Boring, low-tech medical innovation
A long piece in the Washington Post: by Ezra Klein, recommended by Atul Gawande
Brenner puts it more vividly. “There is a bias in medicine against talking to people and for cutting, scanning and chopping into them. If this was a pill or or a machine with these results it would be front-page news in the Wall Street Journal. If we could get these results for your grandmother, you’d say, ‘Of course I want that.’ But then you’d say, what are the risks? Does she need to have chemotherapy? Does she need to be put in a scanner? Is it a surgery? And you’d say, no, you just have to have a nurse come visit her every week.”
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Read the same piece… I wonder if there are any similar trials going on here.
12 years ago
I don’t know of anything exactly along these lines.
There is an Auckland randomized trial attempting to reduce preventable hospitalisations in residential aged care, where the intervention involves visiting the facility repeatedly to help/encourage using various evidence-based care strategies. The results should be out soon.
12 years ago