When life happens … .
Most of my writing comes from mulling over recent events as played out either in social media or research findings. Today’s post is a little different. It’s no secret that I live with persistent pain, fibromyalgia to be exact. I’ve found that being open about my diagnosis, and that all the strategies I advise to others are also strategies I employ, and that none of them are ‘the secret.’ I posted recently about a struggle I have dealing with reviewer’s comments on papers I submit for publication. Now peer review is a thing, I think it’s a good thing though somewhat exploitative ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 16, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Wellth Announces $20M Series B for Continued Growth of Behavioral Science-Based Platform
Why don’t we do what we’re “supposed to do” when it comes to our health?  Written by Matt Loper, Co-Founder and CEO at Wellth and originally posted on Wellth’s website. I’ve seen so much unnecessary pain caused simply because we often don’t do the things we know we “should”. In my own family, my Uncle Roy struggled to manage his type 2 diabetes—he constantly missed doctor appointments, failed to take his medications, and never checked his blood sugars. He knew he should do all of these things—he even wanted and intended to—but he seemingly never could follow through. Uncle Roy spent years on di...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - April 10, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: AI/Machine Learning Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring Alec Zopf Artificial Intelligence At Home Care Behavioral Economics behavioral health CD Venture Chronic Cond Source Type: blogs

Rethinking Medication and Information Technology
Previous articles in this series looked at barriers to taking medication and possible solutions, including special conditions that produce challenges. This final article in the series turns the question on its head. Can patients get better without the medications? Dr. Omar Manejwala, CMO of DarioHealth, goes so far as to use the terms “paternalistic” and “infantilizing” to label claims that people fail to take medication solely out of ignorance or forgetfulness. To all the other factors that hold people back from taking their meds, he adds social and religious factors, concerns about side effects an...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - April 6, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: Ambulatory Clinical Communication and Patient Experience EMR-EHR Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System LTPAC AdhereHealth Bryan Hill Carium Caroline E. Ortiz Charles Lee Cognizant DarioHealth FDB fee-for- Source Type: blogs

On not being a arse
Humans are judgemental beings. All of us are. It’s part of having a big brain and wanting to know who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’. Judgements help us make decisions, they’re surprisingly resistant to change, and they can inadvertently trap us into doing things we would never countenance were we able to stand back from what our minds want us to know (and feel). My post today is prompted by a couple of conversations recently. One was with a clinician, new to a pain team, who found that experienced members of that team thought actions taken by a person with pain were a sign of ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 2, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Interdisciplinary teams Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Professional topics Psychology Research Science in practice healthcare pain management Source Type: blogs

On not being an arse
Humans are judgemental beings. All of us are. It’s part of having a big brain and wanting to know who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’. Judgements help us make decisions, they’re surprisingly resistant to change, and they can inadvertently trap us into doing things we would never countenance were we able to stand back from what our minds want us to know (and feel). My post today is prompted by a couple of conversations recently. One was with a clinician, new to a pain team, who found that experienced members of that team thought actions taken by a person with pain were a sign of ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 2, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Interdisciplinary teams Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Professional topics Psychology Research Science in practice healthcare pain management Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 3rd 2023
Fight Aging! publishes news and commentary relevant to the goal of ending all age-related disease, to be achieved by bringing the mechanisms of aging under the control of modern medicine. This weekly newsletter is sent to thousands of interested subscribers. To subscribe or unsubscribe from the newsletter, please visit: https://www.fightaging.org/newsletter/ Longevity Industry Consulting Services Reason, the founder of Fight Aging! and Repair Biotechnologies, offers strategic consulting services to investors, entrepreneurs, and others interested in the longevity industry and its complexities. To find out m...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 2, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Reactive Astrocytes in Neurodegenerative Conditions
Chronic, unresolved inflammation in brain tissue is a feature of age-related neurodegenerative conditions, and may even be the most important mechanism in these very complex conditions. The supporting cells of the brain, primarily microglia and astrocytes, become more active and inflammatory in later life. This overlaps with a rising count of senescent cells in these populations. Senescent cells produce an outsized contribution to inflammatory signaling, belying their relatively small numbers compared to non-senescent cells. Active microglia and astrocytes are largely not senescent, however. They are reacting to inflammato...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 27, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Bonus Features – March 26, 2023 – Epic sees “ tremendous potential ” for GPT, more than 90% of patients want self-scheduling, and more
This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job. News In a Microsoft press release announcing the availability of GPT-4 in Azure OpenAI Service, Epic’s Seth Hain, Senior Vice President of Research and Development, said the EHR vendor sees “tremendous potential̶...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - March 26, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: AI/Machine Learning Healthcare IT Advata Amwell athenahealth Atropos Health Barbara Allen Bill Scott Boston University Caregility Carenet Health Carium Carnegie Mellon University Castle Connolly Top Doctors ChatGPT CHG Health Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, March 27th 2023
This study has potentially significant implications in the field of OA as it provides a novel strategy for OA treatment. A Vicious Cycle of Heart Failure and Dementia https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2023/03/a-vicious-cycle-of-heart-failure-and-dementia/ The end of life is not pretty. The body is a failing machine of many complex essential parts, and the failures cascade and feed into one another as it breaks down. There is pain, loss of capacity, loss of the self as the brain runs down. There is a tendency to paper over the ugly reality in public discussion, to not talk about the facts of the matter...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 26, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Chromatin Regulation in the Mechanisms that Lead to Age-Related Inflammation
Chronic, unresolved, unprovoked inflammation is a feature of aging, a contributing cause of loss of tissue function and all of the common fatal age-related conditions. The biochemistry involved in the regulation of harmful age-related inflammatory signaling is complex, to say the least. There are many contributing causes, such as the signaling of senescent cells, the mislocalization of mitochondrial DNA resulting from mitochondrial dysfunction, and rising levels of other molecular debris from stressed and dying cells. How cells react in detail to inflammatory stimulation is far from fully understood. Researchers are intere...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 23, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

What do people want from pain management?
The short answer is often “take my pain away” – and we’d be foolish to ignore the impact of pain intensity on distress and disability. At the same time there’s more than enough research showing that if treatment only emphasises pain intensity (1) it may not be achievable for many, especially if we take into account the small effect sizes on pain intensity from exercise, medications and psychological therapies; and (2) even if pain is reduced, it may not translate into improvements in daily life. The slightly more complex answer lies behind the desire to “take my pain away.” We n...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - March 19, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping strategies Research Science in practice Occupational therapy pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs

N of 1 studies – great examples
This study examined whether it’s more fruitful to expose people to many activities they’ve previously avoided, or instead, to limit the number of activities each person was exposed to. This is SUCH an important component of therapy where people have avoided doing things that bother them because they anticipate either that their pain will go to untolerable levels (or interfere with other important things like sleep) or because they’re worried they’ll do harm to themselves. Why? Because doing things in one safe space is not life. We do lots of activities in lots of different spaces, and most of them a...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - March 12, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Low back pain Research Science in practice pain management single case experimental design Source Type: blogs

CodaMetrix Closes $55M Series A to Autonomously Power Medical Coding, Boost Health System Revenue Cycles
Born out of Mass General Brigham, and led by healthtech veterans, CodaMetrix empowers health systems to use Artificial Intelligence to prevent revenue setbacks driven by manual coding inefficiencies Overhauling medical coding is now crucial for health systems grappling with physician burnout, billing backlogs and claim denials, skilled labor shortages, and a graying medical coding workforce AI-powered, multi-specialty, autonomous medical coding eliminates human intervention, reduces coding costs, improves coding quality and unlocks clinician capacity CodaMetrix, the leading AI technology platform transforming healthcare ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - March 10, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT AI Artificial Intelligence Chris Scoggins CMX CodaMetrix CU Healthcare Innovation Fund EHR Electronic Health Record FCV Frist Cressey Ventures Hamid Tabatabaie Health IT Funding Health IT Funding Source Type: blogs

From suffering to healing: the role of trauma in chronic pain
“Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood and untreated cause of human suffering.” – Peter Levine, PhD, Developer of Somatic Experiencing Therapy One frequent cause of treatment-resistant chronic pain is unresolved trauma, yet few health care providers and patients are aware of the connection, and, as a result, it is rarely addressed. Read more… From suffering to healing: the role of trauma in chronic pain originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - February 28, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Conditions Pain Management Source Type: blogs

Neuroimmune Modulation for Inflammatory Disease: Interview with Dr. Simhambhatla, President and CEO of SetPoint Medical
SetPoint Medical, a medtech company based in California, is developing a neuromodulatory device that is intended to treat rheumatoid arthritis. The overlap between the nervous and immune systems is increasingly appreciated, and this technology aims to capitalize on this to create a new treatment for inflammatory disease. The neuromodulation device is intended to be implanted on the left cervical vagus nerve in an outpatient procedure. It stimulates the nerve with electrical pulses. The idea is that this can act to calm inflammatory processes that contribute to rheumatoid arthritis, without the drawbacks of immunosuppres...
Source: Medgadget - February 28, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Exclusive Medicine Neurology autoimmune immunology SetPointMed Source Type: blogs