Giddyup! Horses teaching future doctors
by Jillian Ketterer
I wish I remembered how I stumbled upon this clip, but like so many things, it has evaporated into the ether/webulous/what-have-you.
In any event, this fun clip from NBC shows students at Stanford Medical School learning about communication and interpersonal skills from horses. Unfortunately the clip is old (2007) but it is still an interesting concept. Looks like Stanford is still offering the class, and students are still enjoying it as evidenced by this blog.
The clip is posted courtesy of Horsensei, which offers a range of programs for equine-assisted learning (for your job, your medical school, your birthday, etc.)
More on the mHealth Networking Conference
by Jillian Ketterer
In follow-up to last week's post about the mHealth Networking Conference, I thought I'd share some of the summaries that have popped up around the web. Here they are, in no particular order:
Federal Telemedicine News: Status of Mobile Health
MobileHealthWatch.com: Mobile apps highlight possibilities, hurdles
SPEC: Smart Health Apps, Medical Devices and the Future of Mobile Health Debated
FierceMobileHealthcare: Mobile health technology leads the revolution
MobiHealth News: Does mHealth need a doctor's prescription? (probably!)
First International mHealth Networking Conference (I was there!)
by Jillian Ketterer
Last week (February 3-4, 2010) I attended the mHealth Networking Conference in DC. Sponsored by mHealth Initiative Inc (mHI), the conference was focused around the use of emerging mobile technologies to improve healthcare delivery. Here are a few themes to give you a flavor: iPhones/mobile phones/Android phones, emailing your doctor, bringing evidence to practice via electronic alerts for patients and physicians, home health monitoring, real-time everything, connectivity, usability, patient literacy, technologies for chronic care management and geriatrics.) The full program seems to still be available, and relevant Twitter posts (e.g., for the #mHealth hash tag) are also available.
Throughout the conference I met a mixture of providers (physicians, nurses, PAs, etc), insurance company representatives, techies/code crunchers, expert patients, and informatics researchers. In fact, according to the mHI, there were about 300 attendees - not too bad for a first shot! Note: A second conference is planned for September 8-9 in San Diego (perhaps they'll provide an option for joining remotely?)
One of the biggest take-home messages I got from the conference is that smart phone technologies won't necessarily solve problems for patients who won't or can't use them (e.g., geriatric patients who may not be able to see small lettering). Usability and design issues again rear their heads in healthcare. We need to attack these issues as a "net", tackling many simultaneously so that when convergence occurs, quality improvement is what emerges.
I also wanted to mention that it was especially interesting to see Adam Bosworth, formerly of Google, present on his new venture Keas, which has the following laudable mission:
To help you understand what your health data means and how you can use it to be as healthy as possible.
Keas is in Beta right now - check it out! (And consider this question: How might healthcare change if the act of interpreting results of diagnostic tests and deciding next steps in treatment is done by a company like Keas?)
About Face! The MIT Media Lab assesses microexpressions
by Jillian Ketterer
When I was catching up on posts from one of my favorite blogs, Brain Pickings, I stumbled upon this post about a software application developed by the Affective Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab. The application, called FaceSense, detects and analyzes facial gestures in real-time, and then uses that information to make inferences about the person's mood and emotional state. As Brain Pickings points out:
An accurate disposition detection model for video can be used in anything from analyzing politicians’ televised appearances to testing news anchors for bias.
The possibilities - both wonderful and nefarious - are endless. Check out the video to find out more!
Will the public “buy” Blippy?
by Jillian Ketterer
Today I stumbled upon a really strong example of how certain subsets of consumers are willing to sacrifice privacy in exchange for what I'll call "social convenience". Blippy, which is just in beta and was recently highlighted in a New York Times article, is an online social network that lets you share your recent credit card purchases with your friends. I haven't actually used the service, but from the description, it seems to do this automatically in a "Twitter-like" microblogging fashion - a type of passive, social information-sharing. There are, of course, ways to restrict what is shared with whom, but in general I think this is a step in the direction of transparency. The question is: will people find benefit in sharing where they are and what they are buying (and for how much) with their friends?
My guess is yes, but I am very curious about what the early adopters will look like, since users of this service will need to have, for example, (a) access to the internet, (b) a credit card, (c) available funds on their credit card, (d) an interest in shopping and purchase-related information, and (e) friends who possess characteristics "a" through "e". I look forward to seeing how this one pans out!
Remember the Milk, and other things
by Jillian Ketterer
I spent the last I-don't-know-how-many years of my life in a seemingly constant rainfall of post-it notes and napkins, each with some number of my own reminders scrawled on them. If I had no paper, well, my own left hand would do for taking down a reminder (which could be anything from, "Buy milk" to "Find that post-it you lost, or try to remember what was on it.") [Aside: I'm going to skip making a joke about the left hand knowing what the right hand is up to, because that would just be bad.]
Anyway, I tried all sorts of non-paper-and-pencil task-organization systems, but they were all platform-dependent and just really didn't suit my needs: multiple inputs, multiple outputs, always in my face, easy, convenient, simple, sharable.
Enter Remember the Milk. This is basically To-Do in the age of Web 2.0.
Then take that, and put it on your Active Desktop (if you're a Windows user) with this nifty tip from Third Error.
Then, go throw away all those stupid lists. Or set them on fire. It's really up to you. You can get your task list texted to you each morning via Twitter, check it out on your Desktop and update it via email/Twitter/text/etc.
For someone with a brain chock full of both useful and useless information, this is Big, and not in the Tom Hanks sort of way.
A BarCamp wasn’t what I expected, but it still sounds fun
by Jillian Ketterer
Today I received an email about HealthCamp Philadelphia, which will be held at Thomas Jefferson University on March 28, 2009. It is described as an "unconference" exploring web 2.0 technologies, social media, process innovation and healthcare. It's totally free, and will be modeled after the "BarCamp" meeting format. What is a "BarCamp" meeting, you ask?
What a BarCamp is not: 
- A 24-hour study group for law students
- A rite of passage for 21-year-olds (in America)
- Anything literally involving tents and beer (most likely)
What a BarCamp is:
- An ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.
- An event for which all attendees help out (with set-up, designing the agenda, running sessions, etc)
- A meeting of minds where live blogging, bookmarking, emailing, photographing, etc is encouraged
- A self-organized, user-generated, informal, social meeting format
There's no pre-defined agenda at a BarCamp, and in my opinion, that's what makes it different. I'm excited to attend HealthCamp Philadelphia and experience this meeting format for myself. I think it could be a really interesting format for interdisciplinary brainstorming on a large scale. Hopefully I'll get some tips and tricks - perhaps in the future we'll be holding an "Innovative Assessment of Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes and Performance Across the Medical Education:Practice Continuum" barcamp?
Well, we might want to get a better title.
Disclaimer: This Post Has Not Been Fact-Checked
by Jillian Ketterer
I was introduced to social media and civic journalism guru Jay Rosen's blog today, and stumbled upon what I felt was a fascinating post summarizing the major points of the journalists vs. bloggers debate. Of course, the post was written in defense of bloggers, but nevertheless it highlighted some of the key issues, one of which is the tension between "traditional" journalism and blogging.
Rosen's summary is far better than anything I could write, so I suggest taking at least a cursory scan - but essentially the gist is that journalism holds in high regard its role as an "objective" source of "primary source verified" information, and really, blogging flies in the face of all that. Blogs are transparent, updated quickly and (hopefully) often, participatory, messy and subjective. While most serious bloggers certainly avoid mistakes, I believe the value does not emerge from the original post, but from the social processes surrounding it - the open debate, the longitudinal (time) and latitudinal (blogs) tracking of post "topics", the cross-blog engagement, the public empowerment. What eventually emerges from this process is a picture of the topic - there really is no striving for "100% truth." This news format threatens journalism as it has been practiced at least the past three decades. The average citizen now (theoretically) has access to the same information as the journalist, and has the ability to publish anything with (theoretically) the same audience penetration, and it's ok if they make mistakes. I can just hear the hoardes of journalists now: "You mean I've been sending my articles through the cubicle gauntlet of fact-checkers all this time, and now anyone can post anything online and it's considered news? Puh-LEEZ."
Now, for the real question: What effect will this have on innovative assessment across the med ed:practice continuum?
Is increased regulation in the Internet’s future?
by Jillian Ketterer
I was tempted to answer the question posed in the subject line with a simple, definitive "yes", but I realized I should probably elaborate a bit - after all, "yes" isn't much of a blog post.
The concept of identity has been intimately linked to the Internet since its beginnings - after all, computers have identities, users have identities, and all have to be managed as part of the Web. We choose usernames and passwords and use them to manage our online identities; but a lack of a pervasive standardized identity management system like Microsoft's .net software (a la Identity 2.0) enables users to hide behind a layer of anonymity. MrKewlD00D22 isn't afraid to speak his mind on the discussion board of his favorite science magazine, even if he is painfully shy in person. PunkRockGrrl87 and MackDaddy00 chat online each day, but their real-life counterparts have never met.
However, as the lines between reality and virtual reality become more blurry, it seems identity is more of a sticky situation. Take for example the recent, very unfortunate story of a mother pretending to be a teenage boy on Myspace for the sole purpose of harassing one of her daughter's female classmates, which ultimately ended in the 13-year-old girl's suicide. The mother had been facing up to 20 years in prison for conspiracy charges, but the conspiracy charges were thrown out and she now faces 1 year in jail and $300,000 fines for 3 misdemeanors. This situation brings to light all sorts of regulatory issues around the Internet. For example, if one is to be held personally accountable to the Terms of Service on a site, then somehow their online identity must contain meaning that links to their real life. And how many "teeth" do the Terms of Service have in terms of the law? Do the same rules apply online as they do in real life?
These are important questions, and are becoming even more important as future generations engage with and build upon the giant information monstrodome that is the Internet. Frankly, I think the time for more regulation with regard to identity (and information veracity) is far past its due date.
1100100101001111100000101111101000101 = Learning
by Jillian Ketterer
Scouting Themes
Research
- Content analysis of patient complaints
- Changing physicians' competence and performance: Finding the balance between the individual and the organization
- Individual Differences and the Development of Perceived Control
Bookmarks
- Pre-Grade Your Paper!
- Doctor Leads Quest for Safer Ways to Care for Patients - NYT Interview with Dr. Peter J. Pronovost
- Popular Science puts its archives online for free - awesome!
- amednews: National Practitioner Data Bank expanded beyond physicians to other healthcare professionals
- Bloggasm » New study shows some correlation between free ebooks and higher print sales