Just published – our analysis of 877,201 pediatric hospitalizations in the US 2008. “Morphine Use in Hospitalized Children in the United States: A Descriptive Analysis of Data From Pediatric Hospitalizations in 2008″ Lasky T, Greenspan J, Ernst FR, and Gonzalez L Clinical Therapeutics 2012, 34(3): pp.720-727. Morphine was used in 54,613 (6.2%) hospitalizations in the database. [...]
Information on the Medication Bottle
What kind of directions need to be on the medication container – article in July 2011 NYTimes.
Displaying Drug Information
None of us like to read the label on our medications – would it help to have a clearer label with a better layout? What makes a label clearer and better? See this article in the NY Times.
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Psychiatric hospital as foster home?
I wasn’t aware that psychiatric hospitals have been used as foster homes for children, and am glad that this is no longer allowed in New York State, according to the March 15, 2011 New York Times. As a result of a class action suit in federal court, children can not be held in psychiatric hospitals [...]
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Too much information
Among all the other problems in communicating medication information to consumers, the problem of too much information as described by Gena Kolata in the New York Times, June, 2011.
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Pro Publica Investigates Dialysis Facilities
An informed, informative discussion of dialysis facilities, their corporate management, the increasing numbers of people dependent on dialysis, and the growing costs in Pro Publica. They also provide some summary tables and comparison tools to help consumers select the best quality service in their geographic area. There is considerable variation in dialysis centers within and [...]
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Arsenic in poultry – still under discussion
My article on arsenic levels in chicken was published in 2004, and it looks like it is discussed every year around Thanksgiving. LA Times op-ed
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Visualizing Data from the BRFSS (and other data sources)
Snazzy visualizations of the BRFSS (Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System) are produced by InstantAtlas. It seems to be software that produces an….instant atlas. Their website contains a bunch of demos, and some free trial software.
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A Visual Medical Dictionary
With the Chi Visual Medical Dictionary, you can enter a disease or therapy and find all the terms it is related to, and retrieve a visualization of those relationships. For example, this is the image retrieved using the term “epilepsy”.
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NCI overview of pharmacoepidemiology databases
Check out the NCI website to see a table summarizing attributes of databases available for use in pharmacoepidemiology studies.
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Learn about the Cochrane Collaboration, and evidence-based medicine
Podcasts and video are available from the Cochrane Library. And, they have a YouTube channel. As does the Center for Evidence Based Medicine. And up above, you can listen in on David Sackett lecturing to medical students.
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Storytelling to Communicate Information and Motivate Patients
The New York Times (February 10, 2011) covered the report of a randomized clinical trial in Annals of Internal Medicine suggesting that a storytelling intervention produced substantial and significant improvements in blood pressure in African-Americans with uncontrolled hypertension. The intervention consisted of 3 DVDs containing patient stories, and blood pressure measurements were taken at 3, [...]
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Winner of Tableau contest – FIT and FAT visualization
This visualization, by Rina Petersen, won an award from the company, Tableau, makers of data visualization software. It allows the viewer to examine variables that may or may not be associated with obesity and to look at prevalence of obesity and diabetes in cities, counties and states in the US. It could be used in [...]
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A Health Information Website Aimed at Children
The Great Ormond Street Hospital in England runs a website, Children First for Health. It has separate sections for Juniors (age 4 to 6), Kids (7 to 11) and Teens (12 to 18), as well as a section for parents. The Body Tour lets kids click on a body part or bone and learn more [...]
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Marketing Public Health
NACCHO, the National Association of County & City Health Officials, is developing a national identity for local public health and for public health communications resources. To promote visibility – an icon.
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Symbols or icons to standardize communication with patients
The organization, Hablamos Juntos, works on issues regarding Patient-Provider Communication for Latinos. They have developed symbols for use by graphic designers, and have produced the Universal Health Care Symbol Set. The website has a wide range of resources including a downloadable set of symbols, a best practice workbook, a resource library, and a description of their [...]
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A Network to Provide Telehealth Consults
ICons in Medicine is an organization that “uses appropriate technologies and social networks to improve healthcare in remote and medically underserved areas and reduce global health disparities.” They have an online video that demonstrates how the process works. As I watched the video I began thinking about the database that will accumulate; each aspect of [...]
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Finding data sources
A company named, B.R.I.D.G.E. to Data, provides (for a fee) access to over 100 databases with information for pharmacoepidemiologists. Its not clear how much access is provided for the fee – the fee is low if one obtains complete access to the entire databases. They also seem to provide tools for identifying the optimal data [...]
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Dosing is an issue when children use medications
Many medications require modifications to dosing instructions for different sub-groups within the pediatric population, and sometimes the instructions aren’t very clear. It is easy to see how this can lead to errors. The study by Yin et al. in the December 1, 2010 issue of JAMA examined over the counter medicines for children and reviewed [...]
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Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale painstakingly collected and analyzed data to convince politicians and the public to improve health conditions in England and elsewhere, and she experimented with data visualizations. These are from her work Mortality of the British Army at Home, at Home and Abroad, and During the Russian War as Compared with the Mortality of the [...]
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