Meet or hear Laurie in one of the following:

Related News Articles

11/19/2023

"Individuals reportedly lost $13 million to grandparent and person-in-need scams."

11/14/2023

From the description, too late, and with a significant demand on staff.

11/14/2023

Costs soar for eldercare and family finances are depleted.

10/31/2023

Introducing tech is like 'pushing water uphill.'

10/26/2023

Sage collects data on residents to help track their needs over time and records metrics, such as incident response time, to improve care.

You are here

digital health

Title: 

digital health

What is reality? Headlines distort information about aging and health

So you read a headline and say, what, what?? But of course we regularly find ourselves incredulous.  Can that headline be accurate? What did that study say? Who did they survey to get that result?  This has been a particularly bad week for distortion headlines – and not about politics, actually.  These are about topics seniors and families would care about and be disappointed when they read more.  Let’s start with the Wall Street Journal article title:

Quackery and snake oil – maybe that IS the state of health tech

Firestorm from the American Medical Association.  A few weeks ago, the CEO of the AMA, Dr. James Madara, said what few others will say: "…the explosion of direct-to-consumer digital health products, to apps of mixed quality – it’s the digital snake oil of the early 21st century."  And if that weren’t enough, he compared the technology innovations today (including "ineffective" EHRs) as analogous to the challenges confronting 'quackery' when the AMA was founded in 1847.  Then came the chorus of rebuttals from health IT folk and the Boston Brahmins of digital health, including Dr. Joseph Kvedar ("telemedicine is unstoppable") and Dr. John Halamka ("no snake oil to see here!").  But adults are downloading health apps – in one study, at least half of the surveyed population had downloaded at least one.  Using, not so much.

Connectivity is a Social Determinant of…Everything

Information is online – people need to be there too.  News, bank branches, health advice, streaming radio, borrowing books from libraries– it’s all making inroads in our connected lives.  Consider: Netflix has 42 million US subscribers, half of Americans have listened to Internet radio. But what is the significance of fewer people having broadband access in their homes? Broadband access has a correlation between well-being and wellness (hats off to that Health Populi post!).  Is it the link between being over 50 and finding a job? Perhaps you are checking online to protect from Internet fraud; verifying that an identity hasn’t been stolen; checking out an eBook or using another online service from a library; including training on how to use the Internet. Or perhaps you are buying from the dominant US retail growth engine – hint, it's not Walmart, but Amazon.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - digital health

Categories

login account