I recently came across anecdotal evidence that suggests that there may be a plausible link between “sick care” costs, our food supply, and modern agricultural methods of food production.  I began to wonder if there was any scientific evidence to support the assertion.  The FDA doesn’t think so.  However, I am still curious, so I pose the following question for the International Health Forum members to ponder: What percentage of early onset of puberty, obesity and diabetes in children, or…See More

Some say that health care costs would not be reduced significantly through the practice of prevention.   I wish to take an opposite view.  I want to start with the premise that “sick care” practices cost the economy of the US about $2.3 Trillion dollars per year.  I believe prevention could save upwards of $23 Billion per year and save about 1 million lives. Dartmouth Atlas Projects estimates that the last six months of life could cost between $14,000 and $23,000 per person. Three areas where…See More

It is my understanding that the US lacks a patient centric data repository that identifies, for a given population, the efficacy of procedures or medication regime, for given specialty. It would seem that a patient centric registry supported by a disinterested third party (not government, not insurance, not provider and not pharmaceutical) could provide non-biased, transparent feedback on performance of procedures and medications thus leading to improvements in effectiveness and possibly…See More

Architectural constraints, costs and vulnerabilities may limit centralized HIE market penetration, and impact the HIEs ability to efficiently and effectively share medical records in a highly connected, technologically sophisticated society?   Are they too big to fail?  What do you think? For discussion purposes I wish to define a centralized HIE as follows.  A centralized HIE is a star configuration that supports EHR/CPOE/Patient Locator-Resolver applications that are stored on central…See More

It is my understanding that the physician is held liable if or when a software error in logic, or an interpretation error related to key stroke input or transmission error leads to an "adverse event."   This error situation could mean that the "sick care' industry is held hostage by the EMR/CPOE software that they use.  Is this similar to the potential "Toyota syndrome" where it was suspected by many in the industry that some of the millions of lines of code Toyota used were defective?  Does…See More