Guests: Freakonomics, MD host, UChicago-trained economist, and Harvard medical school physician Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD, and Harvard physician, Mass General critical care doctor, and healthcare policy researcher Christopher Worsham, MD, MPH on their singular work of popular science, RANDOM ACTS OF MEDICINE (published by Random House), on sale July 11, 2023, and available for pre-order on Amazon.
Book Summary
Why do kids born in the summer get diagnosed more often with ADHD and the flu? How are marathons harmful for your health, even when you’re not running? And what do surgeons and salesmen have in common?
As a University of Chicago-trained economist, Harvard medical school professor and doctor, and host of the Freakonomics, MD podcast, Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD is uniquely equipped to answer these questions. And as a critical care doctor at Massachusetts General who researches health care policy, Christopher Worsham, MD, MPH confronts their impact on the hospital’s sickest patients.
In RANDOM ACTS OF MEDICINE, Jena and Worsham show us how medicine really works—and its effect on all of us. In the spirit of Freakonomics, Cribsheet, and Noise, this singular work combines popular topics like behavioral science, health, and medicine through the lens of economic principles and big data insights to reveal the unexpected but predictable events that profoundly affect our health. Relying on ingeniously devised natural experiments—random events that unknowingly turn us into experimental subjects—Jena and Worsham do more than offer readers colorful stories. They help us see the way our health is shaped by forces invisible to the untrained eye. Is there ever a good time to have a heart attack? Do you choose the veteran doctor or the rookie? Do you really need the surgery your doctor recommends? These questions are rife with significance and their impact can be life changing. RANDOM ACTS OF MEDICINE will not only help readers gain a better understanding of how medicine is practiced or what motivates human behavior; it will empower them to see past the white coat and find out what really makes medicine work—and how it could work better.
Ophir Ronen is a serial tech entrepreneur, having begun his career as a co-founder of Internap Network Services, one of the first commercial Internet backbones which IPO'd in 1999. He has started six companies and achieved three successful outcomes, the last of which was PagerDuty's acquisition of EEHQ.
His current company, CalmWave, is using AI to remediate clinical alarm fatigue in ICUs and build a first-to-market hospital operations orchestration platform to improve nurse retention and patient outcomes.
Ophir excels in guiding teams of creative people to successful outcomes regardless of his role, from engineer to CEO. He holds a number of patents spanning data science and IT Operations and thoroughly enjoys the challenges of bringing vision to reality.
Alexis Miller has one of the rarest backgrounds I've met in the industry - in her past life, she worked for UPMC, a large healthcare insurance and healthcare provider, and in her new role, she works at Schell Games, an entertainment company. The crucial link? Gamification. Today, she takes us into the curious world of design, healthcare and motivation, helping us better understand how we can nudge patients towards better, healthier habits.
Amy is author, academic and professional - making her a wealth of knowledge when it comes to healthcare changes! Her work has taken her to various organizations and countries, including Mad*Pow (current work), CVS Health, Johnson & Johnson Health and Wellness Solutions and Big Communications. She also writes a delightful blog which is both informative and entertaining, and which we share with great enthusiasm with you!
Amy Bucher's Book, Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change :
https://www.amazon.com/Engaged-Designing-Behavior-Amy-Bucher-ebook/dp/B084WPQNRR
Amy Bucher's Blog Posts:
https://www.amybucherphd.com/
What do these three topics have in common? In this episode, we invite you on an exploratory tour, as we dip our toes into healthcare innovation.
Host: Corina Paraschiv
https://www.linkedin.com/in/corinamihaelaparaschiv/
https://atdesignresearch.com/
Guest Bio:
I am currently the Executive Director of the Center for Machine Learning and Health at CMU. I have been involved with invention and innovation in applied computing for over 30 years in multiple contexts (academic, corporate, entrepreneurial) and multiple industries (defense, computers, electrical equipment, media & entertainment, marketing, healthcare). I did my undergraduate and graduate work at Harvard University. My areas of expertise include AI, human-computer interaction, and computer graphics.
In this episode, we explore how our healthcare system prepares itself for an ageing population, with guest Dr. Steven Albert.
Host: Corina Paraschiv
https://www.linkedin.com/in/corinamihaelaparaschiv/
https://atdesignresearch.com/
Guest Bio:
Steven Albert is Chair of the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public Health. He holds the Hallen Chair of Community Health and Social Justice. He has nearly 30 years of research experience in public health, aging, neurologic disease, and health behavior. He served as principal investigator on three NIH R01 efforts (AG18234, Cognitive and Physical Basis of Disablement, 2001-06; MH62200, Depression and End of Life Care in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, 2000-07; and NR012459, End of Life in the Very Old, 2010-15). he currently directs or co-directs the Clinical and Population Outcomes Core of the University of Pittsburgh NIA Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (P30 AG024827) and the U Pitt CDC Prevention Research Center (PRC U48 DP001918). He recently co-directed the HRSA Public Health Social Work Leadership training program (6G05HP7841) and U Pitt NIMH Advanced Center for Intervention Services Research for Late Life Depression Prevention (MH090333). He has also completed an extensive array of CDC-funded research, including an evaluation of the Pennsylvania Department of Aging’s statewide falls prevention program (SM Albert, PI, “Comparative Effectiveness of Community-Based Falls Prevention in Pennsylvania,” CDC ARRA U48 DP002657, 2010-13) that established the evidence base for the program. Our efforts led to important changes in these programs to support effectiveness and dissemination, as well as certification as an evidence-based program for Title-IIID ACL/AoA funding. He has also led the community health needs assessment (CHNA) for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s 40-hospital network. He has mentored doctoral (15+), postdoctoral (10+), visiting fellows (4), and junior faculty (6) across a number of academic fields.
Diving Further:
Prohaska TR, Anderson L, Binstock RH. Public Health for an Aging Society, Johns Hopkins Press, 2012.
Albert, SM & Freedman VA. Public Health and Aging, Springer Publishing Company, 2nd Edition, 2010.
What makes a good medical simulation? And what does the range of technology look like when we think of simulation centers? Special guest Thomas Dongilli takes us behind the scenes of the WISER Simulation Center.
To kick off our special on simulations, we had a chat with guest John Cordier, from the FRED Epidemic Simulator. John eloquently shares with us the underlying principles and use cases for epidemic simulators - touching on epidemiology, technology and policy.
Health consumerism brings healthcare design outside of hospitals, and into the community. Special guest Peter Weeks, healthcare designer at Philips Design, shares his perspective on the Internet of Things, Data and what it means to design for human beings.
Interesting links for further exploration:
https://designinghealth.care/
https://medium.com/hsxd-healthcare-systems-by-design
Designing for clinicians and patients brings challenges that are surprisingly universal across healthcare designers and design researchers. Special guests : Bob Groeneveld, Tessa Dekkers and Patrizia D’Olivo, design researchers and PhD candidates at Delft University of Technology guide us through these common design challenges.
Learn more about their research : http://studiolab.ide.tudelft.nl/studiolab/firstaidtoolkit/
Bio-Banking is the starting point of genomic research. As part of our three-part series, special guest Stella Somiari gives us a behind the scenes tour of genomic research.
