Comments on: Smartphone technology acceptable for remote stroke diagnosis

By: Bri

Bri — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:24:48 +0000

I wish that was the only sad story of inept professionals. They bounce her around like a yo yo to different specialists, that charge money that I can only dream of charging. If they actually knew something I wouldn’t mind so much. Another simple story that isn’t to difficult to relate. My dad slipped off the bed while trying to get in. My mother panicked because he couldn’t get up. Three weeks in the hospital and one hundred thousand dollars later, they said that he needed his arteries to his brain cleared. Through our private doctor we knew about the blockages, but knew the risks to benefit wasn’t worth it. Through our family physician we figured that his lower back is terribly degenerated from sitting on the couch all day long. When he gets up he can’t straighten out it’s so bad. Through nerve pinches and loss of muscle tone, this problem has occurred many times, but if you go to emergency they have to evaluate you thoroughly because of lawsuits. It was a total waste of time and money.

By: ProfessorZ

ProfessorZ — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:55:29 +0000

“Significant cost reductions” is an understatement. My dad had to be airlifted to Phoenix just for a stroke diagnosis and that little helicopter trip cost over $30,000. And “medical evacuation” is not covered by health insurance.

By: Camaxtli

Camaxtli — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:17:30 +0000

How’s this for an idea for a requirement necessary for nurses and physicians to retain their licenses: Must take a bi-annual comprehensive test in undergraduate level Anatomy, physiology, microbiology and pharmacology. If they don’t pass with a 90 percent or better, their license is suspended until they make the grade on a make-up exam.

I have an intuition that a lot of them would not perform very well at all. And if they have forgotten the basics, how can they work effectively in their fields?

By: melajara

melajara — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:34:29 +0000

My comment was directed @Bri.
Gosh, where is the Delete button?

By: melajara

melajara — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:33:14 +0000

Yes, that’s awful, and those doctors are frowning when you say those antibiotics will kill her microbiome. Either they will pay no attention to you or they will reply with something like that: “Huh, microbiome? Don’t mess with words you don’t understand!”

By: Camaxtli

Camaxtli — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:24:39 +0000

Sounds like your mother’s nurse isn’t advocating for your mother and just mindlessly carrying out the doctor’s commands and doing a very poor job communicating with you and your mother, not listening to concerns, not forwarding those concerns to the physician, and not explaining the reasoning behind these prescriptions and the care strategy in general.

On a side note, like to see more nurse practitioners in the loop, combining high level general medical knowledge with a greater emphasis on treating the patient as a human being and not a diagnosis. I believe a well trained nurse practioner are as effective as a family practice doctor at a more reasonable cost. Especially when combined with all these advancements in testing and diagnostics we are seeing.

By: Bri

Bri — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:18:53 +0000

I look forward to a Watsonesque / art evaluation program to find the details that a human would. Get those over paid poorly trained doctors out of the loop. I can’t tell you all the times I have to intercede in my mothers medical care because doctors don’t know what they are doing. They certainly charge like they do. A quick example. My mother had a serious infection in her leg. It could have lead to an amputation. After she was hospitalized and pumped full of intravenous antibiotics. The head nurse told us to continue the course of oral antibiotics plus two new ones. I said to her . Wouldn’t that mess up her GI tract. She said we had to do as they said . Later when I read the prescription, it was the same as the two that our doctor had prescribed earlier. When the visiting nurse came she said we should discontinue using the old ones and that the new ones were different. When we got the prescriptions the pharmacist said they were the same. My mother has a nasal infection now, but the family physician say’s that he doesn’t want to give her antibiotics because she has had too much.

By: Dan Tanna

Dan Tanna — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:39:50 +0000

Just make sure one is not being diagnosed with a leggy, buggy, hacked Android phone…

By: Hoss

Hoss — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:23:29 +0000

This is a huge step in the right direction, but the bottleneck will occur when tens of thousands of patients are sending their scans to the emergency room waiting for humans to diagnose them. The future potential of the tricorder will allow all 7 billion people on earth to receive the equivalent of an fMRI scan each day before breakfast, then receive an instant diagnosis and treatment from home.