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Pioneering Emergency Medicine in Ethiopia: AAU/UW Twinning Partnership – Video

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Pioneering Emergency Medicine in Ethiopia: AAU/UW Twinning Partnership
Emergency medicine as a clinical sub-specialty is still in its infancy in Ethiopia, but an AIHA twinning partnership linking Addis Ababa University School of Medicine with the University of...

By: American International Health Alliance

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Pioneering Emergency Medicine in Ethiopia: AAU/UW Twinning Partnership - Video

Pilot Sully Sullenberger on Ebola: Medicine Needs a Higher Authority

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TIME Ideas health Pilot Sully Sullenberger on Ebola: Medicine Needs a Higher Authority Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger in New York City, on Jan. 15, 2014. Andrew BurtonGetty Images

Sully Sullenberger is an expert in the fields of aviation and patient safety.

For the last several weeks, I have been watching the haphazard response to the appearance of Ebola in the U.S. through the eyes of a professional pilot. With limited federal control over matters related to public health, elected officials around the country are rushing to enact emergency measures to prevent Ebolas spread, resulting in major disagreements about how best to do that. We saw the limits of that approach in New Jersey, and then in Maine, when the first person subjected to forced isolation called her treatment inhumane and defied quarantine orders, setting off a debate among public health experts, civil liberties groups and even the White House.

I have devoted my entire professional life to the pursuit of the safety of the public. Aviation and medicine are both high-stakes endeavors with little margin for error. All complex systems are different, but they all abide by similar rules and need a coordinated system of protocols and uniformity to bring into play under situations that can be very different. Over many decades, aviation has developed a systems approach to manage the complexity and interrelatedness of an endeavor that involves inherent risk, and an effective culture of safety that can, in substantive ways, be transferred to medicine.

When an accident occurs in aviation often resulting in mass casualties and widespread media attention the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) immediately conducts a thorough investigation into the accident or incident as the U.S. body responsible for recommending systemic changes and making sure that the right lessons are drawn and disseminated widely to all in the industry. In medicine there are too many entities that have a hand in quality and safety and whose efforts are not effectively coordinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lacks the high degree of regulatory authority of an agency like the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), so there is no single domestic agency that oversees all of medicine and promotes and mandates agreed upon best practices uniformly. And Ebola aside, in medicine, accidents and incidents tend to occur singly, largely without getting much attention.

Without a systems approach, medicine is fragmented. Without sufficient widespread implementation of best practices and effective training, medical personnel and government leaders are forced to scramble, making critical decisions and developing protocols in real time to respond to an evolving crisis. With states and hospitals left to their own devices, no one consistent policy emerges, causing gaps in execution. The result, as we have seen, can lead to chaos and confusion among medical professionals and a loss of confidence by the public.

In aviation we also face complexity, ambiguity and situations we have never specifically trained for, but airline pilots train for the unknown. It is our job to anticipate potential issues and, when faced with the unexpected, to adapt, and to respond calmly, quickly and effectively. The ability to make split-second decisions becomes infinitely easier when the effective protocols, training, equipment and human team skills are already in place as part of the robust and resilient safety system and culture in which we operate. Every day pilots and flight attendants face new situations for the first time at 35,000 feet, but they perform successfully because they know how to execute after years of preparedness training. Theyre not trying to use duct tape to solve the problem.

Medical professionals are as dedicated as any. They grapple with imperfect information, highly complex systems and ambiguities that far outweigh those of a Boeing 747. But thats all the more reason to create a culture of consistent application of best practices and effective communication. In order to establish and maintain public confidence, officials have to handle uncertainty well, acknowledge the limits of their knowledge and have the courage to level with people. Every time I made an announcement from the cockpit, whether it was about a delay or an in-flight emergency, I told my passengers everything that I knew and that I would keep them updated. That kind of transparency is the only way to maintain the publics trust.

The aviation industry has made great strides in safety over the past 40 years by teaching critical skills some call soft skills, which are really human skills, giving crews the tools they need to take a team of experts and make them an expert team. In an overall systems approach, there are real incentives aligned with the public good, and weve found that a long-term approach to safety pays for itself by avoiding accidents and bad outcomes.

In medicine, there is so much uncoordinated individual effort on the part of thousands of entities, it is hard to align public health incentives and take the long-term approach. There were candidate Ebola vaccines ready to go to human trial almost 10 years ago. As weve learned in aviation, safety is cost-effective in the long term, and for that reason we have for decades used government-industry partnerships to do the hard work and proactively mitigate risks.

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Pilot Sully Sullenberger on Ebola: Medicine Needs a Higher Authority

Enliven: Journal of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine ISSN : 2374 – 4448 I e001 – Video

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Enliven: Journal of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine ISSN : 2374 - 4448 I e001
Left Ventricular Assist Device and Resident Cardiac Stem Cells in Heart Failure: Human Heart #39;s Potential Matter.

By: enlivenarchive

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Enliven: Journal of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine ISSN : 2374 - 4448 I e001 - Video

Dallas Cowboys: ‘Do they have medicine in London?’ [AMBIENT] – Video

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Dallas Cowboys: #39;Do they have medicine in London? #39; [AMBIENT]
Tony Romo missed the Dallas Cowboys first practice in London on Wednesday (5th November) but head coach Jason Garrett is optimistic his quarterback may recover from a back injury in time to...

By: SNTV - Inside every story

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Dallas Cowboys: 'Do they have medicine in London?' [AMBIENT] - Video

Developing Tools for Discovery & Implementation in Personalized Medicine – Dan Roden, M.D. – Video

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Developing Tools for Discovery Implementation in Personalized Medicine - Dan Roden, M.D.
Dr. Roden received his medical degree and training in internal medicine from McGill University in Montreal and trained in clinical pharmacology and cardiology at Vanderbilt University, where...

By: Mayo Clinic

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Developing Tools for Discovery & Implementation in Personalized Medicine - Dan Roden, M.D. - Video

QUT Grand Challenge Lecture Series – Biofabrication: The Future of Regenerative Medicine? – Video

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QUT Grand Challenge Lecture Series - Biofabrication: The Future of Regenerative Medicine?
Discover how you can be a part of this research: http://ow.ly/DHC7H Presented by Associate Professor Mia Woodruff (QUT). 3D printing is currently taking the world by storm with the ability...

By: TheQUTube

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QUT Grand Challenge Lecture Series - Biofabrication: The Future of Regenerative Medicine? - Video

Researchers push to back traditional Chinese medicine with more data

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Published November 04, 2014

Workers prepare traditional Chinese herbal medicines at Beijing's Capital Medical University Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital May 25, 2011. REUTERS/David Gray

Traditional Chinese medicine teaches that some people have hot constitutions, making them prone to fever and inflammation in parts of the body, while others tend to have cold body parts and get chills.

Such Eastern-rooted ideas have been developed over thousands of years of experience with patients. But they arent backed up by much scientific data.

Now researchers in some the most highly respected universities in China, and increasingly in Europe and the U.S., are wedding Western techniques for analyzing complex biological systems to the Chinese notion of seeing the body as a networked whole. The idea is to study how genes or proteins interact throughout the body as a disease develops, rather than to examine single genes or molecules.

Traditional Chinese medicine views disease as complete a pattern as possible, says Jennifer Wan, a professor in the school of biological sciences at the University of Hong Kong who studies traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM. Western medicine tends to view events or individuals as discrete particles. But one gene or biological marker alone typically doesnt yield comprehensive understanding of disease, she says.

To reach these goals, the overall quality of research on traditional Chinese medicine must improve. With studies of Chinese herbal remedies, for instance, rarely are scientists expected to provide authentication of herbs theyre studying, which makes it difficult to know whats really in the concoctions. This hurdle also makes it harder for other scientists to replicate the findings, says Qihe Xu, a professor in renal medicine at Kings College London. Dr. Xu served as the coordinator of a recent 200-scientist consortium to study good practices for studying traditional Chinese medicine, dubbed GP-TCM.

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Researchers push to back traditional Chinese medicine with more data

Temple University School of Medicine receives Grand Challenges Explorations grant

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

4-Nov-2014

Contact: Jeremy Walter Jeremy.Walter@tuhs.temple.edu 215-707-7882 Temple University Health System @TempleHealthMed

(Philadelphia, PA) Temple University School of Medicine announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Laura Goetzl, MD, MPH, Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences; and Vice Chair of Research and Academic Development at Temple University School of Medicine will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled "Maternal Blood Biomarkers to Assess Fetal Neurodevelopment."

Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds individuals worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges. Dr. Goetzl's project is one of more than 60 Grand Challenges Explorations grants announced today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

To receive funding, Dr. Goetzl and other Grand Challenges Explorations winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a bold idea in one of five critical global heath and development topic areas. The foundation is accepting applications for the current GCE round until November 12, 2014 at 11:30 AM PDT.

Dr. Goetzl and her research team, in conjunction with the Shriners Hospitals Center for Neural Repair and Rehabilitation, will be working to develop a non-invasive maternal blood test that will help predict abnormal fetal neurodevelopment and guide and monitor interventions seeking to promote fetal brain health. Specifically, the research team will explore fetal exposure to psychoactive substances such as antidepressants, amphetamines and alcohol and the adverse neurodevelopmental effects of these exposures. The blood test will directly correlate with fetal brain development over the first and second trimester of pregnancy and will test the hypothesis that biomarkers found in maternal blood can be identified that predict healthy fetal brain development.

Board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology & Maternal Fetal Medicine, Dr. Goetzl practices high-risk obstetrics and prenatal diagnosis at Temple University Hospital. She specializes in prenatal diagnosis, chorionic villus sampling, ultrasound and management of high-risk pregnancies. Dr. Goetzl is an NIH-funded researcher with numerous publications and presentations to her credit.

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About Grand Challenges Explorations

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Temple University School of Medicine receives Grand Challenges Explorations grant

Investing in 'functional medicine' to cure disease, not soothe symptoms, for patients

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The Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland where the Center for Functional Medicine opened Sept. 23, 2014.

Cleveland Clinic

When the head of the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic approached Dr. Mark Hyman about creating a department that would employ the doctors specialty of functional medicine, Hyman was typically blunt.

If I create a program there, it would cut the number of angioplasties and bypasses in half, and reduce hospital admissions, he told clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove.

And if slicing the number of cardiac procedures at the countrys top heart hospital wasnt alarming enough, Hyman warned that he would strive to take functional medicine to its ultimate end by teaching patients to care for themselves so they could avoid the hospital altogether.

Hire me and Ill do what I can to put you out of business, Hyman recalled of their meeting 22 months ago.

That was just what Cosgrove, a 74-year-old cardiac surgeon who earned a Bronze Star in Vietnam, wanted to hear. And he hired Hyman.

Toby was looking for innovation and he sees the future of medicine, Hyman said of the man who heads the nonprofit clinic that has been a leader for nearly a century in improving medical care.

In the United States, people spent more than $2.7 trillion annually on health care in 2011, more than 80 percent of which $2.16 trillion was spent on chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes and obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And for the most part, chronic conditions are managed with medications and procedures but not cured. Functional medicine doctors like Hyman take a different approach. Instead of soothing the symptoms, they try to identify and eradicate the root cause of the problem through a holistic approach in treatment.

We must consider new approaches to understanding and treating diseases, Cosgrove said. In his book, "The Cleveland Clinic Way," he writes that chronic diseases are now so prevalent and so costly that theyre threatening to destroy Americas broader economic health.

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Investing in 'functional medicine' to cure disease, not soothe symptoms, for patients


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