Enabling Error: Med students, mistakes, and modernization

Why does health care seem to lag behind other industries in innovation? There's a temptation to manufacture reasons that don't necessarily explain why health care has not seen the kinds of revolutionary changes evident in industries from computing and telecommunications to music and retail? People routinely marvel at how easy it is to manage their bank account these days, but they don't appreciate continuing to wait hours in their doctors' offices, repeatedly filling out patient information forms, and fighting to get a satisfactory amount of quality time with their doctor.

The knee-jerk temptation is to hurl blame at doctors' conservative outlook, the industrial medical complex, or just frank stupidity. I think these judgments are misguided.

Breaking the Cycle: Does the hamster wheel blind docs to social media?

Ten years on, Ian Morrison’s “Hamster Health Care: Time to Stop Running Faster and Redesign Health Care” is still eminently applicable. In his words:

Across the globe doctors are miserable because they feel like hamsters on a treadmill. They must run faster just to stand still. In … the managed care systems in the United States doctors feel that they have to see more patients to maintain their incomes. But systems that depend on everybody running faster are not sustainable. The answer must be to redesign health care.

Leslie Saxon says it best.

This talk, Body Computing and Networked Communications, is an excellent glance at the future of medical technology.



Leslie Saxon, M.D., @DrLeslieSaxon, is a Professor of clinical medicine at the USC Keck School of Medicine, specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of arrhythmias in patients with congestive heart failure.

This talk was delivered at TEDxUSC in August 2010.

5 Rules for Medical Students to "Tweak" the system

Many fellow medical students are eager to improve "the system." However, an overeager attitude offers both promise and peril— promise that budding physicians are inspired to improve the inner workings of their chosen field, peril in that our naiveté may simply clutter the very complexities we seek to improve.

How do we strike a balance between getting involved and getting in the way?

I found guidance in law professors Raustiala’s and Sprigman’s post on the New York Times Freakonomics blog: "Tweakers and Pioneers in the World of Innovation":

Some innovators create radically new ideas.  These people — the Thomas Edisons of the world — are the kind that we most commonly associate with innovation.  Let’s call them “Pioneers.”

But the Pioneers aren’t alone.  There are many innovators who improve ideas by refining what others have done.  We call these “Tweakers.”  Tweakers don’t get as much attention as Pioneers.