phenomenalplace

A recent New York Times article - "A Dashboard for Your Body" - led me to nose around the web to learn more about developments in what is often called "self-tracking." It's a fascinating area that is likely to change medical practice, the patient-physician relationship, and even the ways in which we think about ourselves. Home monitoring devices are already letting clinicians - and perhaps more importantly, family members - keep a virtual eye on the frail elderly and homebound people with chronic illnesses. When our dispersed lives keep family members and close friends from keeping a literal eye on a person in need, devices with internet connectivity allow tracking of vital signs, blood sugar, movement in the living space, eating, and more. These capacities would have been useful to me, an only child, and my father, in his 80s and legally blind from macular degeneration, during the years he lived in Florida, a thousand miles away. The telephone, and the front d...

by Brian Klepper and David KibbeOne of American politics’ most disingenuous conceits is that health care must cost what we currently pay. Another is that the only way to make it cost less is to deny care. It has been in industry executives’ financial interests to perpetuate these myths, but most will acknowledge privately that the way we value and pay for medical services is a deep root of

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The FDA has reaffirmed the truth of this aphorism with its policy about Colchicine. Here's the story: I recently spoke with a friend who has a family member suffering from Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF), an auto-inflammatory disorder, most commonly seen in eastern Mediterranean populations. The condition is characterized by recurrent painful inflammation of the abdomen, chest and joints, accompanied by fever. FMF is associated with mutation of a gene on chromosome 16 involved with regulating Pyrin, a protein that is part of the inflammatory response. There is no specific test for the disease. Diagnosis is made on the basis of symptoms, family history, and ruling out other conditions. Since the 1960s, Colchicine, a plant extract first used for treatment of gout two thousand years ago, has been used for treating FMF. As an ancient treatment widely used prior to formation of the FDA, Colchicine did not require FDA approval as a new ...

The debt deal is finally done. But it really isn’t an agreement on what cuts will be made, just the process that will be used to make them.The real work is left to the Congressional appropriators for the first $917 billion and for a super-committee of Congress for the second $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in ten-year cuts.That second tranche is where health care will make its contribution. The