As health professionals we’ve all multitasked on Zoom calls. But few of us have done Zoom calls with a patient asleep in front of us. Recently we heard the story of a California plastic surgeon Zooming court from the operating room with a patient on the operating table. “Hello, Mr. Green? Hi, are you available for trial?” a courtroom clerk said as Dr. Green, ... Continue Reading about Zooming Court From the Operating Room
Compromised connection: Lessons from a Year of Telemedicine
Let’s face it: Telemedicine isn’t there yet. I’ve been treating patients for nearly a year by remote care and so far I’m underwhelmed. And my patients have voted with their feet — most still want to see me in person. I suspect they're not happy with the compromised connection that telemedicine delivers. So I want to unpack some of my ideas on telemedicine. ... Continue Reading about Compromised connection: Lessons from a Year of Telemedicine
Stanford’s COVID Vaccine Algorithm – What We Can Learn
Stanford stepped in just before Christmas when they distributed their COVID vaccine supply according to a homemade algorithm. When the vaccine algorithm was unleashed it invited non-patient facing personnel and only one resident as part of the vaccine’s first phase. It apparently failed because residents as institutional nomads had no ‘home base’ or address that ... Continue Reading about Stanford’s COVID Vaccine Algorithm – What We Can Learn
Telemedicine and Our Transitional Moment
In 2020 with the nearly overnight adoption of telemedicine we experienced a variant what 20th century media theorist Marshall McLuhan called the transitional moment. It basically suggests that when we are faced with a new media we tend to use it in a way that reiterates the old media. The early use of YouTube, for example, mimicked television. It took years before ... Continue Reading about Telemedicine and Our Transitional Moment
Google Health Studies – Connecting Research with People
Let’s face it, if you’re doing a clinical study recruiting research subjects is a bear. To make it easier, Google today introduced Google Health Studies, a tool to match the potential study participants with researchers. Their new (Android) app provides a platform for researchers to reach a large population for recruitment while giving the public the chance to ... Continue Reading about Google Health Studies – Connecting Research with People
AlphaFold and the Future of Physicians
DeepMind’s deep-learning system AlphaFold last week cracked one of biology’s critical challenges: predicting the shape of proteins. As background for the less chemically inclined, a protein is made from a chain of amino acids that folds itself up in a tangled mass. The nooks and crannies of the 3-dimensional structure determines what the protein does and how it ... Continue Reading about AlphaFold and the Future of Physicians