Nextgov/FCW - Authors - Lindsay Abrams

Study: Facebook Likes Predict Obesity

Lindsay Abrams, The Atlantic — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:39:50 -0400

PROBLEM: There has been a lot of interest lately in ways we can use Internet behavior to monitor public health. Facebook likes seem to be a good tool for this -- researchers have already figured out how to use interests expressed on the site to make strong inferences about users' race, gender, age, political affiliation, and sexual orientation. They can even indicate mortality rates for hospitals.

METHODOLOGY: Researchers at Harvard Medical School took behavior either positively or negatively linked to obesity -- namely, being active or being sedentary -- and then looked at the proportion of adults who liked related things on Facebook. Relevant pages were broadly categorized underneath "health and fitness" and "outdoor physical activities" for being physically active and "television" for being sedentary. They organized the data by city for all of the U.S. and, in a more focused analysis, by zip code for New York City, and then compared what they found to public data on the prevalence of obesity in those areas.

Read the study results and more at The Atlantic.

(Image via Suzanne Tucker/Shutterstock.com)

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Study: Google Searches Reveal Mental Health Patterns

Lindsay Abrams, The Atlantic — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:02:30 -0400

PROBLEM: Google overhyped the flu this year, which seemed to be a blow to the company's claim that it can track disease in real-time. Not to mention, the CDC was doing a fine job monitoring the virus's spread without the help of Google's search-based analysis. Traditional epidemiological surveillance techniques are less reliable, though, when it comes to mental illness, which remains complex and stigmatized enough that there's reason to believe people may be more comfortable consulting the Internet than their doctors.

METHODOLOGY: Public health experts at San Diego State looked at every mental health query made on Google between 2006 and 2010 in the U.S. and Australia. They identified searches that used "language suggestive of mental health matters," which usually involved people either attempting to self-diagnose or treat themselves, or looking up information on behalf of a friend or family member.

The researchers specifically analyzed this data in terms of seasonal changes: shorter, darker days are known to increase symptoms of depression, but little is known about possible patterns for other mental illnesses. They adjusted for big news stories, to avoid the effects of media hype like that which caused Google to suggest that the flu was more widespread than it actually was.

Read more at The Atlantic.

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The future of medical records

Lindsay Abrams, The Atlantic — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:11:47 -0500

Electronic medical records are not working like they should -- or could -- according to a new analysis in Health Affairs that revisited previous predictions for the EMR revolution and found disappointing results, in terms of efficiency,saved costs, and patient care.

The practical concerns pointed out by the study include ease of use and ability to share information across systems. But another important metric -- the corollary to questions likeWould You Want to See Everything Your Doctor Writes About You?" -- is, What would you, the patient, do with that information provided you were granted access?

The federal government took the Department of Veterans Affairs' current record system, which "looks and feels like a receipt," and challenged designers to reimagine the Continuity of Care Document, an EMR output used to describe a patient's health history.

Technology is "only a tool," as an expert who helped push for the adoption of EMRs under President Obama told The New York Times. "Like any tool, it can be used well or poorly."

Read more at The Atlantic.

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Where E.R. doctors work entirely via Skype

Lindsay Abrams, The Atlantic — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:36:15 -0500

Every day -- and through the night -- in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, doctors report to work in a hospital where there are no patients.

And in over 70 rural communities in four states, patients stricken by heart attacks, or injured in car accidents, or facing other urgent health issues are rushed to an E.R. where there are no doctors. Or, more precisely, there's one doctor. More often than not, he or she is trained in family practice, not emergency care. And if the call's coming in the middle of the night, he legally has a half-hour to get out of bed and report in.

In these small-town hospitals, which often have 25 or fewer beds, South Dakota's largest city is the closest available source of comprehensive healthcare. The people who choose to live in small, geographically isolated communities throughout the Midwest are used to making the trek -- long car rides come standard with country life. But during emergencies, the up-to 200 miles to Sioux Falls becomes very, very far away.

But when the call comes in the middle of the night, with the push of a button -- mounted right on the ER's wall -- the nurses on-duty are able to connect with ER doctors in Sioux Falls, who have been waiting, in their patient-less hospital, for their call.

Avera Health Network is believed to have the only long-distance critical care center in the U.S., and possibly the world. Based at Avera Mckennan Hospital, the nonprofit provides a range of "telemedical" services that take advantage of technology -- including high-definition two-way video consulting -- to make it possible for experts to be available 24/7 in locations throughout South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wyoming, and Nebraska.

Read more at The Atlantic.

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Why we're still waiting on the 'Yelpification' of health care

Lindsay Abrams, The Atlantic — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 12:49:26 -0400

I found my new favorite restaurant shortly after moving to D.C. by reading online reviews from locals who promised it was great for vegetarians. They even called its food "slap yo mama good." Next up on my to-do list for settling down in a new city? Finding a doctor. And I had no idea where to begin.

"The web has been amazing in terms of collecting information and user experience to put power in the hands of the buyer instead of just the seller," said Mitch Rothschild, the founder and CEO ofVitals.com. The site, which allows patients to anonymously review their doctors, claims to be the largest of its kind and has, according to Rothschild, collected close to a million reviews of health care professionals.

When I spoke with Dr. Marty Makary about his call for increased transparency in the health care industry, he cited spaces like Vitals.com as an important step toward empowering patients with relevant information. Added Rothschild, "We have been kept very ignorant in a way we wouldn't accept in other areas" where we demand to know as much as possible before handing over our money.

While power has indeed shifted into the hands of the consumer when it comes to buying a car or choosing a restaurant, this revolution -- what Rothschild terms "Yelpification" -- hasn't, well, revolutionized health care.

Writing in the New York Times, Ron Lieber attributed the lack of authoritative doctor reviews to patients' unwillingness to do the actual reviewing. The problem, he said, is one of basic supply and demand: "Many people want this information, and more consumers would trust it if the sites had more robust offerings." While Vitals.com is accruing the numbers, it has yet to make the impact that its model, Yelp, has. Other sites, like Healthgrades and RateMDs remain similarly under the radar. And while Yelp itself, along with its paid counterpart, Angie's List, feature reviews of doctors and clinics, questions over just how reliable the information they provide is takes on greater significance when applied to something as important, and personal, as health care.

Read more at The Atlantic.

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FDA goes after online pill pushers

Lindsay Abrams, The Atlantic — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 13:00:00 -0400

The name of the Food and Drug Adminsitration's new public awareness campaign, "BeSafeRx," has the same ring to it as the websites you aren't supposed to be trusting: "expressrx4les," "healthydrugsonline," "ineedmypill.com" and 10,000 others that the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy identified and recommends against.

It also comes off, at first glance, as a bit of a no-brainer. Don't buy pills from the people spamming your inbox -- it's like not accepting unwrapped Halloween candy from your creepy neighbor, except riskier. But the FDA's survey of over 6,000 people revealed that only 13 percent of those who had purchased drugs online checked to see if the site was licensed. Almost one in five admitted to purchasing medications from websites that weren't affiliated with their local pharmacy or health insurance plan, and 47 percent of those same people relied on comments and reviews to verify the drugs' safety.

In person, we know the basic warning signs of potentially unsafe medications: if they're sold by some dude in a back alley instead of your pharmacist, or aren't protected by layers of frustratingly effective protective seals, something's wrong. As NPR reminded us this week in a piece about the 30th anniversary of the Tylenol poisoning episode that lead to safety seals on pill bottles, it would seem we've learned these lessons well, but maybe we're so used to the internet being the solution for everything that it's become easy to forget how great the risks of buying unvouched-for medications can be. The Internet is your friend, right?

Read more at The Atlantic.

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