Search for tag: "population health"

Ninety percent of the data that currently exists in the world is less than two years old, which means everything is new. For the majority of physicians, what they read, is two or three journals that they subscribe to or think are most relevant to their practice. In 2010 the National Library of Medicine cataloged 700,000 new articles. There is information there that would be helpful to you that you never will read, see, learn, or memorize.

We need support such as Watson and other analytical tools because the amount of information that is out there, it overwhelms us. We can't even conceive of it let alone use it. So Watson is a computer system that reads and understands English, which is a major advance. There are lots of tools that can recognize certain words or patterns of words, but Watson actually understands the meaning of an English statement or an English document.

Any clinician patient-relationship is a key to the future of health care. Disrupting that would be distinctly disadvantageous. Patients really aren't interested in having tools make decisions for them but providing them advice or ideas, along with their clinician, to help both of them make a better decision.

So that's what Watson does, it understands the nature of the question to be addressed then does all this reading and says, "'These are the important concepts, I think, for you to consider in making your decisions."' That's the key part, it helps you decide by giving you information that you can use with your skills and expertise to make it more likely to have an evidence-supported decision.

So that's where these algorithms come in. Recognizing that in this complex data, there are patterns and clues and signs that we can use to make better decisions that we can't process ourselves. At the heart of Watson is hundreds and hundreds of such algorithms.

In organizations such as the University of Utah are developing this algorithmic approach because we know that if we are going to use that data effectively we have to develop the mathematical and computer tools that collect and process that information for us and present it to us in a way that we can use when the mass amount of data is something we can't use.

Some of the most innovative things that we're thinking about right now are something referred to as milestones. So in the residency world, we're being able to now identify exactly where people are along a spectrum of skills in six different areas and with the idea and vision that as people meet those skills we can move them along the pathway and again get rid of the rigid timelines that we're currently married to.

For those of us who have been doing medical education for a long time, we know some people learn faster than others, and other people learn slower. The fact that we're facing a deficit of 90,000 physicians coming up here very soon in the next decade, we really need to be thinking about: How can we turn people out more quickly? How can we ensure that we get people in the pipeline, keep them in the pipeline, and then turn them out at the end?

Most people tend to think about diversity limiting it to race and ethnicity. So at Morehouse School of Medicine we intentionally recruit what we describe as academically diverse students. That means students who don't have the highest GPA or the highest MCAT. We know that if we can get those students who have had different life experiences, and if we can get them to perform just as well as students who have MCAT scores of 31 when they come in, we know that we are now creating a platform for greater success for those students, and for the patients they're going to be caring for.

This is something that I think that all academic health centers should be doing. We all have the responsibility for training the health care professionals that the nations needs. The upside of academically diverse students is that you're giving a broad opportunity for people to participate in the care of patients, the demographics of the nation are changing, and so if we're not responsive to that it's great to have great innovation, and technology, but if it's not useful to the people, then what's the benefit of it.

I think we don't really know what patients want. So this is from the perspective of introducing technology and assuming all our patients are techno savvy, and I think you have to ask the patients what they want and how digitalized they are. A lot of our patients are older and may not adapt as quickly to this technology.

I think we need more data on what patients want, and I think patients need to be brought into the discussion. I think the movement for patient and family centered care is increasing at the same time that this digital stuff is going on, and I think if we bring patients into the conversation, we can do this intelligently and thoughtfully.

You have to figure out ways to make it to where you can actually take care of patients, because right now we don't have enough doctors to do it. But in the future, if we can align our care with technology and the needs of the patient, we're going to be able to actually take care of more people.

When you look at equipment, we end up in a situation where we're getting much more information at a cheaper cost and able to make decisions that will actually impact patient care. What this has the opportunity to do is to take us in a different direction, that is to say we have high-tech equipment, we have a better understanding of what an individual patient needs, and we'll be able to design treatment protocols based on that. It's radical thinking, but it's the way we need to go.

What we have to confront in our own nation is: Do we have a national commitment to funding research to improve health?

Well, imagine if we have a population that's not healthy, that doesn't have access to the best care that science underpinned. Imagine that absent science we have no idea what works best for whom, in what context, and why.

So how can we confront those challenges? The power of science brings an evidence base to that that really separates it from unguarded or unfounded opinion. So once we have the power of science, we can think about health in terms of improving the health of an individual patient but also of that patient's family, of the community, and the population, many of whom are vulnerable. And I think once we talk about reframing that for innovation as to improving health through all of those, then some of our other challenges may fall away.

What we have to confront in our own nation is: Do we have a national commitment to funding research to improve health?

Well, imagine if we have a population that's not healthy, that doesn't have access to the best care that science underpinned. Imagine that absent science we have no idea what works best for whom, in what context, and why.

So how can we confront those challenges? The power of science brings an evidence base to that that really separates it from unguarded or unfounded opinion. So once we have the power of science, we can think about health in terms of improving the health of an individual patient but also of that patient's family, of the community, and the population, many of whom are vulnerable. And I think once we talk about reframing that for innovation as to improving health through all of those, then some of our other challenges may fall away.