June 2012
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May 2012
10 posts
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The biggest therapeutic advance in the past 10... →
Dr Centor has a pretty good candidate.
It’s an interesting and difficult question, one to ponder for a few days.
Any thoughts? Open for discussion in the comments below.
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Constant quality improvement at the individual... →
Great example of how quality improvement can happen at the individual physician level.
What would happen if every clinician in an organization conducted their own small-scale improvement effort just like this and then shared the results with the whole institution? We could immediately see what works and what doesn’t, then dedicate resources to promising areas to further research their...
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“My last piece of advice is this simple… Persevere. Because nothing worthwhile is...”
– President Obama in his commencement address at Barnard College (via barackobama)
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“We propose embracing a flipped-classroom model, in which students absorb an...”
– Charles G. Prober MD and Chip Heath PhD writing in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine about the need to reform the format of medical education
I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment encapsulated in the quote above. Medical schools have done an excellent job in recent years of...
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5 things med students can do to engage in social...
Last week, I had the distinct privilege of being invited to participate in the 27th Annual Student Physician Awareness Day at New York Medical College. The event—organized by first year medical students—focused on the influence of social media on medicine. The list of speakers included a veritable “who’s who” of physician-bloggers and health care social media experts....
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“Any company that isn’t primarily delivering its service via mobile five years...”
– Keith Teare cited by Hamish McKenzie in Web 2.0 Is Over, All Hail the Age of Mobile on PandoDaily (via stoweboyd)
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Only 54% of doctors say they would choose a career... →
Just read the quote from the pediatric oncologist. It says everything.
Via jayparkinsonmd:
Just 11% say they consider themselves “rich” — and 45% agree that “my income probably qualifies me as rich, but I have so many debts and expenses that I don’t feel rich.”
And a pediatric oncologist made an excellent comment:
With regard to the compensation bit, it is important to recognize that the...
April 2012
16 posts
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“Once there is no revenue, there is no science, and it all just becomes finger in...”
– Paul Kedrosky—a venture investor and entrepreneur—as quoted in a NY Times piece by Nick Bilton on the Bits blog
I haven’t seen much evidence of this valuation bubble creeping into the med tech world (or perhaps I’ve just missed it) but the recent growth of health/med tech...
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Social media and medicine - topic of the day at... →
Tomorrow, some of the best and brightest physician-bloggers and other health care social media experts are converging at New York Medical College to discuss the impact of social media on medicine. I will be sitting on a panel in the afternoon to discuss social media and medical education, but I am by far more excited to have the opportunity to attend and hear these great talks. I think there are...
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How recruiters look at your resume →
Maybe a bit of an oversimplification and a small sample, but interesting use of eye tracking to find out what are the most important data points on your resume.
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The missing element of TEDMED - critical...
TEDMED is a conference that bills itself as, “… a safe place where people with very different ideas can come together to talk, to learn and to celebrate the amazing world we live in.” Speakers and performers—all leading experts in their respective fields—come together to share their ideas about the future of medicine and technology. Presentations are only limited by...
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TEDMED recap
TEDMED was an amazing experience. I am grateful to all of the people and organizations that made my attendance possible. I met some of the most incredible people, most were medical students with a passion for changing the caliber of medical care provided in this country for the better and helping better the quality of care around the world.
Unfortunately, TEDMED was so jam-packed with incredible...
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“The tone of these articles comes across like Twitter is where [physicians]...”
– Danielle Jones writing on her blog, Mind on Medicine, about medical journal’s predilection for focusing on inappropriate uses of social media among health care professionals
This is a great post and you should absolutely read it in its entirety. I am sick and tired of medical journals and...
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TEDMED 2012 - Day 1
Despite only having a single 2 hour session of speakers, the first day of TEDMED was almost overwhemling. The Kennedy Center is beautiful. The program put together by the the TEDMED organizers is phenomenal and jam-packed with great stuff at every turn. However, the delegates (attendees) are by far the most impressive aspect of TEDMED. It is a huge and diverse collection of peolpe looking for...
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TEDMED 2012 updates
Today is Day 1 of TEDMED 2012 in Washington DC. I am in attendance at TEDMED because I have been very fortunate to be selected as a TEDMED Front-Line Scholar. Without the support of this scholarship—which has been provided by Siemens—I would not be able to attend TEDMED so I am very grateful for the generosity of Siemens and others who provide support to the Front-Line Scholarship...
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The legal landscape of health care social media →
For those interested in some of the legal implications of social media and health care, this is a great piece from David Harlow over on KevinMD.
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“Don’t perform stress cardiac imaging or advanced non-invasive imaging in the...”
– American College of Cardiology’s top recommendation for the Choosing Wisely campaign
For as long as I’ve paid close attention to health policy discussions (almost 7 years now), there has been a constant mantra in cost-reducing discussions—more is not always better...
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“…personalized medicine will lead to “a handshake between clinical research...”
– Amy Abernethy MD as paraphrased by Frank Vinluan in an article discussing a recent conference on personalized medicine at Duke
It’s the last sentence of this quote that worries me. Medical training does not do a very good job of teaching the analytical skills necessary to deal with “big...
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“Real science is a revision in progress, always. It proceeds in fits and starts...”
– A fantastic read on how ignorance fuels science and the evolution of knowledge. (via explore-blog)
March 2012
23 posts
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My best piece of USMLE Step 1 advice
About one year ago, I was contemplating what many second year med students across the country are currently losing sleep over—what is the best way to prepare for Step 1?
Instead of trying to provide an exhaustive and comprehensive roadmap for board prep, I will give you my single best piece of advice (and what I truly believe is the key to doing well on Step 1):
Do as many blocks of...
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“A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and...”
– Steve Blank—author of the The Startup Owner’s Manual—providing his principles for customer development, which he kicks off with a precise definition of a startup
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“Natasha doesn’t ever practice medicine in social networks; that is, she’s not...”
– Greg Matthews profiling Natasha Burgert MD—a pediatrician in Kansas City and expert on social media and medicine—on the MDigitalLife
I had to pull out this quote because it accurately encapsulates why and how physicians should be using social media. Physician use of social media...
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The Mobile Health App Revolution - Why and How →
Incredibly thought-provoking post from Aaron Stupple about the possibility of empowering medical students to design a complete set of health apps to improve healthy behaviors and preventative medicine.
It’s an enchanting idea but one that is far easier to talk about than actually execute. Two major hurdles exist:
Proving that an app on smartphone can improve healthy behaviors, especially...
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“We are now capable of collecting and analyzing orders of magnitude more...”
– The online future is personal, and that requires big data (via courtenaybird)
No where is this truer than medicine where access to data will grow exponentially in the coming years as electronic medical records and pan-omic (i.e.—genomic, proteomic, etc) testing becomes ubiquitous.
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“Now every physician is potentially a broadcaster or journalist…For the...”
– Bryan Vartabedian MD writing on his blog—33 Charts—about how physicians can now be the public affairs professionals for their practices and institutions
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Smartphones more accurate, faster, cheaper for... →
From smarterplanet:
Smartphones are showing promise in disease surveillance in the developing world.
Smartphone use was cheaper than traditional paper survey methods to gather disease information (after the initial set-up cost), researchers at the Kenya Ministry of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found in a study.
Survey data collected with smartphones also had...
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“But the challenge for patients, when they need healthcare, is finding exactly...”
– Jay Parkinson MD MPH talking on his blog about his new company Sherpaa
As usual, great stuff from Jay. I think the bottom line we need to collectively realize is that the current form of our health care delivery model was never consciously designed. It grew out of individual doctors providing care...
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“Reacting well to competition requires critical analysis of your own product and...”
– Marco Arment,creator of Instapaper, discussing on his blog how to react to competition
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Jay Parkinson - Why health and social media don't... →
Great stuff from Jay. While this post brings up some great points about the limits of social media as a tool for improving health, I think the analysis also runs the risk of oversimplification. The breadth of individual health can’t be contained in three distinct categories. Human illness—both the way we experience it and the physiological impact on our bodies—is nearly as...
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iPads increase efficiency of residents...maybe →
Authors from the University of Chicago report on some early research evaluating the impact of giving residents iPads to increase clinical efficiency.
I think this research should be critically evaluated before we begin handing out iPads like candy.
The findings here are in the form of a research letter, not a full original investigation report. Owing to the short length limits of a research...
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How med students and residents can use social...
I recently had the opportunity to speak to a group of residents about social media and medicine. My goal for this talk was to provide a few ways to exploit social media to further their medical education and careers. Here is a sampling of what I talked about:
Share your experience. The medical education system is complex. Sharing your own experiences will not only provide others insight into...
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Do you have to learn how to code to create a med...
iMedicalApps.com recently published a post by Craig Monsen entitled, “5 steps to making your medical app a reality.” Subsequently, this post has received a ton of comments. Nearly all of the comments are related to Monsen’s second step—learn to code.
You can read through all of the comments if you wish, but I can encapsulate their sentiments in one sentence:
Knowing how...
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NY Times - NYC BigApps contest has mixed results →
A similar trend seems to be happening with medical/health app contests. I pointed out a similar lackluster result from the AMA’s app challenge a few months ago.
At least in terms of the medical/health app contests, poor results are solely due to the fact that anybody with a legitimate (read: marketable) idea will invest their own time and money in developing it themselves so they can reap...
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Do we need to have fun in medicine?
NY Times - No more innovation for the fun of it
In this piece from Nick Bilton, he argues that much of our tech innovation is the result of tinkerers and dreamers having fun by making things better. Undoubtedly, medicine needs innovation, but can we capture the fun seemingly inherent and necessary in the innovator’s process?
This, I believe, is probably the biggest barrier to innovation in...
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“On Wednesday, the company announced a new suite of advertising products intended...”
– NY Times - Facebook Paves Way for Huge Growth in Advertising
I infrequently and reluctantly use your site now; I don’t think putting more ads into it will help, Facebook. This announcement was made at their first “marketing conference”—also not helping convince me to turn...
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“Dismissing an idea is so easy because it doesn’t involve any work. You can scoff...”
– Jason Fried from 37signals talking about how difficult it is to nurture a new, fragile idea when it is so easy to dismiss and denigrate something outside the norm [via Gruber]