Fun fact: The first recorded use of electric stimulation to ease pain was in … get ready … CE 46! That’s right, nearly 2,000 years ago, ancient Roman writer Scribonius Largus described the use of torpedo fish, aquatic animals capable of electrica…
Category: Tech
The pancreas of the future?
Hidden in the epigastric region of the abdomen concealed by a curtain of peritoneum is a moody, often forgettable little organ. Of course, the term organ is a somewhat generous description for this rather overqualified gland. The pancreas has its own s…
How to recover from a bad electronic health records implementation
Is your health care organization reeling from a bad EHR implementation? There have been rumblings from hospital leadership and congressional committees about the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospitals’ implementation of the Cerner Corporation electroni…
Is Open Notes as good in practice as it is in theory?
Earlier this year, a federal rule that requires clinical information such as doctors’ notes and lab and imaging results to be made immediately available to patients took effect. A little more than three months out from implementation, there are m…
The rise of non-traditional nursing
Nurses are an essential component of the American health care system and are continually in high demand nationwide. For years, nurses have elected to leave the field or have sought alternative professions instead of working in a traditional nursing rol…
Health tech and the Hippocratic Oath
Health care technology is an exciting, burgeoning industry with plenty of potential for making the world a better place. Numerous health tech startups are on a mission to revolutionize health care, whether that’s through conducting groundbreaking…
Here’s how doctors can support medtech innovation
Medtech companies realize that it’s not a trivial task to get a surgeon to just start using a new device. Surgeons have a great deal of responsibility, and their job involves learning a lot of techniques. Therefore, when surgeons learn a technique and …
Examining structural racism in health tech
I know I was not alone at feeling shock and grief upon reading the JAMA tweet that “no physician is racist.” Beyond the 8,000+ and climbing signatories to the Change.org petition asking for a change to JAMA leadership, the data on microaggressions and …
Why physicians reject health tech
Medicine has been one of the slowest industries to adopt technology. For the last decade, physicians across the United States and in all specialties and settings have been bombarded with fancy presentations, promises of ease of use and integration, and…
Evaluating technology tools for clinical use
It will not come as a surprise to my fellow clinicians that the pandemic has spurred a boom in digital health and health technology innovation, evidenced by the increasing sales pitches we receive for these new solutions. Our practice has experienced b…
