C M G Buttery

For those considering the value of health informatics, please look at this webpage about some of the lesser-known facts about the history of informatics.

American Association for Cancer Research’s Annual Report discusses some of the most successful advances: “Breast cancer deaths fell about 28 percent,” and “deaths from cervical cancer have dropped nearly 31 percent. Colorectal deaths have fallen 28 percent in women and 33 percent in men; deaths from leukemia have fallen nearly 15 percent in women and [...]

According to the New York Times Princeton economics professor Uwe E. Reinhardt wrote that “no other country cedes quite the slice of its” gross domestic product (GDP) “to the providers of health care as does the United States. Current projections are that health care will claim every fifth dollar (19.8 percent to be precise) of [...]

The success in reduction of smoking in the almost 50 years since the first Surgeon General’s report on its dangers, and the consequent reduction lung cancer, has shown that a single targeted message tying together public health and medical care, has resulted in one the few major successful behavioral health changes. Similarly, efforts to reduce [...]

Kaiser Health News reports that “increasingly, questions are being raised about the overtesting of older patients, part of a growing skepticism about the widespread practice of routine screening for cancer and other ailments of people in their 70s, 80s and even 90s. Critics say there is little evidence of benefit — and considerable risk — [...]

A study funded by the National Institutes of Health has found that an insulin nasal spray, of all things, has shown improvements in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. It will be interesting to watch further progress and learn whether Alzheimer’s disease is related to diabetes or whether there is some other basic biological effect that insulin [...]

Last week the FDA deliberated and came out with the a tentative answer to the issue of should the directions for Fosamax, and similar pharmaceuticals, require that it be discontinued after five years. The resulting cautious labeling by the FDA will continue to confuse patients who will not know what does this mean for them [...]

This week’s editorial in the journal Science is worth reading, particularly noting that despite the 2002 publication of the national academies titled “making the nation safer.” Little or nothing has been done to maintain infrastructure. The examples in the study of the brings to mind the effects of a hurricane in Virginia a week ago [...]

The above titled editorial in “the Lancet” this week is worth reading, as much for its omissions, as well as its recommendations. The gathering is taking place in two weeks at United Nations and is focusing on reducing deaths from chronic disease, but nowhere in the brief does it discuss the need to reduce disability, [...]

A study reported this week in the NEMJ discusses the value of electronic health records in managing diabetic patients at a number of VA Hospital’s. I first reported the value of maintaining a records database in a physician’s offices in the Southern Health Journal in 1962, using punch cards prior to the availability of computerized [...]