Clippings

Balls!

They always find new stuff for me to do at rehab. Today I used that large blue ball like a chair—standing up and sitting down, 10 reps, 2 sets. Later in the session I got surprised with a soft wedge I used for sets of squats. The bonus for today was letting my therapist talk me into shelling out-almost-for MLB AtBat for the season.

Doctors Distracted by iPads?

CultofMac calls attention to the adoption and use of iPads by doctors

Since then, Dr. Halamka has been raising awareness about the dangers of distracted doctors. His efforts included an interview with NPR that ran earlier this week. In that story, NPR’s David Greene also interviewed Dr. Henry Feldman (also from Beth Israel in Boston) who is a such a big proponent of mobile technology and iOS devices in medicine that his collegueas have dubbed him the iDoctor. He points out the advantage sof the iPad, including during patient consultations and notes that he can easily switch off distracting devices.

This story  raises the question of whether iPhones and iPads can be too distracting to doctors. A report that coincided with the NPR story from Kaiser Health News cites multiple studies about thedangers of distracted doctoring over the past two years including incidents that occurred during surgery. At the same time, a recent study from the University of Chicago illustrated that iPads made residents more efficient and effective.

I've seen concerns like this raised at least once before, but I've posted before about the advantages of iPads on medicine and my frustration when technology isn't applied to a patient's advantage. I think I like the common-sense solution CultofMac points out.

In the end, as with other distracted driving, the crux of the issue really isn’t about the mobile devices themselves, it’s about how doctors and other healthcare workers choose to use them. As Dr. Feldman points out, anyone can turn a distracting device off – or at least turn off notifications from potentially distracting apps. Setting policies around that idea is actually the approach that Beth Israel Medical Center has adopted to prevent such incidents.

Jay Parkinson, and lots of others I hope, are looking for ways to use technology to serve patients better and make the most of their time.

Visualizing Medical Data

Just saw this via Lucien Engelen but can't digest it fast enough. This is a whole new way to approach medical care—actually could make conversations with a doctor more practical and less of a black box. There's potential for helping users see what they're doing to their bodies and the effect their behavior is having on their health. Even though this seems like an application for the future, it looks like the developers have already made public demonstrations. They claim that this kind of visualization of personal medical data can actually lower the costs of health care.