Matthew's Blog
Your Healthcare Organization Platform’s Second Most Important Page
The most important part of every healthcare organization's digital platform is the website homepage. Hopefully, that should go without saying. But what is the next most valuable piece of digital real estate? Is it your Billing page? Your About page? Your Find a...
Will Digital Scribes Increase the Practice of Defensive Medicine?
If, as a citizen, you knew every phone call you made was being recorded, analyzed and stored using artificial intelligence by your government, would it change what you say on the phone? Of course, it would. So if, as a physician, every word of your conversation with a...
Does De-identification of EHR Data Give Researchers “Carte Blanche” Data Usage?
Heres a typical AI study: Rule-based and machine learning algorithms identify patients with systemic sclerosis accurately in the electronic health record in which 3 million “de-identified” charts were scanned to assess machine learning methods for identifying a rare...
Is Health Measurable?
Is health measurable? I'm not sure. Diseases are measurable, at least in a binary fashion. You either do or don’t have a disease. In addition, often diseases can be quantified in a non-binary fashion, with internal, fine-grained measurements. For example, someone may...
A Lesson in Health Data Ownership
Two days ago a received forwarded internal email from Ancestry.com from a nice young lady in the UK who wanted me to review her family tree since genetically it appears we may have a common great, great, grandfather. I declined. Three and a half years ago, after a...
How to Understand How “Big Health” Approaches AI and Big Data
Whether you work for a large healthcare organization—or trying to disrupt large healthcare organizations—it can be helpful to understand how these huge healthcare companies think about AI and Big Data. To help with this, I consistently read Optum’s blog, called Health...
My 2020 Blog Mission
After approximately a year off from blogging—a year spent reading and taking courses on subjects as diverse as python programming and ethics—I have decided to resume blogging. Over the next year, I hope to write mostly about the confluence of three subject areas:...
Should Physicians Tweet About Politics?
Should physicians tweet about politics? Usually, my answer is no. If you're ikigai - your mission - is to help out individual patients, then it can only hurt you. For example, if you are a cardiovascular surgeon, whose principal mission is to care so your specific...
My Three Cycles of Review
I review my weekly goal list every day for a few minutes each morning. I review my yearly goal list every Sunday morning, to help me create my weekly goal list. This usually takes about half an hour. I review my life’s purpose list (yes, it is written down!) twice a...