyone with a good story and a good voice. We doctors have a great story, and I was honored to tell it. Medicine has changed enormously in the last decade. Knowledge that previously only we had is now freely available to anyone. Technologies that enabled us to be successful diagnosticians are now rendering us redundant. Minimally skilled health care workers use simple tests to diagnose diseases that once only skilled physicians would get correct. Newly empowered patients armed with thei...

Schools are on a short list of organizations that have been notoriously slow to adopt emerging tech. But within the last few years, as social media becomes more integral to students’ lives, educational institutions are finally catching on, and catching up. When it comes to higher ed, there are not only opportunities for digital learning, but digital marketing too. Some schools have taken the reigns on both sides, with mixed results. SEE ALSO: 5 Free Homework Management Tools for the Digital Student The infographic below takes a look at how schools have fared with social media over the last few years — what platforms are best, where they’ve succeeded, and the challenges that lay ahead. Does your alma mater use social media effectively in the classroom and in the recruitment office? Share your social ed story in the comments. Infographic by onlineuniversities.com. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, YinYang

HIMSS12 HIE Symposium Reflects on Recent Success and Plots the Future of HIE Sustainability HIE: The Year of Implementation, Collaboration & Beyond, will be held at HIMSS12 in Las Vegas on Monday, Feb. 20, as part of the pre-conference symposia lineup. The symposia will focus on implementation, collaboration and ways of leveraging innovation to advance HIE organizations at the local, state and regional levels. The HIE landscape is in transition as state and regional HIE organizations seek innovative sustainability, enterprise HIE organizations advance and ACO models develop across the country. Now is the time for these organizations to build a solid foundation for a sustainable business platform, look to their stakeholders for collaboration opportunities and explore new innovations that will propel them forward. These successes will support HIE organizations to truly become the core enabler that facilitates effective and efficient quality patient care delivery. This Symposium focuses on what today’s HIE o...

STUDY: E-PRESCRIBING SHOWN TO IMPROVE OUTCOMES AND SAVE U.S. HEALTHCARE SYSTEM BILLIONS OF DOLLARS Study Quantifies Relationship between E-Prescribing and Medication Adherence, With Potential Savings of $140 Billion over the Next 10 Years ARLINGTON, Va. - Feb. 1, 2012 - Surescripts, the nation's e-prescription network, today announced study findings from de-identified data that link e-prescribing to a significant increase in first-fill medication adherence. Poor adherence to medication therapy is a large and costly problem in the U.S. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 50 percent of patients do not adhere fully to their medication treatment[1], leading to 125,000 premature deaths and billions in preventable health care costs[2]. The Surescripts analysis suggests that the increase in first-fill medication adherence combined with other e-prescribing benefits could, over the next 10 years, lead to between $140 billion and $240 billion in health care savings and improved health outcomes....