Archive for the ‘Medicine’ Category

The antimerits of the SSEHR (Single Shared Electronic Health Record)

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

Ewan Davis, who knows of these things, doesn’t say in his good posting that one of the problems or reasons for deprecating the development of a single record is that it is too hard for us.

It would be A Very Big Program, and we are not good at that, and Have Many Complicated Bits and we are not good at that either.

Whereas the (Unix) approach of many small programs doing small things and doing them well, with simple rules to connect them like the Internet has prospered on seems to be within our capacity.

Naturally this is less attractive to potential buyers of One Big System or potential winners of the fight to sell One Big System, or to Knowers of the One True Way who want to regulate doctors and other healthcare workers by using the computer to program people, than it is to the minority of doctors and others who have a problem they can see a solution to, and know how to program it or know someone who does.

Bring on the bazaar.

Benson remains relevant on IT

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

http://www.bmj.com/content/325/7372/1086.full

As well as the doctors, most of Project 2000 seemed to me to be predicated on automation of the nurses’ record handling, and what actually came out of it was a lot of repetitive hand-writing. There are nursing tasks that would better occupy that time.

Dr Gillian Needham

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

I find the arguments she advances in her personal view piece in the BMJ weak, unconvincing, poorly written and in the end vitiated by the fact that she has now published.

Very considerable and widespread criticism by a great range of doctors of various types and degrees of seniority which has been made of her seems to me appropriate.

I think medical training would not be made worse by her departure from it, and would welcome that.

http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d752.full

Doctor-patient Email

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

1998 AMIA gulideline on email with patients. I remember discussing that on the list back then, hence the credit.

I see it is still surprising some of my colleagues as a new idea. I find Instant Messaging and the like a more interesting new thing to think about.

Toward reduced breast-guilt (feeding your baby some food at 4 months may not be bad)

Saturday, January 15th, 2011

The original article in the BMJ is a quietly and carefully written discussion of whether the WHO recommendations for baby feeding in the whole world are quite so applicable to the UK. It also notes that this was yet another instance of a large change in public health policy being presented without much thought or any testing.

The BBC web coverage seems reasonable, I didn’t see the live TV coverage, but hear it was more television than science, and The Times (of London) demonstrated again that it is no longer what it used to be, with its choice of screaming front page headline. What a pity.

Selecting the College of midwives spokesperson to comment on it was odd, midwives retain an interest in the baby for up to six weeks, not several months. More enthusiasm from them in helping women to start breast feeding would be completely uncontroversial, and wholly helpful. Comments on what to do much later are neither.

Synthesis: Breast feeding is good. Breast feeding for four months is very good. Breast feeding exclusively for several months is good. Giving your baby some squishy food with taste and a bit of bulk to it sometime around 4 months seems really unlikely to do harm, and has plausible ways of doing good – giving them a taste for proper food and avoiding some allergies and Gluten sensitivity. Bottom line: it is possible that mothers have been sensible. I’m alarmed that this ever seemed worth arguing against.

Note: the paper comes partly from the University of Birmingham Institute of Child Health. The first job I ever did was there, and related to Gluten sensitivity among other things. The Gluten work referred to above came from Sweden, where I have never been.

Sickileaks next?

Saturday, December 11th, 2010

Governments tend to be persuadable that putting all the information in one place in a big database is the solution. It isn’t, and among the reasons it isn’t are the problems that have been solved in a few distributed systems (such as the World Wide Web) and have not been solved in any big centralised database I’ve been pressed to use yet.

Centralise medical records and the records will no longer fit the local organisations and geographies that produced them, and there _will_ be some huge leak of records on the order of Wikileaks.

New Maps of Healthcare

Thursday, November 25th, 2010

As with various other things Muir Grey has driven, http://www.rightcare.nhs.uk/atlas/ an atlas of healthcare variations, is a good idea.

Kingsley Amis long ago wrote as a critic a book about Science Fiction, called “New Maps of Hell”. I don’t think that was as useful or will remain useful for so long, although it had its amusing or interesting parts.

Whether the NHS can keep it together to keep this running, and in the same place, is another matter and a recurrent one.

Much better locations for it would be http://rightcare.nhs.uk/atlas/ and http://nhs.uk/rightcare/atlas/ but these things tend to be decided by people whose map of the Web is defective, and who regard that as one of their many strengths in management.

Clear thinking (opposite to chiropractors’)

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

The Appeal Court judgment in the Singh case is important, and also demonstrates clear thinking. Worth reading the whole of it. http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/350.html

Sexual health is mostly looked after by GPs

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

As with most common problems, most of the work is done by GPs, and their staff, in General Practices. It is done cheaply, conveniently, quickly, and well. Sometimes people are referred onward.

So why does the NHS’ misleadingly named “Choices” website rank general practices last, mis-describe them “local doctor” and point people with very ordinary common problems toward newer, more expensive, less convenient other locations for service?

Perhaps because the advice panel is chosen to not include a GP.

If I was looking for a cause for irritation, I’d complain that my taxes were being used to direct me toward someone’s empire that would cost me more to provide than wahat is already to hand.

http://talk.nhs.uk/blogs/sexualhealth/archive/2010/01/22/i-frequently-get-a-white-vaginal-discharge-increased-need-to-go-to-the-toilet-and-also-a-burning-sensation-after-sex-what-could-it-be.aspx#comments

The advice sucks, also, and it isn’t a blog despite being labelled as such in its URL.

neologism definition: methadrone

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Methadrone: a doctor employed by the drug addiction service to prescribe according to guidelines.