Memorial Weekend - Be Happy

This memorial day is a good time to reflect and give thanks - in fact this visual gives a great sense of the sacrifices of so many for our freedoms and life today

Original from Facebook

Here's one for the SHARE button. A truly powerful image that tells it like it is.

Posted by Madison Rising on Thursday, October 30, 2014  

So while thinking about how lucky we are we should try hard to be happy as Bobby McFerrin suggested: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” So in the spirit of focusing on happiness which is well proven to improve your life this piece in Time Magazine: Happy Thoughts: Here Are the Things Proven To Make You Happier choked full of great ideas and principles - starting with Gratitude which

Showing gratitude for the good things you have is the most powerful happiness boosting activity there is....which seemed a perfect match for today. But there are many other elements starting with

Doing what you are good at - no matter what that might be as often as possible - Starving Artists are happier with their jobs which goes a long way to explain the power of Regina Holliday and her amazing presence and power in medical advocacy (She’s just a published her first book “The Writing on the Wall” which should be required reading and would definitely be on Oprah's book list if that were still thing)

As for you time - spend it with the people you like - the happiest people are social with strong relationships and that describes much of the online community around Healthcare and Patient advocacy that i consider myself very lucky to be part of. There have been some studies that suggest a causation between happy social networks influencing others and helping them to be happier (I know could just as easily be correlation but either way Happiness is infectious)

Money can help but is not essential to happiness and it is not good to focus on money or the desire for it.

Well known that giving is better for happiness than receiving - notable during the holiday that the giving of gifts is more satisfying than receiving. Interestingly striving for ambitious goals has a positive effect and being optimistic (even bordering on delusional) has positive effects but it is this list of “big life regrets” that is worth highlighting

• I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
• I wish I didn’t work so hard.
• I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
• I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
• I wish that I had let myself be happier.

and as someone pointed out - no one says as they near death - I wish I had worked much harder and spent more time at work.

 

Relish the time off, enjoy your life, family and friends, savor the positive experiences and do so frequently even in small doses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The intersection of Science Fiction, super-pi, and technology innovation

Celebrating Pi (3.141592653) 3/14/15 at 9:26:53

Today is super-pi day, a day that comes but once a century and extends to a specific time at 9:26:53 seconds (although when that occurs will depends on your time zone. While pi is an infinite non-repeating decimal, there are still mathematicians and scientists seeking to build computers that can run the computation and see how far they can plot the number. As Spock put it:

"Pi as we know the value of Pi is a transcendental figure without resolution"

Here’s to those who choose to defy reality and instead envision a future world – a world that ventures beyond even Mr. Spock’s wildest dreams.

The sad news of Leonard Nimoy’s passing has spurred tributes to not only to his life and craft, but to Star Trek, and what it has meant to so many over the years. In talking with my friends and colleagues, it seems that regardless of age, most Trekkies are also techies.

One of the neatest things about working in technology is that you inhabit two worlds. The first is our everyday reality—with all of its joys, frustrations, celebrations, and inconveniences. This world has soft tender moments tempered by harsh truths; it is simultaneously disappointing and inspiring.

But from this disappointment is born opportunity and a vision for the future world. Here is where Star Trek is a reality, where innovators take those every day frustrations and disappointments as ask themselves how things can be done better.

I’m lucky to work alongside some incredibly innovative, talented minds and whether in R&D or client services, at the core, we all share an inquisitiveness that pulls us from one orbit to another.

“I grew up watching Captain Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise crew boldly go where no man has gone before. In the 1980s, Star Trek was big in India and it ignited our collective sparks of creativity and imagination. In fact, as school children, we learned to make “communicators” with matchboxes and rubber bands. When I grew up, I realized this type of voice-activated technology could be a reality, and I have dedicated my career to making that vision something that is accessible to everyone. I still wonder how close our technology today is to what Gene Roddenberry had imagined when he created Star Trek.”

- Vivek Kaluskar, Nuance Natural Language Processing Researcher

“Star Trek introduced me to the idea of being able to talk to a computer, and have it understand and respond. That’s actually what got me into speech-recognition technology: it was that sense of wonder about making technology collaborative—where you could ask a device a question and it could parse through vast amounts of data to help you do something faster.

The show also got me interested in science fiction, which has proven to be an enduring affection. It’s amazing to step back and see many ideas that seemed outlandish, like tractor beams, talking computers, matter transmission, and warp drives, are either becoming a reality, or are being researched and developed. Science fiction, in many ways, has created a technological roadmap for the future. It reminds us to keep dreaming and keep asking ‘why can’t we do that?’”

- Ignace Van Caneghem, Nuance Customer Support Specialist

Finding solutions to seemingly impossible situations is what innovators do. It’s why we wake up in the morning. I’m constantly looking for ways to make health IT more connected, accessible, and more intuitive so physicians can focus on treating their patients.

Working in tech isn’t easy, but some of the most worthwhile pursuits are also the most challenging. Thinking outside the box is the key to solving complex problems. There’s an episode of Star Trek (“Wolf in the Fold,” 1967) where Spock forces an alien entity out of the ship’s computer by asking it to calculate pi to the last digit, an impossible feat. At that time, using speech recognition to control a computer was also impossible.

We are a lot closer to the Hollywood vision that’s been in our minds since 1967, creating innovative technology that continues to amaze us at an incredible pace. It was this sense of amazement, instilled by the creative mind of Gene Rodenberry, which helped open my eyes to the potential for healthcare technology to touch not just hundreds, but millions of patients through innovation.

This Saturday is Super Pi Day, a day that comes but once a century. While pi is an infinite non-repeating decimal, there are still mathematicians and scientists seeking to build computers that can run the computation, see how far they can plot the number. Here’s to those who chase the impossible. To those who know there is a better way to do things and dare to keep asking “how?” They choose to live between two worlds and they are building the future. Super-pi day is for you.

This post originally appeared in Whats Next

Would you swipe left on a healthier you?

2015 health IT innovation holds the promise of turning massive amounts of personal health data into usable information that can keep you healthier -- and it's conveniently accessible on your phone.

It’s always comical to watch movies from the 1980s, not only for the distinct style choices that typified that decade, but to see the type of technology most of us can still recall using. It’s nearly impossible to believe we used to happily lug around three pound mobile phones with antennas and back-up battery packs, but they offered a convenience the likes of which we had never seen before. While heading to the 2015 Mobile World Congress (MWC)

one of the most prominent tradeshows in the tech industry, I couldn’t help but think about the pace of change and get excited about the digital health innovations that will be showcased.

We tend to take for granted the conveniences and time-saving effects such innovation has on our lives. Prior to the pervasiveness of mobile technology, if you were walking down the street and you saw someone collapse, you would need to find the nearest store or phone booth to call for help. In fact, most of us probably knew which corners on our daily commute had pay phones. Now, even if you’ve left your phone in the car (an unthinkable these days) you can comfortably rely on the fact that someone nearby will have theirs in the case of an emergency.

Is your heart in it?

From a healthcare perspective, the interconnectivity of devices is fascinating and holds a lot of potential for engaging patients and improving health outcomes. Innovations such as smart watches, which are being outfitted with fitness trackers and heart rate monitoring sensors, can alert the wearer he has achieved 10,000 steps that day or that a runner has reached her target heart rate

While innovations such as these are always exciting, the bigger picture is about creating a healthier population. According to the World Health Organization, cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the world today. Factors such as poor diet and lack of physical activity are some of the main contributors to the disease— and they are also elements most of us struggle to balance. In other words Lifestyle is the biggest contributor to your health as you can see in this video




Wearable devices designed with intuitive interfaces hold the possibility of helping us maintain that balance, remind us of our inactivity, track our daily caloric intake, remind us of how many hours, minutes, and days it has been since our last cigarette (even Spock spoke out against smoking)

When smart watches and fitness bands are tethered to mobile devices, we can layer on more practical applications for personal health management. What if you were walking down the street and your wearable could sense you were having a minor heart arrhythmia, send a signal to your phone, and have it call for help or advice? Or, perhaps, much like our phones can now alert us to poor traffic for our daily commute, what if your wearable, knowing you are diabetic, could sense low blood sugar, sync this data with your phone and tell you some appropriate restaurants and grocery stores nearby? They will be able to translate personal health data into steps and actions we, as patients, can take to better manage our care and keep ourselves healthier.

Engagement ROI

The benefits of an engaged patient population are numerous. Not only will people be healthier, but consider the above World Health Organization cardiovascular disease statistics and the associated costs of care, medication, and lost productivity, not to mention the personal impact on each of us. For coronary heart disease alone, the U.S. spends $108.9 billion. If people were more dialed in to their health— tracking, monitoring, and being rewarded by insurance companies for adherence to healthy lifestyle activities— imagine the savings both in lives and dollars. And with the pervasiveness of health IT innovation, we are seeing more consumer-facing health apps, such as Sharecare’s AskMD, becoming standard features on mobile devices. People can now use these apps to walk them through their symptoms, offer guidance on managing chronic conditions, and remind them to check in with their doctors.

We’ve come a long way from the shoe-box sized mobile phones of the ‘80s and it will be interesting to see a glimpse of our future technologies, widgets and devices on display at CES 2015. One thing is certain: whether you’re a physician or a patient, we’re all still consumers and our expectations for efficiency and conveniences on mobile devices will play a large role in the next phase our health evolution. In fact, I imagine the current wearable will be considered clunky and dated in as little as 10 years. We might find our lives equipped with even more svelte tools integrated with all of our healthcare data and real-time advisors, apps or avatars that coach, coerce or cheer us on through daily choices to keep our lives and health on the ideal track.


The original article appeared in WhatsNext

Honor Spock's Logic - Follow the Science

Like many I was saddened to hear the loss of one of my heroes growing up - Leonard Nimoy was Spock to me as he was to many others. He epitomized the value of science and logic in the resolution of problems

As my good Friend Jane Sarasohn-Kahn highlighted in her tribute on Healthpopuli: Learning from Mr. Spock and Leonard Nimoy about living long and prospering. Her selection of this iconic moment with Spock were right on target - from one of the great movies from the franchise - Wrath of Khan

Spock: “Do not grieve, Admiral. It is logical: the needs of the many outweigh…”
Kirk: “The needs of the few…”
Spock: “Or the one.”

He spoke out on smoking - something that in the end killed him before his time in this tweet from January 2014:

I quit smoking 30 yrs ago. Not soon enough. I have COPD. Grandpa says, quit now!! LLAP

I quit smoking 30 yrs ago. Not soon enough. I have COPD. Grandpa says, quit now!! LLAP
— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) January 30, 2014

30% of people will suffer serious Chronic Obstructive Airways Disease (COPD) as a result of smoking - and that's just one of a slew of diseases inextricable linked to smoking. Smoking while in decline in some countries is on the rise in others and this major health risk remains one a negative impact on personal health

You can explore WHO data in this interactive chart from who here

But don't limit the application of science to health and smoking - you can put Vaccines in the same category of Science and Logic. Jimmy Kimmel captured the sentiments aptly in this segment featuring real doctors




So much of your health boils down to Lifestyle choices that was so elegantly captured by Brigitte Piniewski, MD in this chart




Where would you rather be - fun or no fun


Spock the Hero with Super Powers
We may wish for the seriously cool vulcan Nerve Pinch



But we don’t need the vulcan nerve pinch. He and his character have taught us that science while not infallible has been working for us for millennium. We have started to tap into the power of science and the opportunity offered to our health and well being.

When it comes to science and healthcare Doctors are your trusted advisor - the relationship may be changing from the paternalistic role to a collaborative role as Eric Topol so eloquently describes in his latest book - The Patient will See you Now. But as captured in this piece by this Trauma Surgeon (@DocBastard) on the Daily Beast: Why You Trust the Internet More Than Your Doctor

...for god’s sake don’t think that you know as much as a doctor because you Googled something. Medical training takes up to a decade or longer (depending on the specialty), so a 0.452 second Google search does not substitute for consulting with an actual physician whose only interest is your health.

We are only at the beginning - what comes next and in our future is unimaginable. Our innovation, inventiveness and abilities continue to expand our universe and our understanding. Science wins- every time. Be logical with that splash of human emotion and honor his legacy - open your mind, analyze the facts and apply the science. As Jesse: Yeah, Mr. White! Yeah, science!

Live Long and Prosper (LLAP)

or perhaps

Live Long, Logically and Prosper (L3AP)

On a side note - if you are interested in the history of the Spock Vulcan Salute - Live Long and Prosper you can watch his explanation of his Jewish Origins here (derived from the Hebrew letter shin  and the first letter of several hebrew words Shaddai (god), Shalom (hello/goodbye/peace) and Shekhinah (feminine word for god) - How Fascinating!

CES 2015 - The Year of Digital Health and Wearables

This year I have the privilege of attending CES2015 in Las Vegas - for those of you who have not been before its big..even by Las Vegas standards.

CES attracts 150,000 visitors (all looking for the same cabs so I’m willing to bet that Uber is not going to work as well), occupies 2,000,000 sq ft of space (35 football fields - American or the rest of the world soccer) and includes 3,500 companies

This year the DigitalHealthCES meeting runs concurrently and I believe is in its 4th year. Further evidence of the merger of health, consumer and the engaged patient equipped with mobile technology and wearables.

As my friend John Lynn said in his post Initial CES 2015 Observations. He sees the top trends as

• 3D Printers
• Drones, and
• Wearables

The first two not closely linked to healthcare (except perhaps this recent recent student suggestion of an Ambulance drone to deliver help to heart attack victims).

Wearables are front and center and John cites the Amstrip company with a band aid style monitoring concept. I expect clothing and in particular sports to lead this charge with the initial interest in optimizing training and athletic performance as we saw from the World Cup last year and the miCoach system from Adidas that was in use by the winners Germany.

Needless to say others are joining the fray with clothing brands such as Asics, Under Armour and Ralph Lauren now offering clothes to monitor all sorts of parameters

This year may see the emergence of more from the Internet of Things (IoT) - or the new term the Internet of Everything (IoE).

Everything connected and controlled through a consumer friendly hub which will include the wearable and monitoring concepts.

This is as simple as ceiling fans and cooling systems and thermostats but with healthcare making this even more interesting and the learning potential of these intelligent systems and their Artificial Intelligence offering insights into our lives to help turn unhealthy behaviors and activities into healthy choices.

So much of our healthcare expenditure is related to chronic care management, imagine the impact this level of synergy and motivation will have on driving a healthier population while reducing cost.

I’m ready, are you?

We Must All be Engaged in the Design, Delivery, and Re-imagination of Healthcare

Previously posted on HITConsultant

On a recent flight, I had my headphones on and the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”

began to play.

It’s a song I have heard hundreds of times over the years, but I was struck by the difference listening to it with headphones made. With no distractions, I noticed the bass line, in time with the percussion, provides the perfect offset to Mick Jagger’s distinctively strained voice. It was a completely different experience than hearing the track play in the background of a movie or while at a restaurant. Being fully-immersed and listening only to that song allowed me to pick out and appreciate subtle details I had never noticed previously. It’s no surprise that things sound differently when you’re able to concentrate your full attention on what is being said, but as I was sitting there, I became acutely aware of the function headphones serve—they enable the wearer to listen, blocking out distractions.

That is exactly what we are seeking in healthcare and it has proven to be difficult to achieve – in part because of pace, complexity of care, and technology. For centuries, physicians have listened to their patients and relied on their senses— their powers of observation— and matched these insights with clinical experience to heal. Clinicians need to be able to listen and concentrate on what their patient is telling them and noticing those distinctive symptoms he or she may be exhibiting. As Sir William Osler

famously advised:

“Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis.”

Being able to dedicate your undivided attention to anything these days is a rarity, but in healthcare, it is a crucial but frequently missing element. The last thing you want to feel when you are at your most vulnerable is that your physician is multi-tasking. Patient satisfaction scores will suffer, but more concerning are the clinical risks and missed opportunities of distracted physicians.

Distracted clinicians are the result of what Dr. Steven Stack of the American Medical Association refers to as an “over-designed” health IT system.” In a recent discussion with industry leaders, he explained that we seem to have become victims of our own ambition. We have devised structures that don’t work for everyone and policies that create very real, very expensive consequences for those who don’t abide. And this has left physicians stretched too thin, trying to do more in less time without any direct impact on improving their ability to care for their patients.

So, maybe it’s time we scale back. Dr. John Halamka, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and co-chair of the nation HIT Standards Committee, noted that while we are in this period of transition and growth, we need to focus on parsimony, or determining the smallest number of moving parts that need to be adjusted in order to create seamlessness in HIT. Quite simply put, while the cart has been upset, there is no reason to trample all over the apples.

The MIT Technology Review recently interviewed Sarah Lewis, a doctoral candidate at Yale, about her recent book that explores how different unlikely circumstances or paths, like failure, have often spurred innovation. Citing creative geniuses such as Cezanne and Beethoven to Nobel laureates, she defines failure as the gap between where one is and where one would like to be. Confronting this gap, she asserts, is important because it “lets people go deep with their failure while letting it be an entrepreneurial endeavor if they like, or an innovative discovery.” We, in health IT, are currently at that gap where there is a disparity between where we are and where we would like to be.

The recent ICD-10 delay has provided the perfect opportunity for us to find Halamka’s parsimony, leveraging solutions that work for physicians and creating consistency and impact wherever possible. Like medicine itself, there will be no one perfect solution for every physician or organization, but we need to begin finding things that work – from re-skinning EHRs with easy to use tools like single sign-on or mobility to systems that respond to voice, touch or swipe to improve the experience for clinicians and patients. We need to start thinking of health IT more like headphones, coming in different styles to suit preferences, but providing the same function of reducing distraction and enabling the clinician to focus on the inflections in their patients’ voices, and truly hearing what is being said.

As Mick Jagger poignantly remarked, “The past is a great place and I don’t want to erase it … but I don’t want to be its prisoner, either.” We have accomplished a lot, but it is time to learn from the past and break free from what isn’t working. I think we can get health IT satisfaction (despite what the song says), but to do so we must all be engaged in the design, delivery, and re-imagination of healthcare and its intersection with technology. This truly is the art of medicine and we are all virtuosos contributing to the next masterpiece of healthcare.

Peace #Inspiration Love - Nelson #Mandela - I'm a Rainbow Too #tribute

Nelson (Rolihlahla) Mandela or Mandiba as he was know to many

was an inspiration for many with his incredible strength and especially his compassion and moral courage despite his 25 year incarceration. His strength contributed to the Rainbow Nation. In the words of another early lost talent Bob Marley:

I Want you to know I'm a rainbow too

You can take the boy out fo Africa, but you can't take Africa out of the boy. Today I am proud to call myself an African and stand tall with the people of Africa at this time of sorrow

He managed to bring light into any situation and there are so many tributes across the web - you can read his biography here - hard to pick on any but I liked Richard Branson's here
and included this great version of the classic song by "Biko" that was performed by
Peter Gabriel performed Biko a cappella at the unveiling of Steve Biko’s statue and the whole crowd sang every word. He said: "I have been living with the words (of the song) for a long time. It is a sense of completion to be here." You could see tears in Madiba’s eyes - it was one of the most emotive moments of all of our lives.




and Time's 10 songs to remember Manndiba by

The Nelson Mandela Foundation posted its own message. But it was his words that summed it up for me and I have quoted many times:

What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” — Nelson Mandela

My deepest sympathies and condolences to the Mandela Family, the Nation of South Africa, the Continent of Africa and his friends around the world


Hamba kahle Madiba
(Go well/stay well)