Douglas Elwood, MD, MBA

Mobile technology will be omnipresent in health care

Tech

September 23, 2011

A white paper from The Beryl Institute reveals a 10% increase in general patient satisfaction and over 40% improvement in satisfaction with educational materials at hospitals when interactive technology is provided.

The publication examines six different hospital systems using the industry-standard Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey for evaluation. According to a press release on the study, the technology gave patients faster access to hospital staff and services by submitting …

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Using genomic data to understand disease entities

Douglas Elwood, MD, MBA

Meds

July 5, 2011

Three recent studies point to the continued presence and increasing importance of genomic information to improving health care.

We have discussed the power of personalized medicine in multiple posts and highlighted the potential of genomics and though this movement is really still in its infancy it is a burgeoning component of medicine.

The first study, published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, explores Helicobacter pylori, a common …

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Personalized health records and genomic tests for patients

Douglas Elwood, MD, MBA

Patient

April 18, 2011

Two articles recently highlighted two very different areas of medicine that are quickly colliding and pointing to a new direction for health delivery.

The first, published in the Wall Street Journal, discusses the steady rise of personalized health records through companies like Google, Microsoft, and WebMD. The second, published in USA Today, examines genetic tests and the disconnect between what is available and what physicians understand about …

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Mortality risk associated with lack of social relationships

Douglas Elwood, MD, MBA

Patient

December 10, 2010

PLoS Medicine recently published an article commenting on an earlier study exploring the link between social networking and mortality.

The result speaks for itself: “the degree of mortality risk associated with lack of social relationships is similar to that which exists for more widely publicized risk factors, such as smoking.” You read that right, according to this study which examined over 300,000 participants in a meta-analysis, social relationships are as important …

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