The ‘Wellness’ Phone

NTT DoCoMo Inc. has prototyped and presented a “wellness mobile phone” that can measure body fat ratio, pulse, breath odor, how far the user has walked and give health advice. This was a joint development with Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and the company assumes that it will be commercialized in the future, although it has not [...]

The Elements of Influence

Why is influence important?While many of us need to influence others in our work and personal lives, we are aware that bare persuasion doesn’t always work. Influence really means being aware of others needs and leveraging their likes and dislikes to help them act. From Robert Cialdini interviewd on Smartplanet. There are six universal principles [...]

Patient Genetics and Online Collaboration

Is the future in controlled clinical trials, or IT driven collaborations to share health experiences? The answer is obviously a mixture of both, but patient/industry collaborations are making some very positive steps towards becoming a powerful tool. This great article from NYTimes highlights some collaborations already formed. For example, in June this year, the Belgian [...]

Are Placebo’s Getting More Effective?

At least some people believe they are – particularly those drug companies whose pipeline champions are being sunk by the famous effect. This Wired article offers a great list of drugs recently entombed by the placebo effect. It also explains it’s history and the concern it is causing in drug development. But I disagree that [...]

Innovation and Change

Words on everyone’s mind in the health arena. Here are some interesting tips from the experts. Change (from MindTools) Richard Beckhard and Rubin Harris first published a change equation in 1977 in “Organizational Transitions: Managing Complex Change”, and it’s still useful today. It states that for change to happen successfully, the following statement must be [...]

Genome and Metabolic Scans the new anti-Cancer Weapon

New cancer treatments are one of the most precipitous of all drugs to develop. But a renewed focus on the DNA mutations that make each cancer unique is about to expand our ability to find new treatments. Traditionally, cancer drugs have been developed by identifying compounds, more recently antibodies, that have a highly toxic effect [...]

Recruiting Stars

Most managers would consider the purpose of HR is to hire the best and brightest, from other good firms is possible. But the story is not so simple. This great article from Jeffrey Pfeffer suggests talent should not be over-rated as your workplace probably has as much impact on your measured performance as your talent. It [...]

Innovation opinions by McKinsey

McKinseys had a few good articles on innovation posted yeasterday. I’d recommend them for a read – and particularly the comments below each article which are quite insightful and perhaps better in content terms also. This article, on how economic downturns drive innovation was quite controversial. I found one of the comments by a Paul [...]

The Dangers of Mixing Medications

Well known to geriatricians, the dangers of mixing medications are significant with around 21% of the elderly reportedly on a bad combination of drugs. CHOICE seems unsure who to blame citing historical, practice and industry factors. I would say the blame should fall squarely on no one. We have very little data on real-life interactions [...]

Want to Reform Healthcare? Start with the Workplaces

According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. spends by far the most per capita on health care but by most measures ranks not even in the top 30 countries in terms of health-care outcomes. If we want to improve Americans’ health and reduce our health-care expenditures, we need to understand why. There are many [...]