Envisioning 2.0

While scanning the headlines for interesting stories, I often find little tidbits of healthcare-related information and save them to blog about in the future. In this series, From the Back Pages I post links and commentary on a few of them. This month’s edition is below.

While scanning the headlines for interesting stories,
I often find little tidbits of healthcare-related information
and save them to blog about in the future. In this series, From the Back Pages I post links and commentary on a few of them. This month’s edition, which focuses on social media, is below.

While scanning the headlines for interesting healthcare-related stories, I often find little tidbits of information and save them to blog about in the future. In this series, From the Back Pages I post links and commentary on a few of them. This month’s edition is below.

While scanning the headlines for interesting healthcare-related stories, I often find little tidbits of information and save them to blog about in the future. In this series, From the Back Pages I post links and commentary on a few of them. This month’s edition is below. Read the rest of this entry »

While scanning the headlines for interesting healthcare-related stories, I often find little tidbits of information and save them to blog about in the future. In this series, From the Back Pages I post links and commentary on a few of them. This month’s edition is below.

-Teasing Out Preeclampsia: While television shows like House MD provide crisp, and sometimes gripping entertainment, their portrayal of medical science is sometimes highly inaccurate. Determining the cause of a medical illness takes years, not hours, of painstaking effort.

In late July, the New Yorker magazine published an article, “The Preeclampsia Puzzle,” highlighting the efforts of Dr. Ananth Karumanchi to develop a viable theory explaining why some women develop preeclampsia and others do not. (Preeclampsia is a mysterious illness that can cause significant complications, including kidney failure, in pregnant women.) Reading the article reminds one of the difficulty and excitement of medical research.

Click here to read the article, written by Jerome Groopman.

Commentary: Not much to say here that I didn’t note above. Medical research is difficult and the rewards are sometimes few. However, it is vitally necessary.

-Cooking With Ambien: In a very funny spoof published in the New Yorker, Paul Simms makes light of a strange side effect associated with the sleep-aid Ambien. The drug apparently causes some patients to raid their refrigerators while sleepwalking.

Commentary: Great stuff.

-Toward Predictive Diagnosis: Business Week highlights the work of Dr. Leroy Hood who is pioneering the field of systems biology, which may one day help doctors predict disease in certain patients and prescribe highly individualized treatments.

Commentary: Personalized medicine will have a profound impact on how we treat and communicate about disease. Techniques developed for communicating with the masses will be less effective in a world where a medication only works in a sub-set of the population.

However, one benefit of the fragmentation of the media is that communicators are learning how to speak with smaller slices of the population. This is why it is important for us to learn all we can about social media, which is consumed by small, but highly engaged audiences.

While scanning the headlines for interesting healthcare-related stories, I often find little tidbits of information and save them to blog about in the future. In this series, From the Back Pages I post links and commentary on a few of them. This month’s edition is below.

-Sometimes It’s All About What’s Not Said: In January, researchers published a study suggesting that what patients don’t say is as important as what they do. According to the study investigators: “Nonverbal behavior can be an important diagnostic tool increasing the physician’s comprehension of words spoken or thoughts left unsaid.”

Commentary: As someone in the field of communication who has participated in a number of projects focusing on cultural competency, this study is very interesting to me. Despite all of the different channels of information available to healthcare consumers,  medicine is still – and will likely remain – a one-on-one, person-to-person art form.

-Congressional Power Players: In order to be effective, advocates need to contact individuals who are going to help raise awareness about an issue or champion a cause. If you are outside of the Beltway and do not have inside information how do you find out which people in Congress wield the most influence?

Enter Congress.org’s Power Rankings. This organization ranks each member of Congress on 15 indicators, including position, influence and legislative activity.

Commentary: This is a great resource for those developing public affairs programs designed to engage and motivate Congressional stakeholders.

-25 Years Of AIDS: Christine Gorman has this blog post focusing on her experiences covering AIDs over the decades.

Commenatry: Interesting reading and a reminder that while a lot has changed with AIDS, much more remains the same.

While scanning the headlines for interesting healthcare-related stories, I often find little tidbits of information and save them to blog about in the future. To highlight these stories, I have decided to start a new series, “From the Back Pages.” Each month, I will post links and commentary on a few of them. The first edition is below.

-The Power Of The Placebo: A study conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School indicates that the placebo effect varies greatly depending on whether patients receive a sugar pill or a medical procedure (i.e., acupuncture).

Commentary: Given the evidence of a pronounced placebo effect, I wonder how and whether physicians leverage it in their practices?

-Intelligence & Heath Disparities Link?: An interesting study indicates that low IQ may not explain the differences in healthcare outcomes between people of varying socioeconomic status.

Commentary: It’s best not to forget that socioeconomic status has a significant impact on access to healthcare and treatment outcomes. See this post for more on this subject.

-Prepare For A Blog Attack: In Februrary, The Economist looked at the impact of blogs on corporate reputation. Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion warns that hospitals and other healthcare organizations have to be ready to respond to negative commentary published in an on-line forum.

Commentary: This is a good point, but as we’ve seen with Edelman (The Wal-Mart blogger relations campaign) and other companies, engagement does not always turn the tide of negative opinion. Despite this drawback, it is important for hospitals (and other healthcare organizations) to be thinking about the impact of consumer-generated media on their reputation and consider devoting resources to monitoring blogs.