All Blog Posts (1,472)

Imagine a person that develops an acute problem that requires hospitalization and even a time in the ICU. Serious but something that modern medical care can deal with and cure. Until …the patient now develops an unexpected serious infection and despite excellent and appropriate medical care, dies. Unfortunately this scenario is all too common in today’s hospitals.

More than 100,000 Americans die each year from hospital acquired infections; that is the infection developed only…

COMMUNILATOR WILL HELP TRANSFORM GLOBAL MEDICINE, DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS, INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE, MISSION-WORK AND WAR ZONE COMMUNICATIONS

RantNetwork’s Communilator™ is the most advanced mobile phone language translation application in the world. It is capable of recognizing and translating foreign text, including books, newspapers, and menus in 54 languages and dialects captured with the host’s mobile phone camera delivering translations in over 3,000 language pairs,…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:

Dodge Communications for ICA

Jeff Nessler; 770.576.2573

jnessler@dodgecommunications.com

For AlliedHIE

Kelly Lewis;  570.510.7745

Kelly@lewisstrategic.com…

Media Contact:

Kelly Lewis, AlliedHIE

570.510.7745

kelly@lewisstrategic.com

DodgeCommunications for ICA

JeffNessler; 770.576.2573

jnessler@dodgecommunications.com

AlliedHIEAwarded HISP Certification in Pennsylvania

--ICA Technology Enables Coveted Health Information Service Provider…

Having trouble getting an early appointment with a doctor? It’s a common problem. Here is one company’s proposed solution.

It takes an average of 20.5 days to get an appointment with a physician, according to a study by Merritt Hawkins & Associates and related to me by the principals at ZocDoc, a startup company. That’s a long time. ZocDoc aims to fix that problem with a rapid appointment scheduled on line.

Perhaps your need is not urgent in the classical sense but imagine…

Stress is with us all the time. Issues at work or at home, getting a traffic ticket, the grocery store out of your favorite yogurt. Life has stresses. We can go to the doctor and ask for a pill or we can learn to deal with our stresses effectively without much medication. 

Acute stress is normal and can even be lifesaving – seeing a truck barreling down the road at us. But when stress is chronic it becomes a major cause of ill health. 

Chronic stress builds up when the demands…

Colleagues,

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology (HIT) is seeking nominations for the HIT Policy and Standards Committees.  I am confident that there are members of the MedTechIQ community who have unique perspectives and experience that highly qualify them for consideration.  

Both committees advise ONC on issues related to the adoption and meaningful use of Electronic Health…

Does old age necessarily mean declining health and cognition or can one age gracefully with a high quality of life? 

This was another topic discussed at the recent Health and Wellness conference organized by the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine.  Steven Gambert, MD, Professor of Medicine and Surgery and Director of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center described preventive aging. Here…

Colleagues,

Please find below a press release announcing the contribution of the JANUS graphical user interface  to the OSEHRA (Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent) code repository, OSEHRA Janus Announcement.  

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) funded OSEHRA was launched last fall and now has over 900 software developers, programmers and researchers using its…

Colleagues,

Thank you to MedTechIQ member Neal Neuberger for bringing this important article to our…

Have you ever thought that the doctor wasn’t listening to you? Didn’t seem to understand what was important to you? Was talking in medical speak but not in a language you could understand? That he or she gave bad news to you and left you hanging as to what to do next? Unfortunately, these are all too common. 

Medical advances such as new drugs, imaging devices, operating room technology and others are coming rapidly and greatly expanding what can be done for patients. But concurrently…

Is it possible that health care can become more effective, more personalized, more attuned to real health and wellness in a manner that truly benefits you the customer? 

At the recent health and wellness conference celebrating the 20^th anniversary of the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine there was a panel discussion moderated by Center director Brian Berman, MD on the topic of health care of the future. Here are some excerpts from the comments made by…

Can integrative medicine add value to standard western practices? Some would say absolutely not; others point to new scientific evidence that demonstrates the value of specific modalities in specific situations.

Health care is complex, expensive and often depersonalizing. It shouldn’t be. At the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine, the staff focuses on evaluating and involving complementary medicine into traditional…

Genomics Part 4 -- Medical Megatrends

Are you concerned about a family history of heart disease? Or cancer? Worried that you genes will be your fate? We know that good dietary habits are generally good for us but can foods affect our genes? The new science of nutrigenomics suggests that they can.

Nutrigenomics is about using what you eat to change your gene expression (meaning how your genes function) to optimize your health.

Nutrigenomics is the science of how bioactive…

Medical Megatrends – Genomics Part III

Genomics promises to fundamentally change much of medical care as described in the two prior posts on this subject.  But the ultimate value of this new understanding of basic human biology will in many cases come with fits and starts. The saga of belimumab (Benlysta) and Human Genome Sciences is illustrative.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) occurs in somewhere between 300,000 and 4 million Americans according to the…

In the previous post I discussed the field of pharmacogenomics. Today I will focus on

            Disease classification

            Disease prognostication

            Early and rapid diagnosis

            Prediction of diseases to develop later in life

Genomics is proving to be very valuable in disease classification, especially with cancer. A pathologist’s evaluation looking at a microscopic slide has been the basis for most cancer…

A new daily blog on diet-food-lifestyle-therapeutics, diagnostics, exercises and services to elevate the human condition provide  better healthcare, preventions and outcomes

There are a series of medical megatrends outlined in my book The Future of Medicine – Megatrends in Healthcare that will profoundly affect health care in the coming five to fifteen years and beyond. Some are due to the explosion of basic understandings of cellular and molecular biology. Others are related to advances in engineering and computer science. Here is a very brief overview. 

These are the megatrends in medical care that are…

Colleagues,

Do you need a good incentive to exercise? Check out this set of pictures. They may well surprise you.

Tis is not a typical topic for MedTechIQ but it is relevant to all of us. I just turned 70 so I am going to the gym after I post this.

We all know we should exercise. It feels good during and we feel even better after. We know it burns calories and that our bodies were meant to be used. But all too many of us are sedentary; it just the result of modern life.…