Tech Medicine Signing Off

I'll be taking a break from Tech Medicine as Healthline redesigns its Health Experts Network. If you're interested in more musings on technology and medicine, here's how to find me:

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The First iPad Reviews and News Roundup

Image via CrunchBase

The first iPad reviews are out, and they're very positive. Here's a selection of the reviews (compiled by MacRumors):

• David Pogue, New York Times
• Walt Mossberg, All Things D
• Andy Inhatko, Chicago Sun Times

Here's a roundup of recent medical blogs commentary on the iPad:

iMedical Apps has a nice review of how 5 medical apps might appear on the iPad, including the Blausten Human Atlas, Visual Dx Mobile, Procedures Consult, OsiriX and eFilm, and Papers.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog features a review of Carter's Encyclopedia of Health and Medicine, an app designed specifically for the iPad. (This is not an eBook, but a full app with searchable interactive skeletons, etc.) Check out the video:



CareCloud, a new cloud-based EHR, plans to have an iPad version. Epic already has an iPhone app and presumably will have an iPad version available. Allscripts is rumored to have an upcoming EHR for the iPad. (No word on whether other EHRs plan on having an iPad app. If you have any information, please post a comment.)

According to Macworld, 1 in 5 doctors plan to buy an iPad. The Practice Fusion Blog has a discussion of other iPad-related surveys of doctors and healthcare professionals.

Healthcare Technology Online has a discussion of the pros of cons of the iPad in healthcare.

Finally, on Satish Misra attempts to temper the enthusiasms surrounding the iPad. On a post on KevinMD.com titled "Why healthcare may not embrace the iPad," Misra notes that the iPad lacks some features identified as "must-have" in a survey of physicians, including fingerprint access, an RFID reader, camera, and a barcode scanner. However, he noted that many physicians are enthusiastic about the iPad, and according to an Epocrates survey, 20% plan to buy one within 1 year and at least 40% are interested.

I'll have more information about the iPad next week (after I've had a chance to actually test it myself). Stay tuned.

Dr. Schwimmer practices Nephrology in New York City and also blogs at Info-Stream.

Labels: Apple, CareCloud, IPad, iphone, MacRumors, Unofficial Apple Weblog

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The Checklist Manifesto Reviewed

Image by americanlibraries via Flickr

Spoiler alert. Atul's Gawandes new book, The Checklist Manifesto, begins and ends with an ocean of blood. Each of these gruesome bookends is a surgical catastrophe which illustrates the major point of the book: how a simple, "unsexy" checklist can improve medical care.

Many excellent reviews of The Checklist Manifesto have already been written. (See, for example, Bob Wachter's.) You may have read these reviews. You may have decided that the book's apparently simple premise — checklists improve medical care, okay, I got it — means you don't have to read it. You'd be wrong.

This is the third Gawande book I've read, and it's his best one. (That's saying something, because I was previously interviewed by Google and heaped praise on Gawande's book Complications. See my discussion of that book on Tech Medicine here.) The Checklist Manifesto is about medical care, but less than a third of it is directly related to medicine. During the book's spiral meandering, it discusses the applications of checklists in construction, aviation, finance, rock tours, and restaurants.

Far from diluting the point, these forays into other fields strengthen the idea that practicing medicine is so complex that simple tools are needed and other professions have already figured this out. (Besides, it's entertaining to hear the surgeon Gawande tell about his visits to the kitchens of restaurants where they won't let him touch their knives, his vertigo at the top of half-built buildings where he's lectured about checklists in construction, and his own failure at creating a surgical checklist which required a visit to Boeing's "checklist factory" where aviation checklists are made.)

Gawande's book has been occasionally criticized for not presenting a "balanced" view of checklists. The concern is that checklists add layers of bureaucracy and eliminate spontaneity and free thinking. While this is a valid point, the book's main focus — it's a manifesto, after all — is that well-designed checklists, which take care of the simple tasks, actually allow professionals more freedom and spontaneity by allowing them to concentrate on the complex parts of their jobs.

It's a great book. Go read.

Dr. Schwimmer practices Nephrology in New York City and also blogs at Info-Stream.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Wachter on Checklist Manifesto (medrants.com)
• One Thing After Another (nytimes.com)
• The Checklist Manifesto (medrants.com)
• The Checklist Manifesto (freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Book Review Podcast: Atul Gawande (papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com)

Labels: atul gawande, Checklist Manifesto, Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, Gawande

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Google Suggest and Healthcare

When you type a search query into Google's web search, a feature called Google Suggest will offer searches that other users have typed that are similar to the one you're typing. Sometimes, this can provide an eye-opening view of how the Internet — or at least, the people who search Google — feel about a particular topic.

For example, here are the Google suggested searches for "Doctors are..."


In case you were wondering — no, thousands are people aren't all searching for "doctors are sadists who like to play god and watch lesser people scream" because they necessarily feel that way — it's a quote from the movie Juno.

Here are some other similar searches from Google Suggest.

Nurses are:

• nurses are great
• nurses are angels
• nurses are mean
• nurses are heroes

Medicine is:

• medicine is keystone of the arch of socialism
• medicine is working but u.s. economy isn't healthy yet
• medicine is an art
• medicine is not candy

Hospitals are:

• hosptials are generally categorized as nonprofit for-profit or governmental
• hospitals are cold
• hospitals are challenged by competition for paying patients
• hospitals are dangerous

I am sick:

• I am sick and tired of being sick and tired
• I am sick in spanish
• I am sick of being fat
• I am sick of obama
• I am sick and tired hillary clinton
• I am sick all the time
• I am sick and bored

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google Search Box Suggestions Allow Us to Peer into the Internet's Dark, Disturbing Id (gawker.com)
• The 20 funniest suggestions from Google Suggest (telegraph.co.uk)

Dr. Schwimmer practices Nephrology in New York City and also blogs at Info-Stream.

Labels: google, Google Suggest

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Connecting with Physicians Online, a Study by Google

Image via Wikipedia

In November 2009 Hall & Partner published a study sponsored by Google titled "Connecting with Physicians Online." (Here's the webinar on YouTube and here's the PDF of the presentation.)

The study's aim was to better understand how physicians use the internet in their clinical practices. As you'd expect from a study sponsored by Google, it was particularly focused on how physicians use search.

The study surveyed 411 physicians from a range of specialties (PCPs, endocrinologist, cardiologists, psychiatrist) and with a range of experience (2 - 30 years in practice) on their use of the internet in clinical practice. Additionally, various clinical scenarios were presented designed to mimic actual situations the physicians might encounter.

Here are some of the findings. All these percentages seem low to me.

• 86% of physicians have used the internet to gather health, medical, or prescription drug information.
• Only 21% of physicians who use the internet in their clinical setting access the internet for medical information in the patient exam room.
• 58% of physicians access the internet more than once daily.
• Only 81% of physicians use search engines. Of these, 92% use Google (naturally), but only 13% use Google Scholar. (I'm not certain where Pubmed fits into this — I presume it falls under "search engine.")
• Physicians most commonly searched online for general condition information and specific drug information.
• As a result of online research, physicians made a change in medication or initiated a treatment about 30% of the the time.
• 78% (only 78%?!) believe the Internet has made practicing medicine easier.
• 8% of all physicians clicked sponsored links, but 21% of psychiatrists clicked on sponsored links. (Analyze that.)
  
• 92% of physicians clicked on the first search result.

To delve further into the summary PDF, click here.

Dr. Schwimmer practices Nephrology in New York City and also blogs at Info-Stream.

Labels: google

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