The Association of American Medical Colleges has named Darrell G. Kirch, M.D., as its next president, effective July 1, 2006. From AAMC:

Currently The Pennsylvania State University’s senior vice president for health affairs, dean of Penn State College of Medicine, and chief executive officer of Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Dr. Kirch will succeed Jordan J. Cohen, M.D., who announced earlier this year that he would step down in June.

This is definitely better than Googling a diagnosis: Contextual physician portals. The article talks about a system being used by the AO Foundation, and it sounds pretty slick:

An example of such a presentation layer is the portal, built on IBM WebSphere Portal technology by IBM partner WP Experts, currently in use by AO Foundation, a global nonprofit network of 250,000 surgeons involved primarily in osteopathy. After talking at length to Oliver Trabert, the founder of WP Experts and portal architect for AO Foundation, I began to think of the portal he was describing as contextual. But let’s look at some details first.



“The idea is to allow a surgeon to view information in the context of current patients,” explains Trabert. “For example, a surgeon can identify a bodypart and verify his diagnosis.”




Say the surgeon has a patient with a certain kind of fracture in the leg. The AO Foundation has a clickable map of a human, so a surgeon could click on the effected part of the leg, specify that a fracture has taken place, and get detailed drawings, photographs, and even “teaching videos” of other fractures. WP Experts has created links to AO Foundation’s back-end systems, including an enterprise content management (ECM) system from Documentum and IBM DB2 databases, so as to be able to pull up and serve relevant information in any specified context.




The AO Foundation portal is a very powerful tool, and not just for diagnosis. It helps with patient positioning and prophylaxis before procedures, offers tips for rehabilitation after procedures, and is the front end to a wealth of searchable surgical literature. This is important because, if surgeons don’t get served what they’re looking for when they click on a bodypart or ask for some other contextual information, they can always do a search of their own to find the material.




Another compelling feature of the contextual portal is that people tend to learn contextually, so presenting information in context is a way of ensuring better education and not just supporting a one-off procedure.

Just in case you need convincing, read this article from the New York Times: Being a Patient: When the Doctor is in, but You Wish He Wasn’t.

Yep, now there’s even a flu shot game designed to teach awareness about the importance of getting innoculated. (Instructions here.) I like the concept, and I wonder if this really will help raise awareness as we move into flu season. In any case, it’s a pretty good timewaster!

(Thanks to MedPundit for the pointer.)

If you weren’t able to attend the Industry/Provider Collaboration Task Force meeting, here’s my writeup of it. I hadn’t heard so much MECC bashing in a long time, but it was pretty lively, with lots of good discussion. Now I’m just waiting to see what, if anything, results from all that discussion.

That’s the topic of Medical Meetings’ December issue’s cover story, Future Shock. A snip:

Disaster-response training is as different from traditional CME activities as the aftermath of a killer hurricane is from the usual day in the office. These programs teach physicians and other healthcare workers skills that usually lie far outside the realm of CME, such as how to communicate with the various federal, state, regional, and local authorities under chaotic circumstances; in other words, how to work in a multi-specialty, multi-disciplinary environment that extends to fire, police, the military, and beyond. Then there are the other challenges for organizers: funding that comes and goes with the news cycle, a reluctance on the part of physicians and other healthcare workers to spend time learning something they fervently hope they’ll never need to know, and the tangle of agencies that must coordinate their training efforts for the activity to be effective.



Disaster-preparation training may not seem to be worth the hassle, but as the past 12 months’ worth of tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorist bombings, and other natural and man-made disasters — not to mention the pending threat of an avian flu pandemic — have made all too clear, this type of training is essential for all healthcare workers, not just those usually found on the front lines of emergency care, because disaster can strike anywhere, any time.

When I was researching the story, it seems like everyone and their brother was putting on some kind of disaster-related CME activity, but most were focused on a specific clinical area, not the bigger picture that really is the most important thing to have under control should disaster strike yet again. Anyway, if you read it, I’d love to know what you think of it.

Now that pharma companies can’t wine, dine, and lavish gifts on docs in the old-fashioned way, they’re calling in the pep squad. From the New York Times:

Anyone who has seen the parade of sales representatives through a doctor’s waiting room has probably noticed that they are frequently female and invariably good looking. Less recognized is the fact that a good many are recruited from the cheerleading ranks.



Known for their athleticism, postage-stamp skirts and persuasive enthusiasm, cheerleaders have many qualities the drug industry looks for in its sales force. Some keep their pompoms active, like Onya, a sculptured former college cheerleader. On Sundays she works the sidelines for the Washington Redskins. But weekdays find her urging gynecologists to prescribe a treatment for vaginal yeast infection.




Some industry critics view wholesomely sexy drug representatives as a variation on the seductive inducements like dinners, golf outings and speaking fees that pharmaceutical companies have dangled to sway doctors to their brands.

This is so cool—PubMed is adding an RSS feed so you can sign up to track specific topics. Check it out!

(Thanks to MedPundit for the pointer.)

From an editorial in the November 22 issue of CMAJ:

Clinical practice guidelines and conflict of interest

CMAJ  November 22, 2005; 173 (11):1297.

Anne Taylor-Vaisey.

I hadn’t heard of Sinkie day before, (Sinkie=Standing In Nutritious Kitchens Ingesting Everything), but the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. might as well be celebrated in style. So check out sinkie.com for letters from guilt-free Sinkies, how to spot other Sinkies, and useful information to free us from the guilt, shame, and embarrassment of being discovered eating with our fingers over the kitchen sink.

 

Thanks to Anne Taylor-Vaisey for this one!