Category Archives: Health & Medicine

Rewiring with meditation

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“Spending some time meditating may improve the integrity and efficiency of certain connections in the brain, according to a new study. When a group of participants meditated regularly over the course of a month, brain scans showed increased nerve connections in the areas that govern reward processing and decision making. The authors of the study hope this particular kind of meditation can be adapted to help those conditions with manifestations in the same area of the brain, such as ADD, addiction, and dementia.”

Tech improves ER care

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It’s the middle of the night and you’re just north of East Jesus, headed to the beach so the kids can play in an oil slick before they’re all gone, and gandma chokes on prune. How do you find the nearest emergency room? According to Telemedicine News, there’s an app for that:

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Emergency Medicine Network have launched FindER™, a free iPhone application to help users locate the closest emergency room, provide directions, along with additional information all with a touch of the screen.

FindER uses the iPhone’s GPS to quickly direct patients to emergency rooms anywhere in the U.S. FindER is also designed for quick phone calls to both the care center and if necessary used to contact 911 emergency services. Once the symptoms are determined, information is available on specific emergency rooms that can treat the symptoms and the wait times for ERs.

EliteCare 24 hour Emergency Center in Texas has partnered with Healthagen® to promote their emergency center through the iTriage® applications. If help in an emergency is needed, the consumer can download the iPhone or android application or go to www.iTriageHealth.com using any capable smart phone or computer to evaluate symptoms. At that point, iTriage will pinpoint the locations and provide turn-by-turn directions to the closest type of facility needed anywhere in the country.

Helping patients receive live ER wait times via text messages in the middle of an emergency is a new way to reach consumers. To do this, ERTexting in Miami manages a new free 4ER411 system. This new service available in hospitals all over the U.S. enables patients to text their zip code to 4ER411 and then receive their local participating hospital ER wait times.

To help deliver the patient’s medical information directly to a first responder or emergency room physician, Emerging Healthcare Solutions Inc. has a smartphone application under development called “e-911”. The “e-911” App automatically delivers the user’s medical information to first responders or to doctors when 911 is dialed from an iPhone. The “e-911” will first be made available for Apple’s iPhone and after assuring product quality, the e-911 will then be offered through Google’s Android and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry

One in five docs plan to buy an iPad

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“The scenario sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie — the doctor pulls out her touch-screen tablet computer from the drawer of instruments. She calls up the patient’s chart with a few taps and proceeds to add a note to the page with her latest diagnosis. A visualization pops up, and she flips the screen over to give the patient an idea of what ails him.

Doctors are presuming the iPad could make this scene a reality as soon as next week. One in five doctors say they plan to buy an iPad, according to a survey of 350 clinicians by the San Mateo medical software vendor Epocrates.

Full story at LATimes.com

Why health care costs keep rising

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It’s nearly impossible to separate the truth from the politics, bullshit and greed surrounding the debate on health care in the U.S. But This American Life brings it in to clear focus in this first of a two part series.

An hour explaining the American health care system, specifically, why it is that costs keep rising. One story looks at the doctors, one at the patients and one at the insurance industry.

Don’t even mention this subject to me until you’ve listened to this program.

What does it mean with the doctor tweets “oops?”

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I got a call this morning from Matt Kelley, a reporter for Radio Iowa (one of Learfield’s news networks). He was working on a story involving Twitter and he wanted to check a couple of terms. Here’s the story (minus the audio):

A Cedar Rapids medical center plans to use the social media tool Twitter to broadcast a surgery to the world next week. Doctors at St. Luke’s Hospital will perform a hysterectomy, and other procedures, as people who’re interested follow along via web browser or mobile device. Hospital spokeswoman Sarah Rainey (RAY-nee) says it’s an educational opportunity.

Rainey says, “We have marketing consultants who will be in the operating rooms with the surgeons as the surgery takes place and as the physician communicates exactly what he’s doing, we will have our consultants tweeting, or typing in conversation to bring it to the outside world.” She says two doctors will be performing the operation on a 70-year-old woman using robotic surgery techniques. The play-by-play will be sent out over the micro-blogging service in messages of 140 characters or less.

“He’ll be talking about how the anesthesiologist is now placing the patient under sedation and here’s my first step, so he will be talking as he goes through the procedure,” Rainey says. “You’ll hear him say, ‘Scalpel, please,’ or whatever he may need to instruct the O-R team to help him with.” She expects a wide host of Iowans — and people around the globe — to follow the surgery, starting at 10 AM next Monday.

She says they’re targeting people in the Twitter audience, roughly between the ages of 25 and 45. “We’re looking for people that just might want the opportunity to go into an O-R suite and see what happens without visually seeing all of the stuff that maybe they don’t care to see,” Rainey says. The hospital recently featured a “webcast” of the same type of surgery so anyone in the world could watch it live over their computers.

“With the webcast, you actually got to see everything that was going on in the O-R suite,” Rainey says. “It might be cutting open the patient, it might be a little blood, it might be the suction part, so for some people it might’ve been too much. Tweeting, on the other hand, is communicating through emails and tweets so it’s a little gentler on the eyes.” She says St. Luke’s will be the first Iowa hospital to “Twitter-cast” a surgery. To follow it, go to the hospital’s website “www.stlukescr.org” and click on the Twitter icon.

My friend David insists this is a “gimmick” and nothing more. That nobody would have the slightest interest in following this procedure on Twitter. I’m not as convinced.

Non-American health care

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Good old American health care is all I’ve ever known. I remember when the family doctor made house calls. I think I even remember when the insurance company existed to help us (but that could have just been a dream).

We can’t really call what’s happening a national “debate” on health care — more of a national shriek– but there are those who think we have the best health care in the world. Since I haven’t been a lot of places in the world, I decided to get the opinion of some of my over-seas pen pals.

Keith Povall lives in or near Birmingham, UK and has recently had more of their national health care than he would have liked. You can read his full assessment in the comments, but here’s an excerpt:

“In modern times, much criticism has been leveled at the NHS because there is a lot of truth in the opinion that it is a monster grown out of control. It is the largest employer in Europe for example and many say / believe that there are too many chiefs and not enough Indians (to coin a phrase). Over the years, governments have thrown billions at it and the monster gobbles up the cash. It is believed governments would like to introduce a private service to replace it, but in the main “the people” love the NHS, something that is there as a safety net for when they need it and whilst you will hear complaints about income tax and stealth taxes, no one complains about their NI contributions.”

Peter is a psychiatric nurse in the Netherlands and –as a health care provider– might be less than objective on this subject. On the other hand, he has first-hand knowledge of his country’s system.

“The insurance companies want to control everything; they even want to control what professionals like me should do or not. The basis of their policy is not what the clients want (those who put money in the big jar) but what the shareholders want. Their goal is not good health care for their members, but profit and big bonus for a couple of hotshots. A very bad development which surely will be changed the moment the issue is hot again and elections are due. As you see we are quite a normal country in this.”

Again, I hope you’ll read Peter’s full email in the comments.

I’m still waiting to hear from a friend in Belgium and will add her thoughts if and when we get them. My thanks to Keith and Peter for taking time to respond to a serious inquiry from me. Something they are rarely called upon to do.

Alzheimer’s Disease iPhone app

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My father and Barb's father suffered from Alzheimer's Disease and died from  related illnesses. But I am no kind of expert on the disease. Please keep that in mind as you follow along with this post.

I checked the iPhone apps store and didn't find anything like what I'm going to try to describe. Probably a good reason for that. And the application I'm imagining would be targeted at those in the early and mid stages of the disease. And if they refused to keep the phone with them or couldn't remember to take it, game over. But let's assume they're on board.

The iPhone app would launch whenever the phone was turned on. It would be programmed with information about the patient (for lack of a better term).

The map would have pins for the patient's favorites spots (corner market, hair salon, friends, etc). If they clicked on one of the pins, a small bubble would appear with the person photo and some info about them. A video link would play a short video clip ("Hello, Mrs. Johnson. Steve Mays here. Looking forward to your next visit.") and, of course a phone number to call the person.

The patient and family would decide on a radius that covered most of the places they were likely to go. Let's say 20 miles. If they go outside that radius, the phone wakes up and a familiar (?) voice says something along the lines of: "Hi, mom. It's me, Janice. Please give me a call. Just hit the green button.")

This repeats a couple of times and if ignored, the iPhone begins calling family and –if necessary– the authorities.

My father would go to morning coffee and on the way home make a wrong turn and just get confused about where he was. With an app like this he could have turned it on (maybe by just shaking it?) and seen the blue pin for where he is and the red pin for home. Or just say, "Help" or "I'm lost" and get assistance.

And before you point out "if they can't work the Tivo…" Remember I'm talking about people who grew up with mobile phones and –eventually– iPhones. We're gonna be freaked if we don't have the things in bath robes.

If this already exists, send me a link. I'd love to see it. If you have ideas for features I didn't think of, share those in the comments.

And if you are some brilliant young app developer and can make this thing a reality. You've got my blessing. You might even donate porcedes to Alzheimers Assocaition.

Pill to erase bad memories

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I first wondered about this back in 2004. A couple of years later, 60 Minutes did a segment on one such drug. Now Dutch researchers claim to have erased bad memories by using ‘beta-blocker’ drugs, which are usually prescribed to patients with heart disease.

“The astonishing treatment could help sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder and those whose lives are plagued by hurtful recurrent memories. But British experts said the breakthrough raises disturbing ethical questions about what makes us human. They also warned it could have damaging psychological consequences, preventing those who take it from learning from their mistakes.”

Would I take such a pill? I think I might. I haven’t experienced more than my share of pain or trauma but if I’m a better person for it, I’m hard pressed to say how.

“But you are YOU because of the sum of your experiences, smays.com,” one might argue.

Yes, and I’d just be a different person if I took the pill and erased the memories. In fact, maybe I did take the pill. I wouldn’t remember, would I?

And before we leave this topic… how is this different from taking pills that alter our perception of this moment (Valuium, anti-anxiety meds, etc)?

108 Sun Salutations

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Greg Perry did a nice job manning the cameras (still and video) at this morning’s Show-Me Yoga Center event. You can learn more about 108 Sun Salutations from this earlier post. This shot captures my first 108SS perfectly. A picture worth 1,000 breaths. In case you’re wondering. I did about 104 of the 108 sequences (assuming you don’t count really shitty form). I got a blister on my big toe at about 30 and it broke around 40. I missed a couple when I made a band-aid pit stop. We go again in 6 months.