Category Archives: LCOI

We Like, February 16: Ask Bill Gates anything, Computers saving health care and Watson graduates medical school Reply

by • LCOI • Tags: , , ,

I’m Bill Gates, Ask Me Anything

Bill Gates

Hi, I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ask me anything.

Many of you know me from my Microsoft days. The company remains very important to me and I’m still chairman. But today my full time work is with the foundation. Melinda and I believe that everyone deserves the chance for a healthy and productive life – and so with the help of our amazing partners, we are working to find innovative ways to help people in need all over the world.

I’ve just finished writing my 2013 Annual Letter http://www.billsletter.com. This year I wrote about how there is a great opportunity to apply goals and measures to make global improvements in health, development and even education in the U.S.

Can computers save health care? IU research shows lower costs, better outcomes

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Using Twitter to connect with patients 2

by • Clinical Trials, LCOI • Tags: , ,

Lego Walking Gallery_White House

People are inherently social – in all walks and aspects of our lives.  This includes patients and patient advocates and their participation in healthcare.  Individuals, whether they meet at a conference or have built bonds based on their shared experiences with their disease and treatments, are connected like Legos.

There are many social networks where patients interact online. As we examine below, data scientists and researchers are using publicly available posts on Twitter in new ways.

Sick? Tweet about it!

For those who aren’t feeling well, they often turn to their mobile phone or computer and tweet about being under the weather. Researchers at Brigham Young University are paying attention and have parsed tweets and their location data to help entities tracking disease find out where flu symptoms are popping up and where the disease might be headed next. In addition, folks at MappyHealth have built out the same concept to include the trending of a variety of diseases in different regions of the world!

By utilizing Twitter data and location, those involved in disease management can monitor, in real-time, the current state of an outbreak and thereby develop intervention steps to better manage an epidemic – influenza in this case.

Twitter as a discovery tool

Twitter might be the perfect medium for finding conversations amongst patients.  Here’s why: More…

We Like February 8: What makes open source communities work, a 25 hour work week and DARPA support for Python Reply

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We should only work 25 hours per week, argues professor

Photo courtesy of ScienceNordic

When you’re 20, you would rather spend more time with your friends. When you’re 35, you want time with your kids. But then when you reach 70, you have far too much time on your hands…

Clay Shirky on what makes open source communities work

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Reboot: Clinical trials protocols for patient understanding 13

by • Clinical Trials, LCOI • Tags: , ,

In the world of presenting and understanding information, there is no doubt that smartphones and the iPad have given us a fresh take on how information can be presented to the user. It’s under this notion that a challenge was recently run to help re-design and re-imagine the Electronic Medical Record (EMR).

For those who have never seen an EMR file, they are filled with text and are heavy in data but lack any sort of design to make them usable to a wide audience. See Exhibit A below.  Edward Tufte would be appalled.

Sample EMR

The Health Design Challenge, run in cooperation with the US Department of Health and Human Services, prompted over 230 submissions to modernize the Electronic Medical Record. More…