Last year, I became interested in emergency room wait times when a family member needed medical attention but did not want to spend his day waiting for treatment. I had recently seen an article about the growing number of hospitals publishing their wait times online, but since that information is scattered across multiple sites, I found [...]
Asthma epidemiology reports – February 2, 2010
Reduction in Asthma Hospitalizations, Definitions of Childhood Asthma; Confirmation of Asthma; Adult Asthma Trends Rapid reduction in hospitalizations after an intervention to manage severe asthma (ERJ – Souza-Machado et al.) – Evaluation of the Programme for Control of Asthma in Bahia (ProAR) which focused on providing free management of severe asthma. Achieved an 82% decline [...]
Digital Learning submission
The public comment period for the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media / Reimagining Learning competition has opened. The scope and cleverness of these projects is extraordinary and very motivating. If you have a minute, it’s well worth reviewing and contributing to the conversation- http://bit.ly/cjKa0S. I humbly added my classroom epi project (EpiLab) to the mix. It’s [...]
Chlorine gas update
Last year (Nov 6, 2009), the House approved legislation to reduce the risks of terrorist attacks on chemical plants and water treatment facilities. The Chemical and Water Security Act of 2009, which passed without a single Republican vote, includes measures a NY Times editorial called “reasonable, vital and long overdue” that were long sought by [...]
Missing populations in global health
I spent last week in the United Arab Emirates, attending a great conference sponsored by UAE University in Al-Ain to raise awareness of global health problems in the Middle East and neighboring Asia, and to draw attention to the region and its populations and health problems among the global health community. As a result, I’ve [...]
IDD meeting – Overview of the respiratory generic market
Last week in London I gave a presentation on the Spiroscout GPS inhaler device at the Inhaled Drug Delivery conference. It was a great meeting and I thought well worth writing up a few words on some of the presentations over the course of the next couple of weeks. One of my favorites was a [...]
Pop!Tech post on open hardware in global health
I recently wrote an article for Pop!Tech on how we might build better open source hardware projects for global health.
India’s fury of frugal innovation
A recent article in the Economist surveys the drive toward frugal innovations in the Indian health care marketplace. This brief, compelling review describes the strategies and entrepreneurial activity being applied to identify and develop affordable approaches to a range of businesses in the health sector – from the delivery of advanced surgical care, to medicines, [...]
Global affordability and availability of asthma medication
In my chapter in Anthropology and Public Health I noted that global respiratory health activities and guidelines tend to assume the affordability of asthma medications. I wrote a bit about the lack of affordable antiasthma medications in India and other low income settings, and how questions of affordability figure into the day-to-day decisions of physicians. [...]
Low-cost, open-source spirometry
Chronic respiratory disease is a serious and growing threat to global health. The WHO estimates that 300 million people worldwide have asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, already one of the top killers. Having worked in clinical settings in low and lower-middle income countries, I’ve always been struck by the absence of basic equipment like [...]
