Category: Tech

It’s time for AI-enabled solutions in health care to live up to their buzz

Artificial intelligence is incredibly buzzy in health care right now, and for a good reason. Other industries are already experiencing AI-enabled radical transformations, like real-time fraud monitoring and detection in banking and finance and instanta…

It’s OK if doctors can’t memorize everything

The storage capacity of the human mind is amazing. One estimate of the size of the brain’s “RAM” is as high as  2.5 petabytes (a million gigabytes). The number is based on the total number of neurons in the brain and the total number of possible connec…

It’s time we get the technology working for the patients, and not make their lives more difficult

In a world where, in a moment, I can order from thousands of items and have them delivered to my doorstep the same or next day at the press of a button without having to re-enter my name, address, and billing information each time, it would seem that f…

If you spend more than 80 percent of your day staring at a screen, you are no longer a doctor

The use of health care information technology has increased exponentially over the last five years, and as a frontline physician, I have seen this change at close quarters. In most of the hospitals I’ve worked in up and down the East Coast, it’s been i…

Virtual scribes are game-changers for physicians

Today was like no other day. It was our first day together. Me and my “virtual” scribe — an actual person who seems to “virtually” to exist inside of a Jabra speaker on my desk and so subtlety that I forgot to mute a few times w…

How EMRs can actually help physicians

Collaboration is the key. When I think about how hard it is to take care of our patients, and how many different people are involved in their care, it’s a wonder that anything ever gets done. We need to simplify systems, and harness the power of …

How does this tech improve patient care?

What if each new feature of your medical record came with a description of how it would improve patient value, not just how to use it? Could a simple checklist help to achieve Annals’ vision of putting patients first by helping to ensure that hea…

How telemedicine intersects with AI, social media, and precision medicine

Telemedicine will eventually become a more prominent part of our clinical practice, with the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) and social media and networks, and integration with precision medicine in electronic health records. As clinician…

Can entrepreneurial geriatrics fight ageism in health care?

Ageism in health care abounds. Older adults are often overtreated or undertreated for various conditions. The presence of things like fatigue, chronic pain, arthritis, and even cognitive impairment are often accepted as “normal” parts of ag…

Just because EMRs can document everything doesn’t mean they should

It’s always kind of a surprise when you read a patient’s chart, and you see an examination of a body part they just don’t have. Just the other day, I was reading a consult note on a patient of mine who had been seen by a subspecialist…