Interrelativity

Category: Health

  • Arthroscopic shoulder surgery: biceps tenodesis, but not rotator cuff tear repair

    Prior blog posts I've written about experiences with health challenges appear to have been helpful to others facing similar challenges. The following is a partial historical recounting of some problems I've experienced with shoulder pain, and some of the medical treatments (including surgery) that have been contemplated or applied thus far. I am not a…

  • PRP, Regenokine & other biologic medicine treatments for joint & tendon problems

    Science journalist Jonah Lehrer posted an interesting article last week about aging star athletes' embrace of biologic medicine, "Why Did Kobe Go to Germany? An aging star and the new procedure that could revolutionize sports medicine". The article describes Regenokine, a relatively new procedure for treating joint and tendon problems that sounds similar to the…

  • Design for Health: Notes from a Multidisciplinary CSCW 2012 Workshop

    I participated in an incredibly well organized and facilitated workshop on Brainstorming Design for Health: Helping Patients Utilize Patient-Generated Data on the Web on Saturday. The participants represented a diverse range of backgrounds and interests – even for a workshop at a Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) conference, already a particularly diverse community. Our workshop…

  • Usability and confusability in Health IT: doctor-computer interaction vs. doctor-human interaction

    A segment on the Marketplace Tech Report, Health care providers having trouble with new technology, caught my ear yesterday. The story included health and safety concerns raised by one of the authors of a 197-page report, Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care, published by the Institute of Medicine this week:…

  • Fructose malabsorption: the latest milestone on an epic digestive health odyssey

    [Update (August 2016): Since writing this post in 2011 about an odyssey that began in 2009, our hypothesis that Amy has fructose malabsorption has been disconfirmed. I hope the information in this post will still be of use to those who have similar hypotheses, or confirmed diagnoses. Amy still suffers from periodic episodes of extremely…

  • The Multidimensional Role of Social Media in Health Care

    The first regular installment of my new Social Mediator forum at ACM Interactions magazine came out in the July/August 2011 print edition last week. Dana Lewis served as guest editor for The Multidimensional Role of Social Media in Healthcare, soliciting and compiling a fabulous collection of short contributions from some of the leading voices in…

  • Health, science, knowledge, access and elitism: Lawrence Lessig and science as remix culture

    I have been an admirer and supporter of Lawrence Lessig's crusade for copyright reform and promotion of remix culture for many years. In a recent talk at CERN, Lessig applied his arguments for a fairer interpretation of fair use in the arts world to opening up the architectures for knowledge access in the world of…

  • Social Media and Computer Supported Cooperative Health Care

    I've become increasingly aware of – and inspired by – the ways that social media is enabling platform thinking, de-bureaucratization and a redistribution of agency in the realm of health care. Blogs, Twitter and other online forums are helping a growing number of patients – who have traditionally suffered in silence – find their voices,…

  • Mobile Phones, Cigarettes, Diversions and Health

    I recently read an article in GOOD magazine, Are Cell Phones the Cigarettes of the 21st Century?, which I initially misinterpreted. When I read the title on Twitter (@GOOD), it evoked an image of people using mobile phones instead of lighting up cigarettes during periods of boredom or high stress. It turns out the article…

  • All models, studies and Wikipedia entries are wrong, some are useful

    A sequence of encounters with various models, studies and other representations of knowledge lately prompted me to reflect on both the inherent limitations and the potential uses of these knowledge representations … and the problems that ensue when people don't fully appreciate either their limitations or applications … or the inherent value of being wrong.…