Catastrophising – and controversy
There are few constructs more widely known in pain psychology than catastrophising. Defined as “an exaggerated negative mental set brought to bear during actual or anticipated pain experience” (Sullivan et al., 2001), catastrophising is associated with poor outcomes including greater pain intensity, distress and disability in almost every situation where pain is experienced (Sullivan & Tripp, 2024). Cognitive biases associated with catastrophising include interpretive bias, attentional bias and attentional fixation – in other words negatively interpreting situations, attending to the negative in a situation, ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 21, 2024 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Coping Skills Pain Pain conditions Research Science in practice catastrophising catastrophizing Chronic pain pain-related worry Source Type: blogs
Arguing with idiots
Chris Quinn, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer,wrote this now famous editorial a couple of weeks ago. It is a sad day when the editor of a big city newspaper is forced to go on the record defending the concept of reporting the truth. I ' ll just give an excerpt, in case you haven ' t read it.The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.The
truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his
false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended
to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 20, 2024 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trigger Universal Health Care in America? What do expert Academics say?
By MIKE MAGEE
In his book, “The Age of Diminished Expectations” (MIT Press/1994), Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman, famously wrote, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.”
A year earlier, psychologist Karl E. Weich from the University of Michigan penned the term “sensemaking” based on his belief that the human mind was in fact the engine of productivity, and functioned like a biological computer which “receives input, processes the information, and delivers an output.”
But comparing the human brain to a computer was not exactly a complemen...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 18, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Bob Wachter Erik Brynjolfsson Karl E. Weich Medical AI Mike Magee Paul Krugman productivity Source Type: blogs
Third-Party Accommodations
Doron Dorfman (Seton Hall University), Third-Party Accommodations, Mich. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025): Does disability rights law impose an obligation on employers, schools, and other places of public accommodation to control the behavior of coworkers, students, or other third parties to... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - April 15, 2024 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs
Supported self-management – what are we managing, actually?
One of the words that has been in my vocabulary for decades is ‘management.’ No, I don’t mean the proliferative middle management layer infesting healthcare for about as long as I’ve been working in health. I mean ‘pain management’ or ‘supported self-management.’ As ever, what pops up for me is about what, exactly, is being managed?
Is it pain? Well – not exactly. After all, pain does what it does, and if we focus on pain reduction alone just look where that gets us (Ballantyne & Sullivan, 2015; Cutler & Glaeser, 2021). And quickly, lest anyone think I’...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 14, 2024 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Disability Accommodations at Sentencing to Divert Persons with Mental Illness Away from Prison
Benjamin A. Barsky (Harvard University), Harold J. Bursztajn (Harvard Medical School), Michael Ashley Stein (Harvard Law School), Disability Accommodations at Sentencing to Divert Persons with Mental Illness Away from Prison, 37 ABA Crim. Just. Mag. (2022): Judges can incorporate reasonable... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - April 12, 2024 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs
The Structural Desexualization of Disability
Natalie M. Chin (CUNY), The Structural Desexualization of Disability, Colum. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024): Sexuality is inseparable from the other complex layers of the human experience. It encompasses sexual self-expression, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, eroticism, sexual pleasure, intimacy, and... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - April 12, 2024 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs
I Suspect We Need To Be A Bit Wary Of Some Excessive Hype But Things Are Happening!
This appeared last week:
03 April 2024
Australia
entering ‘extraordinary epoch’ of AI in healthcare
By Harriet
Grayson
AI apps could transform clinical workflows
and patient outcomes across aged care, disability, radiology and primary care,
according to the CSIRO.
The rise of natural language processing and
generative language models across AI app lications in healthcare has taken (Source: Australian Health Information Technology)
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - April 11, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David G More MB PhD Source Type: blogs
New U-RISE and MARC Funding Opportunities and Upcoming Webinar
We’re pleased to announce that the notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs) for the Undergraduate Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement (U-RISE) (PAR-24-137) and Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) (PAR-24-138) programs have been reissued. These NOFOs aim to promote broad participation in the biomedical research workforce by strengthening research training environments and expanding the pool of well-trained students who:
Complete their baccalaureate degree, and
Transition into and complete biomedical, research-focused higher degree programs (such as a Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D.).
...
Source: NIGMS Feedback Loop Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - April 9, 2024 Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Funding Opportunities Meetings/Events Training/Fellowships/Career Development Preparing an Application Undergraduate Webinars Source Type: blogs
Linus Health Acquires Aural Analytics
Purchase Expands Linus Health’s Cognitive Assessment Capabilities
Linus Health, a digital health company enabling early detection of Alzheimer’s and other dementias, today announced it has acquired Aural Analytics, a leader in clinical-grade speech analytics. The deal includes Aural Analytics’ assets, including its technology and intellectual property.
With the acquisition of Aural Analytics, Linus Health, the leader in multimodal cognitive assessments, has added clinical-grade speech analytics to its platform. This allows Linus Health to further enable researchers and clinicians to identify cognitive impairment and ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - April 8, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Alvaro Pascual-Leone Aural Analytics David Bates Digital Cognition Technologies Health IT Acquisitions Healthcare M&A Kinesis Health Technologies Linus Health Source Type: blogs
Complexity and chronic pain*
*Persistent didn’t alliterate so well!
I’ve been pondering what makes persistent pain so complicated? What is it about this problem that means clinicians use terms like ‘heart-sink’, or ‘problematic’, or ‘difficult’ when they talk about people living with pain?
While nociception and all the associated neurobiological processes associated with pain are undoubtedly complex (and poorly understood), I don’t think this is what people mean when they describe chronic pain is complex. After all, there are loads of body systems and disease processes that are complex.
I...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 7, 2024 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Professional topics Science in practice healthcare pain management Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 8th 2024
In this study, we tested a stem cell secretome product, which contains extracellular vesicles and growth factors, cytoskeletal remodeling factors, and immunomodulatory factors. We examined the effects of 4 weeks of 2×/week unilateral intramuscular secretome injections (quadriceps) in ambulatory aged male C57BL/6 mice (22-24 months) compared to saline-injected aged-matched controls.
Secretome delivery substantially increased whole-body lean mass and decreased fat mass, corresponding to higher myofiber cross-sectional area and smaller adipocyte size, respectively. Secretome-treated mice also had greater whole-bod...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 7, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Will Medical Facial Recognition Technology (mFRT) Reawaken Eugenics?
By MIKE MAGEE
How comfortable is the FDA and Medical Ethics community with a new super-charged medical Facial Recognition Technology (mFRT) that claims it can “identify the early stages of autism in infants as young as 12 months?” That test already has a name -the RightEye GeoPref Autism Test. Its’ UC San Diego designer says it was 86% accurate in testing 400 infants and toddlers.
Or how about Face2Gene which claims its’ mFRT tool already has linked half of the known human genetic syndromes to “facial patterns?”
Or how about employers using mFRT facial and speech patterns to identify employees likely t...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 4, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Raised Inflammatory Markers Somewhat Correlate with Incidence of Age-Related Disease
Onset, progression, and resolution of inflammation are all driven by the interaction of many different complex signaling processes. The immune system as a whole is highly complex, an array of many different interacting populations of specialized cells. Nonetheless, there are a few individual circulating signal proteins that, to some degree at least, tend to reflect overall inflammatory status. Not reliably, but enough to produce correlations in patient populations of any reasonable size.
Today's open access paper is a survey of the literature on inflammatory cytokines IL-6, TNF, and IL-1β, pulling reported measures...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 3, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Chronic Pain Accelerates Brain Aging, Perhaps via Inflammation
A range of conditions produce chronic pain in muscle and skeletal tissue. While conditions such as osteoathritis are comparatively well understood, the etiology of chronic muscular pain disorders such as myofascial pain syndrome is poorly understood and treatment options are consequently limited. Here, researchers analyze available epidemiological data on knee osteoarthritis, and show that it suggests an inflammatory link between chronic pain and an accelerated pace of degenerative brain aging.
Individuals suffering from chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) may face a higher high risk of brain aging. CMP is a leadin...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 2, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
