Playing with silly putty

There's a med for that

Medications, whether over the counter or prescribed, often remind me of cars. It seems that we're forever trying to frame the next big breakthrough in pharmaceutical research without trying to utilize what's already in front of us by way of other products/industries. Have you ever wondered what current products and medications could actually treat and/or supplement treatment for an ailment or condition in which it was not initially intended for? It's no different than aloe vera on a burn or coke on your car battery. It's a practice called repurposing, something that is growing immensely at our hospital research labs. Investigators are targeting previously unknown benefits and uses for existing products. To give you a random example, the mapping process for repurposing could be as unexpected as prescribing prilosec (traditionally for GERD patients) to athletes to minimize exercise-induced asthma. The benefit (and goal) is to ultimately minimize R&D spending by pharmas, the single-greatest expense for medication costs themselves. This is clearly a major avenue for opportunity... stay tuned.

I think you said...

There may soon be an end to the nightmare of filling out 15 pages of the same shcrap when seeing a new doctor (referral or otherwise). Our team is piloting a new platform, whereby previously defined orders (things that doctors submit with "authorization", such as prescription, physical therapy, etc) are saved as templates for future entries. It remains to be seen whether this will be more beneficial for the provider (as a template) or for the patient (in preventing both adverse treatment and carpel tunnel syndrome from the duplicative forms).

Teach 'em early

My new goal for my Little (mentee) is to teach him the value of a healthy, balanced diet. He currently eats fast food numerous times a week, which is never a good sign for someone so young to fall into this track. The previous myth (and really still holding true in majority of America, sadly) was that every person must always clean their plate... seen sort of like the 'American way'. In the 3 weeks we've known each other, we've talked about eating 6-8 small meals per day, preferably using only small plates as a default limiter. I'm a big believer in education as a form of soft power as opposed to merely telling a kid what they can't do, because even if you tell them what they CANNOT do, how will they ever know what they should do? Andre has never been taught this nor the rationale/benefit of doing so, so this is a short-term goal of mine. Soon enough, we'll be talking it up about what he consumes. Baby steps...