The Sister was actually home last night and had on the Emmys. The Sister seems to like keeping the TV volume up rather high, so I could hear it in my room. No biggie. I barely watch network TV, so I didn’t really know what most of the shows winning awards were. Let me rephrase that, I know of them but I doubt that I’ve watched them.
At one point during the commercials, an ad for United Healthcare ran. It featured people lamenting how they always have to fill out the same kind of paperwork at different doctors offices.
I groaned.
True, the paperwork is a pain for both the patient and the office staff (the latter having to try and get the patients to complete the forms)> Alas, they’re somewhat necessary (registration, privacy rules, etc)–but still a pain.
The commercial seemed to be hinting at an electronic repository of sorts of information that would be available to all providers. That would be nice from a providers standpoint. Alas, it also alluded to the idea of seamless EMR intergration.
As I’ve learned, that’s easier said than done. EMR systems for doctors are rather pricey (for the software alone–not including the hardware to host and run the systems). Include the cost of migrating to electronic records, staff training, physician training, the hours spent in training and migration. The costs add up! Furthermore in an industry where costs are rising but reimbursements are staying level or decreasing–for many a provider an EMR platform is but a dream.
Had to retrieve some old (10+ years old) medical records today.
Found ‘em.
On a 3.5″ floppy disk! Remember those?
More difficult was finding a PC with a 3.5″ drive in the office!
Here’s a story the anti-vaccine crowd is sure to jump on:
“Finland Suspends H1N1 Vaccine
The Finnish National Institute for Health (THL) proposed suspending vaccinations for H1N1 swine flu, due to suspected links to increased narcolepsy in children and adolescents, the body announced this week.
Six cases of narcolepsy, a chronic disorder causing excessive daytime sleepiness and extreme fatigue, have been reported after patients had been receiving the Pandemrix vaccine.
Six cases of narcolepsy is consistent with annual averages, reports THL, but all of these patients were affected after being vaccinated, and there are nine additional cases that have not yet been confirmed.
Now since this is a mainstream media article versus a scientific publication, there are some questions that definitely need to be answered.
Was the diagnosis of Narcolepsy made by combination of history plus multiple sleep latency test?
Were any of said patients displaying any symptoms preceeding vaccination?
Did these individuals have either lumbar punctures or blood tests performed to detect the HLA-DQB1*0602.marker?
[This while not a diagnostic tool per say would however provide interesting immunological evidence]
What makes this all interesting, is that increasing research seems to be pointing towards Narcolepsy having an auto-immune origin in the body. In the simplest terms, individuals with narcolepsy commonly lack hypocretin/orexin [hcrt/ox] producing neurons. The lack of hcrt leads to a disruption in the normal neuro-chemical functioning of the brain which leads to the symptoms of the disorder. [A discussion of which is beyond the scope of this blog--however I can provide references]
The laws of physics would preclude it from simply disappearing, so where did all the oil go?
The intellectually curious would like to know….
This is a brilliant comic strip style presentation of the fraud physician Andrew Wakefield and the MMR controversy which he stirred up.
Even with pictures, I highly doubt the likes of Jenny McCarthy will comprehend the error in her ways of thinking.
My boss came to me yesterday afternoon:
Boss: Did you see Google today
Me: No
Boss: You can play Pac-Man! It’s Pac-Man’s anniversary!
Me: There goes my productivity for the rest of the day
Boss returns to her office–perhaps to play Pac-Man?
Who really cares what it’s really for? The thing looks awesome and if it works could be a big leap forward technologically speaking.
Mysterious X-37B unmanned space shuttle set to be launched by U.S. tonight… and they won’t say what it’s for
So my PC at work is a bit on the old side…4+ years old (at least) The thing is a clunker, even without all the applications it has to run (including MS SQL Server 2008)
It takes ~10 min to start up and then another 10 to load the basic applications.
Last week my computer somehow got infected with a Trojan which generated these annoying pop ups from a malicious piece of software called “xp defender pro” (lgt removal instructions). So the IT guy came downstairs and removed it–so it’s back to the normal, (painfully slow) status quo.
Then late yesterday afternoon the trojan re-appears as I attempt to visit an insurance company website. I email IT, but it’s too late in the day, so they come to my desk this AM. They start working on the machine and remove the malware. Two hours later–bam–it’s back!
They come down again to fix things. Meanwhile, I’m story of stuck. How can I do most of my work without a PC? I attempt to accomplish all non-computer busywork that I can and even then I’m wandering around wasting time.
Next the spy-ware is gone. Thank goodness. I try to load up our medical billing software to take care of some routine billing–it won’t load. I try MS Word–won’t load. Excel–zip. Nothing except IE and Outlook would run.
Called back up to the IT guys (who must hate me now) and tell them what happened. One comes down and tries some things–to no avail. He has to research what’s going on. At least I have IE–and can take care of some research I needed to do.
Finally they figure out the answer–a file they had me delete from the desktop earlier (it had a suspicious sounding name) was actually meant to be run! So we did so–and it’s back ot the previous status quo.
[Fortunately, they've found a spare PC in the office and they'll be swapping out my old one! Much to my excitement, as well as the physicians and Managers for whom I work]
Public trust is something scientists must work hard to maintain. When it comes to science and public policy, the average citizen usually has to trust scientists—whose word he or she has to take on faith almost as much as a religious believer takes the word of a priest. Once that trust is undermined, as it has been in recent years, science becomes a casualty of politics.”
–Cathy Young, When Science Becomes a Casualty of Politics
Regardless of whichever side one is on via-s-vis the whole “global Warming” debate, or if one is sitting on the fence–what the hacked emails reveals is a gross disregard for the scientific method
That is what bothers me the most about this whole story. The talk of “cherry-picking” data, releasing only certain info, etc. it does a great disservice to the scientific method.
CUNY’s got math problem: Report shows many freshmen from city HS fail at basic algebra
How simple are the State exams for students, if by the time they graduate, they can’t even handle basic fractions?
Depressing to say the least….
Wow….just wow!
NAsA is about to start experimenting the effects of cosmic radiation on monkeys.
NASA has been doing similar experiments on mice and rats for a few years now–so this shouldn’t come as much of surprise. (It’s actually really cool how the experiments are set up as well)
Yes, I’ve taken the plunge and gotten a blackberry.
It was time for a new phone anyway…so may as well make the leap up.
Time to go read the manual…
Huge chest of drawers hoisted aboard space station
I think it would be cooler if they had to assemble the drawers a la Ikea style!
Exploding celery..and what it can teach us
Personally, I’d much rather eat the celery pre-explosion, but this is still really cool
This sounds like a promising first step: Six end simulated Mars mission isolation
Now granted, there’s still a lot of other variables to look at (e.g. the effect of a zero-g environment, exposure to cosmic radiation, etc.)
One random thing that came to mind—what would the effects of such a long space mission be on one’s circadian rhythms?
Blood Samples Raise Questions of Privacy
I’m surprised that consent wasn’t required for the States to hold onto these samples. In every sort of trial and/or experiment, informed consent is a must!
Even though the blood was likely stored anynomously, it sorts of seems “unethical” to be doing something like this sans permission.