What is Digg?13 Comments
- nullcodes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4From the article:
"In the end, one key part of the solution to these problems is a better educated patient. If patients understand their diseases better -- the symptoms, the treatments, the drugs, and the side effects, they are likely to get better and quicker care -- before, during, and after treatment. "
I understand that a lot of information on health matters is on the web. However trying to diagnose and self treat oneself without proper medical training is rather silly. As a kid, I used to read my dad's medical texts .. and I used to fear that I had many of the conditions described in there. That was stupid. On the other hand I have helped a friend of mine figure out she had a brain tumor when her doctor misdiagnosed it (because she wasn't fully explaining all her symptoms). However. after the doctor and imaging confirmed it I didnt go telling her what to do because I know that I am not a doctor.,
Too much information without an understanding of it is bad. Medicine can't yet be whittled down to a bunch of "if this, then that" stuff. EVen well trained doctors can make honest mistakes. The human body is complex, a lot of things can go wrong in it, and not understanding all the interactions can lead you to make deadly false assumptions. Understanding side effects and evaluating risk is a MAJOR part of what doctors are for. Unfortunately, there is no quick troubleshooting "cheat sheet" for medicine.
"If patients understand their diseases better -- the symptoms, the treatments, the drugs, and the side effects"
But the problem is that without a foundation in how the human body works, the patient is very likely to misunderstand these exact things.
Now China's former leader Mao thought that all you needed was 6 months training to be a doctor and he started this program called "barefoot doctors" to go out administer healthcare to the poor. This turned out to be a shoddy and stingy substitution for real doctors.
If this sort of thing where patients are expected to go do "homework" becomes a popular expect the quality of healthcare to go down as HMO's tell their doctors not to spend time explaining what the patient needs to know. And expect doctor's time to be wasted as they expend energy explaining why coral calcium won't cure someone's non existent pancreatic cancer.
I very strongly believe in the free availability of information. However, people should understand there is a risk when trying to decipher what something means without a full understanding of the field. Also, let's improve tools for doctors to research symptoms, share information about patients, their history, and treatment options. - Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Posting health-care information on the Internet might as well include Lock-Ness monster and UFO sightings.
Unless you can establish a trusted source, such as Mayo Clinic, most health-care information on the Internet should not be considered accurate or even valid. I came across a medical site that included a comment board like here on Digg, and I was actually surprised that solutions like leaches and drilling a hole in the head were not offered as suggestions, most of them were either home remedies or completely obscure conjecture with no actual knowledge to back up the claim (much like Digg).
The Internet is a great place for the average joe to jump up on a soap box and speak his or her mind, but when it comes to something like medicine and health issues, I whole heatedly don't believe that the average joe should have a right to say anything on the subject. There is a reason why doctors spend years getting educated and trained in their professions, I am not about to follow some swamp remedy from some under-educated hick that swears by it.
Even many of the websites supposedly run by "doctors" or "health professionals" are spotty at best. Most are inclined to promote their own personal biases, i.e. a doctor that believes acupuncture is witch-craft or some doctor that spouts lies about the flu-shot. When you go to a doctor's office, you can spot their diploma and papers on the wall, what proof do you have that the medial advice given on the Internet is from a credible source.
Perhaps Google could establish a trusted source for medical and health information, but I don't see how that is possible. Google isn't going to require proof for anybody contributing to that sort of solution, and most likely Google will accept content from anywhere as long as its going to mean greater exposure for Google Ads and such. Most likely Google's health service will be a collection of home remedies and old wive's tales peppered with Dr Phil like advice on how to loose weight or fight depression, all with tons of links to online stores willing to sell you herbal remedies for everything that ails you.
If you want to talk about your experiences with cancer or illness, or dealing with someone with cancer or an illness, then fine the Internet is an excellent place to bring people together with common goals, experiences, and purpose. But if you want to start saying that drinking 16 glasses of beet juice and black pepper cured you of cancer, keep it to yourself.
If you need medical advice, go see your doctor or go to a clinic, stay offline. - heptahedron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Google claims to be in the business of organizing the world's information and health information could certainly stand to be better organized.
Imagine a search engine where one could type in one's symptoms, medical history, and diagnosis and find all the people (anonymized, of course) that share your medical condition. You could see what doctor's they visited, whether they got treatment that worked, how much it cost, and how when they did. This is where Google comes in.
Such a system would also help determine if blockbuster medications, nutritional supplements, and even foods have dangerous long-term or short-term side effects. As expensive and clinical trials are for new drugs, they typically test only a few 10's or at most 100's of thousands of people and then only for a few months. The real trials, currently poorly monitored, occur when the drug is approved and millions take the medication for years. Herbal supplements are very poorly studied because there's too little money. Does Echinacea lead to autoimmune diseases? Nobody really knows. Can drinking grapefruit juice with your medication lead to liver damage? Maybe. Can taking ecstasy in your twenties mean you'll get dementia in you sixties? Nobody really knows. The only way to uncover rare interactions, combinatorial interactions, and long-term effects is with data -- lots and lots of data on what people eat and take and what happens to them. This is where Google comes in.
Even the best doctors don't know and can't know all the unique combinations of diseases and treatments in the context of genetic variations in people. Doctor's don't know how to treat so-called zebra cases -- those rare one-in-a-million conditions. And there a lot of possible rare conditions confounded by overlapping and ambiguous symptoms. Moreover, doctors aren't immune to the same cognitive biases that cause regular people to latch onto quack treatments based on anecdotal evidence. If a doctor uses treatment X and it works well, they will tend to use treatment X even if treatment Y is better, even if treatment X did nothing (the patient recovered by themselves). Evidence-Based Medicine seeks to reduce this problem. With enough data (the doctor's version of the medical history search engine), doctors and researchers can quickly identify rare conditions and craft treatment programs that have a broad base of data to prove effectiveness. This is where Google comes in. - alohamahalo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The knowledge per se is probably not enough. The knowledge must be advocated. There should be a knowledge champion. The knowledge should be refined, marketed, and sold to the audience. Until there is a mind shared about the knowledge base, there is no way to formula a well reasoned policy. This is not what I want to say, but . . . any how . . .
The knowledge per se is not enough. The knowledge must be in the open forum and the mind shared of the group. This is closer to what I want to communicate, but the idea is incomplete. - bizzay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Information access and information management is a key factor for both doctors (and other health care workers) and patients to improve the state of health care. There is a great deal of research growing in this area. Google has an opportunity to work with research entities to come up with solutions to enhance communication among care givers and recipients. In addition, they may be able to help small practices incorporate electronic health records and electronic medical records that can lead to better communication, quality improvement efforts on the part of doctors, and increased quality of care. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.
- alohamahalo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1root cause analysis?
- bubbaliscious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Physicians make descisions based on many variables. For instance, once the diagnosis of an uncommon symptomatic disease is made, its impact on the person is likely to be highly variable (emotionally, physically). Patients and physicians may disagree on how important some of this impact is. For instance.
Doctor is concerned about a 15% chance of death in the next week if the issue is not addressed, (but currently asymptomatic).
Patient is concerned about fatigue which is severe but untreatable symptom of the disease.
If you ask the patient the "unaddressed" fatigue makes the physician a poor provider.
It all depends on perspective. While this example is extreme, shades of grey occur.
The additional comment about not being your own doctor (the first lesson of being a physican patient) is very important.
While my relative is a "rocket scientist" with 6 years of college/graduate school, I would never assume that I have any remote understanding of what he does.
As a physician, now finishing fellowship (15th year of continuous training, since high school), most of which was 80 hour weeks between patient care and reading, I find it very difficult to deal with patients who make their own diagnosis. Patients that focus on good descriptions of symptoms and follow up with recommendations get much better care, because it much more clearer what to do. - intense321, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1heptahedron,
You obviously have never dealt with HIPAA. As a physician, I have. You would not be suggesting a search engine that would identify a person's medical problems and find commonalities if you did.
Every physician is taught to treat patients based upon evidence-based medicine. Personally I find the suggestion that a physician would depend upon anecdotal evidence to treat a patient quite insulting. - alohamahalo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Burdens of benefits? hmm . . .
- intense321, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Bubbaliscious,
I am a physician as well. I agree with everything that you said. I agree with what you said about patients walking in with their own diagnoses and how that can be detrimental. However, I do feel that it is very important for the patient to be well educated on their symptoms and potential causes. Also, a patient who can explain their symptoms will get better care.
heptahedron,
What you're suggesting, although amusing, is virtually impossible. With HIPAA, the hoops we have to jump through just to get patient information from another doctor are almost unsurmountable. Making that information public would be completely unacceptable by their standards. - alohamahalo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_05_29_a_risk.html
markets work best when the burdens of benefits are broadly shared. - alohamahalo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1What you would want is an expert system for medicine?
More knowledge has been lost than all the knowledge that has been discovered.
There are two types of lost knowledge that I am referring to . .
One type of lost knowledge is gone when the person who knows it did not write it down or communicate it to the next generation and you can not get it back . . .
The other type of lost knowledge is forgotten, but through close observation of the world and human nature you could probably get it back . . .
I really believe we are all slowly killing ourselves. Cancer is simply one of the symptoms of this death process. The food we eat, the air we breath, the water we drink, we are very much removed from the natural state of man, eating food grown directly from the Earth, breathing clean fresh air in the wilderness, and drinking clean mountain spring water. Of course, I like technology, but I only want the positive good stuff of technology. I don't want the negative crappy stuff that produced the technology. I guess I am asking for more technology to deal with the negative crappy stuff of technology. You know the way nature does it. I want a close system. Of course, I could be completely wrong and off the mark. Oh well . . . . - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1i thought monkeys throw *****,
I didn't know that they digg *****.
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