Social Media To Be The Commonest Source Of Continuing Medical Education

Social Media is the commonest use of Internet. Everyone uses the internet to access their emails and Facebook accounts. A Google search engine is the gateway to all information for most of us. These platitudes of an everyday normal life also apply to physicians.

Communication technology has made things easy for doctors. Keeping up-to-date with medical advances has become an easy part of everyday life and not restricted to events like conferences or receiving prints of journal publications. Recent publications have highlighted the importance of social media in continuing medical education. In a recent large study, 70% of doctors were found to have accessed new medical content via social media every month.

Social media integrated medical content platforms like India Cardiology 2.0 and India Rheumatology 2.0 make it easier to read, share and discuss the latest studies and articles within the niche. Such platforms let readers (which in most cases are doctors) recommend and easily share the relevant study on their Facebook wall. Reader recommendations on the website are used to list the most visible studies. On such social media integrated medical content platforms, Readers can choose to stay updated via email (enewsletter) or via Facebook page or Twitter. So, for example, on liking India Cardiology 2.0 Facebook page the latest news and articles in Cardiology shall be visible to readers on their Facebook wall stream. Readers can also use common social media platforms including LinkedIn and Google plus to recommend the article to his/her own friend circle with pertinent comments.

Similarly, following @incardiology on Twitter will let a reader receive all new updates in his/her twitter stream/wall. Such platforms make finding and sharing relevant items so much simpler for medical professionals.

Social media and emails are well ingrained into our daily lives. Its time doctors make professional uses of such tools too.

Freeing Medical Data: Video

Technology has enabled us to collect vast amounts of medical data from myriad sources. But most of this data is locked in silos and unavailable for use by researchers. Performing a medical or genomic experiment on a human requires informed consent and careful boundaries around privacy. But what if the data that results, once scrubbed of identifying marks, was released into the wild?

At WeConsent.us, John Wilbanks thinks through the ethical and procedural steps to create an open, massive, mine-able database of data about health and genomics from many sources.

Health Tablets Proposed For Public Health In India

India has increased planned expenditure in healthcare to 2.5 % .  While this is a big jump from the previous 1% of GDP, do note that it is about 5% to 10% in most civilized countries. The Indian government is now betting big on technology and eHealth. Faced with shameful data collection practices, health ministry officials are now looking at using Tablets to improve collection of health data and also improve quality of healthcare service provided at peripheral areas. 

In the news almost simultaneously this week were 2 specialized tablets to be used for healthcare service providers in India.

The Kalam-Raju tablet is the result of collaboration between the former President of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, and well known cardiologist Dr. B. Soma Raju of Care Foundation. This Kalam-Raju tablet will help physicians and certified nurse practitioners in rural areas access patient information, diagnostic tools and new treatment procedures. The tablet shall be out within 3 to 6 months.

Also unveiled this week was another  Android based Health tablet, the "Swasthya Slate"  reportedly capable of providing enough information to make clinical judgements. The tablet can record body temperature, conduct ECG, test blood sugar and blood pressure, measure heart rate and also test quality of water. This is the braibchild of Kanav Kahol, a US-returned Indian biomedical engineer and is being dubbed as the first-of-its kind diagnostic tool. Swasthya Slate is likely to be ready for operation in next three months. 

This is a demo of the Swasthya Slate to a class of medical officers in Odisha

Doing More With EMRs: What Are The Top Reasons For Failure?

Electronic Medical Records hold a lot of promise. When used well, EMRs decrease drug errors, streamline work flow, assist in clinical decisions and allow efficient accounting. At the same time, EMRs chosen without proper thought and assessment can cause long term pains. The really restrictive EMRs won't even let you shift medical data elsewhere and healthcare providers maybe stuck with outdated EMRs soon after buying them.

EMR failures are most often a cause of one or more of the following four reasons

• Technical EMR implementation failures, because of issues with hardware/ software combination or wireless connectivity issues;
• Financial failures, where the expected EMR ROI wasn’t realized, or the costs were significantly more than expected;
• Software incompatibility issues, where the EMR system didn’t interface with an existing medical practice management system; and
• People-related issues, where some physicians or staff members avoid training or simply refuse to use the EMR system. 

Making an EMR work for a healthcare provider needs work before, during and after installation of an EMR system. When choosing an EMR system, Ignore the bells and whistles and Look at the nuts and bolts.

Social Media and a Medical Practitioner: Guide from 'Down Under'

Research Projects like those carried out by pathoftheblueeye.com as well as by Accenture have pointed out Medscape.com and WebMD.com as the most often visited sites by Medical Professionals ( 50 % of the time spent within health category) as well as non-medicos. Social Media sites showed  a rapidly rising 6% of time spent by a large number of people.

Social Media is now being widely used by doctors as well as patients. All doctors even remotely on social media face many ethical and moral questions regarding online physician-patient relationships. So when is it Okay to use social media and when is it Not ?!

Recently, The American Medical association posted some guidelines for Doctors use of social media tools in a professional capacity.

But now we have the Australia Medical Association and New Zealand Medical Association come out with their version on this dilemma. Here is the google document ( a 14 page pdf you can download/ view online). It is one of the most practical and useful guide of its kind online.

Attached: Social Media and the Medical Profession_FINAL with links.pdf

Related articles

• AMA Issues Social Networking Guidelines (medgadget.com)
• Social Media Policy Adopted by the American Medical Association (healthblawg.typepad.com)

Contact MeFacebookLinkedinSlideshareYoutube

• Using Web 2.0 technologies and social media for the cardiologist's education and update (medicineandtechnology.com)

Electronic Medical Records - Hosted Vs SaaS

A very simple explanation of what an EMR is and what are the main 2 options of EMRs available.

1) Internally Hosted EMRs - like most famous EMRs, including VistA and OpenEMR

Here, the software is on a client server and is generally cut-off from the outside world. Some of these EMR packages also allow remote computers to log in into the software, thus adding 'web- enabled' feature.

2) Internet based/ Cloud Based EMRs - like Medscribbler

These EMRs reside in the cyberspace and access is via a website login. These services are typically priced based on number of doctors using it / number of patient entries / Periodic subscription fees.

               

Though the first type is considered more secure, it can be a pain to use. You would need a whole army of technicians to maintain a system like that in-house.The other option, of using a web based EMR provided as a service, would be my choice. It allows for easier to use interfaces (in my opinion), geographically free application (as it can be logged on to from clinic/hospital/home) and less expensive for small and mid sized practices.

Also Read-

List of open source healthcare software

GE Bets on EMR in The Cloud

Related articles

• HP edging toward VistA support? (zdnet.com)
• Electronic Medical Records on Google Wave? (scienceroll.com)
• What the perfect EMR would look like (kevinmd.com)
• Pros and cons of cloud based or web based EMR systems (kevinmd.com)

What Are Electronic Medical records: EMR primer

View more presentations from Neelesh Bhandari

Need for skilled personnel in Healthcare services

I have been a strict proponent of increasing use of eHealth tools to ensure democratization of better quality health services, best quality healthcare and paperless clean environment for ALL.

Availability of a skilled workforce is definitely one very obvious obstacle in countries like India and Brazil.One of the challenges to implementing health information and communication technology is the need for a skilled workforce that understands health care, information and communication technology, and the people and organizational challenges involved. The intersection of these areas is commonly known as the discipline of biomedical and health informatics (or health informatics for short)

This paper explains the need for skilled and trained professionals for better utilization of information technology and the various peculiarities faced in Developing countries.

E-health and m-health applications hold vast promise to improve global health. As these projects develop, leaders need to be cognizant of the need for a well-trained workforce to lead their implementation. An ideal approach will include needs assessment as well as education and training opportunities for that workforce. Successful local examples can be expanded into larger networks whose scale can be leveraged to more rapidly and effectively disseminate them. Such an approach should also foster the establishment of academic partnerships and centers of excellence in education and research in developing countries for sustainable capacity building while still being responsive to local needs

Read the original article on Health Affairs.

Related articles

• eHealth technology improves patient safety (avantrasara.com)
• ePatients.net answers FAQs regarding IT in health care. (medical-communication.blogspot.com)

Communication issues with Tele-consults , new study shows

With newer technologies and net-centered consultations on the rise, this study below shows us the disadvantages of Telemedicine.

An Evaluation of Patient-Physician Communication Style During Telemedicine Consultations:

Background: The quality of physician-patient communication is a critical factor influencing treatment outcomes and patient satisfaction with care. To date, there is little research to document the effect of telemedicine (TM) on physician-patient communication.

Objective: The objectives of this study are to measure and describe verbal and nonverbal communication during clinical TM consultations and to compare TM with in-person (IP) consultations in terms of the quality of physician-patient communication.

Methods: Veteran patients (n = 19) requiring pulmonary medicine consultations were enrolled into the study. The study group included 11 patients from the Iron Mountain Veterans Affairs Hospital (VAMC) remote site. Patients had individual TM consultations with a pulmonary physician at the Milwaukee VAMC hub site. A control group of 8 patients had IP consultations with a pulmonary physician at the Milwaukee VAMC. Video recordings of medical consultations were coded for patient-physician verbal and nonverbal communication patterns using the Roter Interaction Analysis System (RIAS).

Results: There were no differences in the length of TM consultations (22.2 minutes) and IP consultations (21.9 minutes). Analysis of visit dialogue indicated that the ratio of physician to patient talk was 1.45 for TM and 1.13 for IP consultations, indicating physician verbal dominance. Physicians were more likely to use orientation statements during IP consultations (P = .047). There were greater requests for repetition from patients during TM consultations (P = .034), indicating perceptual difficulties.

Conclusions: The study findings indicate differences between TM and IP consultations in terms of physician-patient communication style. Results suggest that, when comparing TM and IP consultations in terms of physician-patient communication, TM visits are more physician centered, with the physician controlling the dialogue and the patient taking a relatively passive role. Further research is needed to determine whether these differences are significant and whether they have relevance in terms of health outcomes and patient satisfaction with care.

Patients seem to be put at a certain communication disadvantage as they are immersed into a totally new environment and need the Doctor to guide them through the interview.As technology gets better, these virtual meetings might get more realistic and take away the awe associated with high technology AND Medicine working together in tandem.

Read the full article on the JMIR site. JMIR is the leading open access journal for eHealth and healthcare in the Internet age.

Related articles 

• Convergence of eHealth and Health 2.0? (ehealth.johnwsharp.com)