Improvement of Medical Care
-90
points posted to Healthcare by mhvstrick
07/06/07
I read that Michael Dell wanted to improve medical care in the world. I am a MD and I tried this idea on Bill Gates and never got to anyone. Basically, most doctors understand anatomy, physiology, disease processes and pharmacology. They could understand/ust the latest medical information if it were readily accessed. However, try to search Medline about a topic and you may see that thousands of citations are listed, but one can only get abstracts or titles for most items.
I have tried to search a particular topic for a medical school lecture or a paper and end up spending hundreds or thousands of dollars and many hours to get information that I could comprehend and use with only minutes of time were it easily available. I proposed that the world literature (at least the last 10 years) be loaded into a databank (in English) where it could be accessed by hyperlinks or other mechanism that allows one to go right to the information desired without reading 10,000 full articles. This would be a massive undertaking, but once done, the database could be kept up to date with maybe only a few hundred programmers. Medical schools, hospitals and doctors could subscribe to this database (I would pay $5,000 a year myself for such access).
I believe that if a physician could have ready access at his fingertips to the newest medical knowledge, then the average doctor could be a super-doctor. If the doctors are too lazy, sell access to the patient for a particular medical condition and they could determine if they are receiving state-of-the-art therapy for their conditions.
I have seen patients waste money and time (months or years even) trying to obtain treatment that is effective, only to finally find a knowledgable doctor after three of four tries.
I realize that this is a software problem, but hardware would be needed to use this program. I contacted the best known software GURU first and was ignored, so I thought that Michael Dell may have an interest.
Sincerely,
Maurice Henry Van Strickland, M.D., F.A.A.A.A.I., F.A.C.A.A.I., F.A.A.P., A.C.P. , A.M.A.A., Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of Kansas School of Medicine, Wichita, Kansas
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