Fight Health Worries|Healthy Living Techniques

Many dogs get cancer too and this is a great story on how the drug is helping and as the article states, our friends are exposed to the same every day environments as us, so the animal can benefit and we develop more information on how the drug works and eventually it can be approved for human use as well.  The drug is similar to a Trojan Horse in the way it infiltrates and kills the cancer cells from inside.  All 4 dogs who have used the drug have had success with shrinking tumors and these were dogs that were unable to walk due to the placement of the tumor and now are back walking.

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I tell prospective clients all the time that medical malpractice cases are very difficult for the patient/plaintiff. They are long, drawn out, and very expensive. Additionally, call it want you want but there is a “conspiracy of silence” when it comes to one doctor pointing a finger at another member of the “white coat profession.”

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Early this month, yet another story surfaced about allegations of undisclosed conflicts of interest affecting the author of a highly publicized clinical trial. This story has now taken such an odd twist that it seems worth discussing in some detail. Let me first try to present some relevant facts, derived from published articles, mainly peer-reviewed, which do not seem to be in dispute, in chronologic order.

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There has also been a pilot program in place with Beth Israel Hospital in Boston who has been exchanging records with SSA for disability cases.  The automated processing will remove the requirements and waiting times for paper to be mailed back and forth.  BD 

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This article makes a lot of sense and I have said somewhat the same in various posts over the last year, and this is where aggregating data is coming in to play, one place to add, edit and read information. 

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… after all, a full Electronic Medical Record/Order Entry/Decision Support system is far more complex, with potential for far more immediate patient impact, then pharma’s research IT systems. Yet the former is unregulated.

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I have posted several articles relative to traveling or temporary healthcare workers and you can real the partial clips below or go to the entire post.  Surgeons are now working at several locations, so are doctors at facilities such as Kaiser as they tend to be less expensive employees and everyone is cutting budgets and corners every which way they can.  I mention this item relative to having your healthcare records available for them.  Kaiser has done a pretty good job with their records system and they would be available for temporary doctors, but what if you are seen by a temporary doctor at a facility still using paper and the records or the medical records are not integrated anywhere?

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 Dr. Halamka , Chief Information Officer and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School took the time to speak with the CEO of eClinicalWorks, Girish Kumar, Linda Dillman, Executive Vice President of Benefits and Risk Management for Wal-Mart Stores, and Marcus Osborne, who leads Wal-Mart’s healthcare business team and has some additional information to offer.  You can read the full post at his blog, but heres the quick list he made on the package.  Being the software as a service model, I am guessing it will also be available for connectivity to HeatlhVault as well, so theres one more reason for the EHR.  He already has some expertise in working with connecting eClinicalWorks with hospital systems. 

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The implantable medical devices are getting smarter and the FDA has approved the new functionality.  In recent posts I have mentioned the work being done with Microsoft HealthVault with several devices including implants from St. Jude, so it appears soon that your implanted device will be able to talk to the HealthVault and enter information into your personal health records.

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A few thoughts for a Wednesday morning:

• I had recently written on some (probably) minor issues about CCHIT, the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology. However, I have more substantive concerns. I would like to know how CCHIT functions differently from a fictional “Drug Certification Commission.” Imagine such a Commission founded by PhRMA and other pharmaceutical industry advocates, partly staffed at high levels by pharmaceutical executives, and “certifying” drugs for consumer purchase simply on the basis of their being manufactured under cGMP guidelines (current good manufacturing processes). Imagine this Commission declaring drugs “certified” without clinical trials, impartial regulatory oversight, postmarketing surveillance and in the face of equivocal studies and outright unfavorable studies showing increased risk of adverse events. How is CCHIT conceptually and substantively different from this fictional drug certification commission?

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