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Future of Medicine

• No More Swabbing: Spit Sampling Gets a Whole Lot Easier - Science Daily, 1/20/12 - "The new Whole Saliva Collection Device -- available for use in February -- is a small, polypropylene collection tube with an integral adapter that comes individually wrapped in a clean, foil pouch with ready-to-go instructions, and is a universal fit with common cyro vials"
• An app that could save your life - USATODAY.com, 12/29/11 - "The Emergency Medical Center Locator (emcl) is a free iPhone app that geo-tags your location to offer a list of names and addresses of the closest medical centers, because having easy access to such information in an emergency could be a real lifesaver. The app contains addresses for hospitals in 101 countries, including France, Peru and Spain ... Since not all care facilities are created equal, only medical centers certified by the American College of Cardiology and American College of Surgeons are included. The app also offers recommendations for facilities with the best patient outcomes in six key areas: trauma, stroke, eye, pediatric, cardiac and burn. This is vital when emergency rooms are equal distances from where you're located in order to allow you to choose the center that specializes in treating your particular health problem, such as heart attack and stroke" - Note:  If you search for that app in the app store you won't see it.  After playing around with it, here's the way to find it:  Email the link "http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/emergency-medical-center-locator/id477974669?mt=8&ls=1" to your iPhone or iPad and click on it and it will bring up that app in the app store.
• Supersized market economy, supersized belly: Wealthier nations have more fast food and more obesity - Science Daily, 12/28/11
• U.S. Physicians Spend Nearly Four Times More On Health Insurance Costs Than Canadian Counterparts - Science Daily, 8/4/11
• 10 Top-Selling Drugs Coming Off Patent - ABC News, 7/25/11 - "could cost up to 80 percent less ... Plavix ... Lipitor ... Seroquel ... Actos ... Enbrel ... Levaquin ... Zyprexa ...Concerta ... Protonix"
• Prostate Cancer Kills Half Those Diagnosed in UK, But Not US - Medscape, 6/17/11 - “New data from the United Kingdom show that prostate cancer kills half of the men diagnosed with this disease ... The situation is much different in the United States, where recent estimates suggest that only about 15% of men diagnosed with prostate cancer die from this disease”
• Quality of Cancer Care Falling With Doc Shortages and Rising Costs - Medscape, 3/11/11 - "The quality of cancer care is under pressure in part because of the rising number of cancer patients in the United States ... But in addition to more patients, there is also a looming shortage of oncologists ... The number of cancer patients is expected to grow by 55% by the year 2020, which will significantly outpace the availability of oncologists (J Clin Oncol. 2008;26:3242-3247). This will lead to an estimated shortage of between 2550 to 4080 oncologists in the United States by 2020"
• Physicians Face 29.5% Medicare Pay Cut in 2012 - Medscape, 3/10/11 - "Medicare reimbursement rates for physicians will decrease by 29.5% on January 1, 2012, unless Congress once again acts to postpone what organized medicine likens to doomsday"
• Rates of Suicidal Ideation Among US Surgeons 'Very Concerning' - Medscape, 1/17/11 - "The fact that 6% of US surgeons thought of killing themselves in the last 12 months is certainly very concerning ... even more striking considering that surgeons are highly educated, nearly universally employed, and overwhelmingly (88%) married — all factors known to reduce risk of suicide in the general population ... rates were substantially higher among surgeons age 45 to 54 years"
• US scientists significantly more likely to publish fake research - Science Daily, 11/15/10 - "US scientists are significantly more likely to publish fake research than scientists from elsewhere, finds a trawl of officially withdrawn (retracted) studies ... A total of 788 papers had been retracted during this period. Around three quarters of these papers had been withdrawn because of a serious error (545); the rest of the retractions were attributed to fraud (data fabrication or falsification)"
• iPhone images: Good enough for medical use? - Science Daily, 10/17/10 - "We found high consistency-more than 85 percent agreement-between evaluations based on the standard computer monitor and on the iPhone for all image sections tested ... There were no significant differences between evaluations and recommendations using the two systems, and the doctors rated the iPhone images as excellent"
• Massachusetts health reform fails the disadvantaged, study finds - Science Daily, 9/9/10 - "it has not increased people's access to a personal physician or improved their self-rated health. Neither has it reduced healthcare inequalities between ethnic or income groups ... The research by Jane Zhu from Harvard Medical School and team ... study is published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine ... In 2006, Massachusetts passed comprehensive health reform legislation to expand health coverage to all its residents and has achieved near-universal coverage ... Although there were improvements in both coverage and cost barriers in Massachusetts for some disadvantaged groups compared to trends in New England, overall this did not reduce healthcare inequalities between ethnic or socioeconomic groups, largely because of comparable or larger improvements among whites and those on higher incomes"
• Study: Number of children born to illegal immigrants jumps - The Boston Globe, 4/15/09 - "The number of US-citizen children born to illegal immigrants has dramatically increased over the past five years from 2.7 million in 2003 to 4 million in 2008 ... 1 in 4 US-born children of unauthorized immigrants went without health insurance in 2008, compared with 14 percent of those born to legal immigrants and 8 percent born to US-born parents"
• Health Spending to Double by 2018 - WebMD, 2/24/09 - "National spending on health care is expected to double to $4.4 trillion per year by 2018 ... more than 20% of the economy will be taken up by health costs by 2018"
• Health Care Costs To Top $8,000 Per Person - cbs2chicago.com, 2/24/09 - "As the recession cuts into tax receipts, Medicare's giant hospital trust fund is running out of cash more rapidly, and could become insolvent as early as 2016 ... That's three years sooner than previously forecast ... The health care cost forecast did not take into account recent legislation that expanded medical coverage for children of low income working parents, and added to the government's obligations ... The government statisticians estimated that health costs will reach $13,100 per person in 2018, accounting for $1 out of every $5 spent in the economy"
• 'Paperless' Hospitals Are Better For Patients, Study Confirms - Science Daily, 1/26/09
• Businesses Wary of Details in Obama Health Plan - NYTimes.com, 10/26/08 - “To all of a sudden whack 6 to 7 percent of payroll costs, forget it,” he said. “If they do that, prices go up and employment goes down because nobody can absorb that.” - That's coming from one of the most pro-Obama newspapers in the U.S.
• Costs Soar for Mass. Health Care Law - washingtonpost.com, 4/12/08
• Microsoft Rolls Out Health Records - New York Times, 10/4/07 - "Microsoft is starting its long-anticipated drive into the consumer health care market by offering free personal health records on the Web ... The organizations that have signed up for HealthVault projects with Microsoft include the American Heart Association, Johnson & Johnson LifeScan, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the Mayo Clinic and MedStar Health"
• Vitamin controls backed by Europe - BBC News, 7/12/05 - "Under the EU Food Supplements Directive, due to come into effect in August, supplements will only be able to include vitamins and minerals taken from an approved list"
• Pharmacogenetics May Improve Blood-Pressure Control - Doctor's Guide, 9/29/03
• Health-Care Technology for Doctors - WebMD, 9/26/03
• Online Medical Records and Privacy - WebMD, 9/26/03
• Health-Care Technology for Patients - WebMD, 9/26/03
• 1 in 3 Doctors Withhold Info - WebMD, 7/10/03
• Doctors Stuck in Time Warp - WebMD, 1/21/03 - "Millions of people with chronic disease are not getting the care they need because of outdated systems ... most doctors work in a system -- the two- or three-doctor medical practice -- that isn't keeping pace with new treatment guidelines ... As a result, many patients end up in emergency rooms for medical crises that could easily have been prevented" - A good reason to take a proactive approach by using my web site. - Ben
• Web Filters More Effective at Blocking Health Info Than Pornography - Medscape, 12/10/02 - "All Web filtering software mistakenly blocks access to medical information"
• Adult Marrow Cells Show Versatility - Intelihealth, 1/25/02
• Compaq, Allscripts to offer handhelds to doctors - USA Today, 3/26/01

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