Friday, September 23, 2011

High technology prosthetic devices

This video is about the use of technology to improve prosthetic devices and to potentially modify and extend abilities of human bodies. Where does the right to healthcare end in the United States? Is it rationing to provide these devices to some people and deny them to others? Is the "line" the point at which the device provides enhancement beyond natural abilities, contrasted with "merely" restoring a lost functionality?

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Lead the cause of poverty cycles?

While doing homework for my course in Environmental Health at Georgia Health Sciences University yesterday I found this video of Congressional testimony by Dr. Herbert Needleman dated 1991. I did not realize how dangerous old lead paint is to children and the neurological damage and learning disabilities it can cause. Given that children in poor families must often live and attend school in old structures is there reason to wonder why we as a society continue to struggle to break the cycles of multigenerational poverty?

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Remembering September 11, 2001

Like most people I remember some of the details of the morning of September 11, 2001. I was preparing to teach a class at a university in Southeast Kansas that morning. One sad truth is that people are still suffering and dying as a consequence of the events of that day. To conclude that the high rates of cancers among those who responded to that event cannot be scientifically linked to exposures to toxic dusts seems disingenuous to me. If our nation cannot afford to provide the first responders healthcare treatments for their present conditions then I wish some official would simply say so. I remember walking to lunch at Taco Bell through the fairly deep snow that morning. There were long lines of cars at the gas station next to the railroad track, waiting to be filled with gasoline. The sky the next day was the most beautiful blue sky that I have ever seen in sixty years. To think that I was stepping through snow in September in Southeast Kansas seems odd only ten years later. The fact that the grounding of commercial aircraft produced such a dramatic difference in the appearance of the sky is remarkable. I remember as a small child in the 1950s that I could see thousands of stars almost every night. Now, ask a young person if he or she has even once seen the North Star, the big dipper and the little dipper. Their only dippers are likely to be dairy treats. As I remember that fateful day I do so in the context of the evidence that there are things even more frightening than acts of terrorism affecting the health of earth's living beings.

Monday, September 5, 2011

The value of connections

Tim Berners-Lee changed the world, recently. He is credited by Time Magazine and others as the inventer of the World Wide Web. His vision and passion are evident in the TED presentation shown below. His vision is not limited to an innovative way for electronic devices to be connected. His vision extends to the connectivity of minds and the many possible transformations of the world. It often takes years for the knowledge produced by medical research to become applied in actual patient care. We are a society obsessed with the possession, protection and ownership of data, information and knowledge. It is a rare person who puts contribution before self enrichment. The coming revolutions in healthcare will largely be based upon the values of people like Tim Berners-Lee.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Hospitals should not fly on autopilot alone

The CNN report below by Brian Todd and Dugald McConnell is disturbing evidence that professionals can become too dependent upon computer systems. As computers become smarter humans are becoming more entirely dependent upon them. That is scary. One of the most fundamental aspects of flying is knowledge that when a plane is near a stall condition you put the nose down (assuming you have some altitude to work with). For a copilot not to have converted that from knowledge into instict is a serious issue. It is true that when one flies "by the seat of the pants" bad things can happen. But to substitute faith in computer systems for tacit knowledge is not good either.

Medical settings, of course, are highly automated these days and many new employees are members of "generation net," meaning that they grew up with digital skills (Tapscott, 2008). There is a limit to the degree to which automation can substitute for human knowledge and skills. To think that the transcription of audio tapes by physicians into medical records might be accomplished using voice recognition software is, in my opinion, outrageous at this time. Humans should oversee what computer systems are being programmed to do. The answer is not just more intuitive computer interfaces. Computer systems today are intentionally being designed to minimize the need for human working memory. The answer is humans who although they grew up digital still have real tacit knowledge. We may already be beyond the point of no return.

Tapscott, D. (2008) Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World.
New York: McGraw-Hill.



http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/09/01/airlines.autopilot/index.html?hpt=hp_bn12

Friday, September 2, 2011

Most connect hospital list uses HIMSS Analytics data

In this video John P. Hoyt, Executive Vice President of HIMSS Organizational Services explains the organization's EMR Adoption Model. Additional information is available at the following URL.

http://www.himssanalytics.org.