by Matthew Rehrl MD | AI Ethics, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Healthcare Ethics, Healthcare Revenue
Have you ever noticed how a patient’s body mass index (BMI) in the EHR seems to be placed alongside a patient’s vital signs, as if it is a vital sign? I don’t think BMI is a vital sign. For me, there are only four vital signs (blood pressure, heart rate,...
by Matthew Rehrl MD | Big Data, EHR, Healthcare Ethics
I have no emotional attachment to the number known as BMI—the Body Mass Index. When I see it in print I feel neither pleasure nor anger, joy nor despair, hope nor fear. It is an index—a mathematical trick that lives in the same part of my brain as other indexes: the...
by Matthew Rehrl MD | Big Data, Blogging, Healthcare Ethics
At the end of each month, I enjoy reviewing my last month’s blog posts to see if there was at least one rough diamond, one insightful idea. (This falls under the principle that even a broken clock is right twice a day, or if you shoot enough arrows you are bound to...
by Matthew Rehrl MD | Healthcare Ethics
The more Black & White photography I shoot the more I realize how rare it is to have a photograph that has something which truly all black or truly all white. Nearly everything is simply a different shade of gray.
by Matthew Rehrl MD | Healthcare Ethics, Philosophy
One of my long-term writing goals is to write a treatise on the ethics of AI in healthcare. But to pursue this I realized I had to first clarify what I meant by healthcare, which then led me to consider the definition of health, and finally, so I can recognize a good...
by Matthew Rehrl MD | Healthcare Ethics, Writing
Whenever I run across controversies around words, a common occurrence now thanks to social media, I tend not to weigh in too quickly, if at all; rather, I like to start with the basics—the word’s etymology and dictionary definition. Take the word hesitancy. In the...
