Someone finally replicated the Milgram experiments, sort of anyways. It hasn't been replicated because no review board would allow a similarly deceptive experiment to take place. The thoughts by a research assistant to Stanley Milgram are excellent.
The difference between a million and a billion shown graphically and in funnier comic form.
MIT Tech Review reads my blog (joke) and talks about electronic medical records and piracy (previously here and here, none of the links provided are especially great reads).
Q&A's with the author of the books Tyranny of Dead Ideas (good read, I may comment on it later) and Bottom Billion both from Freakonomics. The Bottom Billion guy, Oxford economist Paul Collier, kind of annoyed me. He had some great answers - he even mentioned Kiva as one of the best ways that Americans can get involved in Africa. The one that stuck out was this:
"I don’t know this stuff and don’t want to. But I am just about prepared to believe that the average Chinese person is smarter than the average Englishman." - Paul Collier after being asked about the controversial research of Richard Lynn.
Don't want to? Research regarding the average IQ of Asians by Richard Lynn showed their IQ's to be slightly higher than that of Caucasians. This was later refuted by James Flynn, the world's (likely) leading expert on IQ, who stated counter to Lynn that in fact Asians historically have had slightly lower IQ's than that of whites (Asian Americans: Achievement Beyond IQ, 1991, taken from Outliers p. 231). The delicious irony being that Asians out earn whites significantly here in the US. I'm not trying to be prejudice or inflammatory or whatever. I just believe in scientific rigor. I believe these questions and their answers are important. How can you not want to know?
Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts
05 April 2009
30 January 2009
Electronic Medical Records
I'm not exactly up and up on what's going on in health care in the US, but apparently about 75% of physicians and hospitals here still keep all their records on paper... that seems kind of ridiculous. Assuming that being able to look up a patients history, medications taken, and possible drug allergies might be useful. Well, it is.
"The researchers found that hospitals that rated highly on automated note taking had a 15 percent decrease in the odds that a patient would die while hospitalized. Hospitals with highly rated decision-support systems also had 20 percent lower complication rates. Researchers found that electronic systems reduced costs by about $100 to $500 per admission."
This is a bit perplexing to me. The free market accounts for all variables whether you take them into account or not. Which is also what makes forecasting it so hard. In the case of health care it would seem like the benefit of lower costs, less complications, and less deaths would outweigh the costs of hiring IT professionals and keeping digital records. So why doesn't the health industry adopt this technology like the rest of the (socialized medicine) world? Didn't we invent this stuff?
The only answer I can really come up with is that old non-tech savvy hospital and insurance company business people do not fully appreciate the advantages of computers.
Maybe privacy concerns? I'm about the biggest privacy advocate there is, but not when dealing with my doctor. If they ask what drugs I do I tell them. If I get rolled in unconscious from a car accident I want the ER staff to know my history. Look at it this way, if you ask a stranger in any country what they do for a living and they say that they're a M.D. you more or less instantly trust them. It's the only profession that gets that universal privilege.
So what's the deal? Why is our health care system so unresponsive?
EDIT: Wow, this was bad even by my standards. There were about a dozen misspelled words and a rant about econ 101. I apologize to anyone who read the initial version of this post.
"The researchers found that hospitals that rated highly on automated note taking had a 15 percent decrease in the odds that a patient would die while hospitalized. Hospitals with highly rated decision-support systems also had 20 percent lower complication rates. Researchers found that electronic systems reduced costs by about $100 to $500 per admission."
This is a bit perplexing to me. The free market accounts for all variables whether you take them into account or not. Which is also what makes forecasting it so hard. In the case of health care it would seem like the benefit of lower costs, less complications, and less deaths would outweigh the costs of hiring IT professionals and keeping digital records. So why doesn't the health industry adopt this technology like the rest of the (socialized medicine) world? Didn't we invent this stuff?
The only answer I can really come up with is that old non-tech savvy hospital and insurance company business people do not fully appreciate the advantages of computers.
Maybe privacy concerns? I'm about the biggest privacy advocate there is, but not when dealing with my doctor. If they ask what drugs I do I tell them. If I get rolled in unconscious from a car accident I want the ER staff to know my history. Look at it this way, if you ask a stranger in any country what they do for a living and they say that they're a M.D. you more or less instantly trust them. It's the only profession that gets that universal privilege.
So what's the deal? Why is our health care system so unresponsive?
EDIT: Wow, this was bad even by my standards. There were about a dozen misspelled words and a rant about econ 101. I apologize to anyone who read the initial version of this post.
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