Innovation + Technology = Good Patient Experience
Reporter: Gail S. Thornton
Following are a sampling of several relevant articles comprising health innovation and technology, which may ultimately lead to a good patient experience.
When a health journalist found out her 4-year-old son had a brain tumor, her family faced an urgent choice: proven but punishing rounds of chemotherapy, or a twice-a-day pill of a new “targeted” therapy with a scant track record.
SOURCE
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/genomics-tumor/
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Paying for Tumor Testing
A recent U.S. government decision about coverage of tumor sequencing could affect cancer patients.
SOURCE
https://www.cancertodaymag.org/Pages/cancer-talk/Paying-for-Tumor-Testing.aspx
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Dr. Elaine Schattner has authored numerous articles on cancer — as a doctor and patient. She is a freelance journalist and former oncologist who lives in New York City. She is writing a book about public attitudes toward cancer.
A life-long patient with scoliosis and other chronic medical conditions, and a history of breast cancer, Elaine’s current interests include physicians’ health, cancer, and medical journalism.
SOURCE
https://www.elaineschattner.com/
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Speaking Up for Patient Preferences in Cancer Treatment Decisions.
Informed consent should include your input.
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Breast Cancer, Risk And Women’s Imperfect Choices
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A cancer researchers takes cancer personally: Dr. Tony Blau, who started All4Cure, an online platform for myeloma clinicians and researchers to interact directly with patients to come up with a customer treatment plan.
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Julia Louis-Dreyfus Acts Out: The actress on challenging comedy’s sexism, fighting cancer, and becoming the star of her own show.
SOURCE
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/17/julia-louis-dreyfus-acts-out
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Thanks to Wendy Lund, CEO of GCI Health (gcihealth.com) and her team for compiling part of this list.
Interoperability, patient matching could be fixed by smartphone apps, RAND says: Patients need quality information. A physician at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences believes that the healthcare community must improve reports by making them more accessible to patients.
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Sometimes Patients Simply Need Other Patients: Finding a support community is also getting easier, through resources like the Database of Patients’ Experiences, which houses videos of patients speaking about their experiences.
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At These Hotels and Spas, Cancer is No Obstacle to Quality Care: A trend among spas and wellness resorts shows the increasing integration of safe wellness treatment options for cancer patients.
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This is very insightful. There is no doubt that there is the bias you refer to. 42 years ago, when I was postdocing in biochemistry/enzymology before completing my residency in pathology, I knew that there were very influential mambers of the faculty, who also had large programs, and attracted exceptional students. My mentor, it was said (although he was a great writer), could draft a project on toilet paper and call the NIH. It can’t be true, but it was a time in our history preceding a great explosion. It is bizarre for me to read now about eNOS and iNOS, and about CaMKII-á, â, ã, ä – isoenzymes. They were overlooked during the search for the genome, so intermediary metabolism took a back seat. But the work on protein conformation, and on the mechanism of action of enzymes and ligand and coenzyme was just out there, and became more important with the research on signaling pathways. The work on the mechanism of pyridine nucleotide isoenzymes preceded the work by Burton Sobel on the MB isoenzyme in heart. The Vietnam War cut into the funding, and it has actually declined linearly since.
A few years later, I was an Associate Professor at a new Medical School and I submitted a proposal that was reviewed by the Chairman of Pharmacology, who was a former Director of NSF. He thought it was good enough. I was a pathologist and it went to a Biochemistry Review Committee. It was approved, but not funded. The verdict was that I would not be able to carry out the studies needed, and they would have approached it differently. A thousand young investigators are out there now with similar letters. I was told that the Department Chairmen have to build up their faculty. It’s harder now than then. So I filed for and received 3 patents based on my work at the suggestion of my brother-in-law. When I took it to Boehringer-Mannheim, they were actually clueless.