Posted on March 19th, 2009 by Sean Khozin, MD, MPH
President Obama has proposed that widespread adoption of health IT can save us $80 billion a year in healthcare costs. This is a bold statement that has many physicians and experts wondering how the clunky health IT solutions currently on the market can add so much value to our system.
In response to Obama’s projections, Jerome [...]
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Posted on March 18th, 2009 by Sean Khozin, MD, MPH
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
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Posted on March 14th, 2009 by Sean Khozin, MD, MPH
I have a lot of interest in finding practical applications for data visualization techniques, where specific patterns are revealed by merging and visually depicting large numbers of seemingly discordant data points. Data visualization can be of potential use in analyzing population health outcomes by, for example, scanning large databases of specific medical interventions paired with [...]
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Posted on March 11th, 2009 by Sean Khozin, MD, MPH
Not sure if this is our First Lady’s official twitter page, but the picture posted there is kinda cool and a refreshing representation in the dry world of politics.
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Posted on March 10th, 2009 by Sean Khozin, MD, MPH
I was just introduced to Medi-Share, a non-profit Christian ministry where people share their high cost medical expenses. They even have services to negotiate rates for individuals after they’re thrown an exaggerated medical bill. It seems like they’ve created a viable alternative to the expensive and intrusive third party payment system. On their website they [...]
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Posted on March 9th, 2009 by Sean Khozin, MD, MPH
It costs drug companies about $800 million to develop a new drug that may not even be approved by the regulators. The rising costs of drug development coupled with a stagnant pipeline has urged Merck to buy Schering-Plough for an impressive $41.1 billion in cash and stock, making them the second largest drug company in [...]
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Posted on March 9th, 2009 by Sean Khozin, MD, MPH
The White House has annouced that President Barack Obama will lift the eight-year ban on embryonic stem cell research today. This is good news for science and medicine.
The previous administration had not completely banned research on stem cells but instead imposed serious restrictions. In 2001, President Bush made it a requirement that federal funding could [...]
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Posted on March 8th, 2009 by Sean Khozin, MD, MPH
Nature on Comparative Effectiveness research:
Where the really tough questions arise … is in how [the outcomes of Comparative Effectiveness research] will be used. Sometimes the decision is easy: treatment A is much better than B, so A should become standard practice. But what if treatment A is only a little bit better than B, yet [...]
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Posted on March 8th, 2009 by Sean Khozin, MD, MPH
On July 31, 2008, Senators Max Baucus (D, Mont) and Kent Conrad (D, ND) introduced the Comparative Effectiveness (CE) Research Act of 2008. The bill authorizes the establishment of a private, nonprofit corporation to be known as the Health Care Comparative Effectiveness Research Institute which will aim “to improve health care in the U.S. by [...]
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Posted on March 3rd, 2009 by Sean Khozin, MD, MPH
Yesterday, President Barack Obama nominated Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
Sebelius is fully on board with Obama’s proposal to raise $634 billion for healthcare reform over 10 years through tax increases on the wealthy and cuts to existing government healthcare spending. These cuts may include reduction of government [...]
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