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Trend: With 25% of US physicians aged 65+, hospitals test older doctors on mental and physical acuity

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When Are Doc­tors Too Old to Prac­tice? (The Wall Street Journal):

“In Feb­ru­ary, Robert Brown received an email that left him trou­bled. The New Jer­sey hos­pi­tal where the 71-year-old pedi­a­tri­cian was prac­tic­ing informed him that doc­tors age 72 and old­er would have to take a test to assess their phys­i­cal and men­tal health—or risk los­ing their priv­i­leges [Read more…] about Trend: With 25% of US physi­cians aged 65+, hos­pi­tals test old­er doc­tors on men­tal and phys­i­cal acuity

Improving Brain Health Outcomes with Tech, Incentives and Comparative Effectiveness Research

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Mal­prac­tice Method­ol­o­gy (New York Times OpEd by Peter Orszag)

Right now, health care is more evi­dence-free than you might think. And even where evi­dence-based clin­i­cal guide­lines exist, research sug­gests that doc­tors fol­low them only about half of the time. One esti­mate sug­gests that it takes 17 years on aver­age to incor­po­rate new research find­ings into wide­spread prac­tice. As a result, any clin­i­cal guide­lines that exist often have lim­it­ed impact. How might we encour­age doc­tors to adopt new evi­dence more quickly?

If this is the case with health care over­all, despite much progress over the last 30–40 years, imag­ine how worse it may be when we talk about brain health, when neu­ro­science and cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science are rel­a­tive­ly more recent disciplines.

This is a key insight to keep in mind as we debate the val­ue and lim­i­ta­tions of inno­v­a­tive brain health solu­tions, espe­cial­ly those that are non-inva­sive and have no neg­a­tive side effects:  what mat­ters most to actu­al human beings liv­ing today is how those tools and solu­tions seem to per­form, based on best evi­dence, com­pared to alter­na­tives avail­able today — not com­pared to Pla­ton­ic ideals about research and prac­tice which may exist in our minds but not in the real, empir­i­cal world. Of course we then need to guide research so that we have bet­ter evi­dence in the future, but progress must occur in par­al­lel and rein­force each oth­er: progress in prac­tice and in research.

The OpEd author then pro­ceeds to defend mal­prac­tice reform as the pri­ma­ry way to do so. This may well be so with health­care as a whole, but when we are talk­ing about brain care I believe his next 2 pro­pos­als are more direct­ly rel­e­vant: [Read more…] about Improv­ing Brain Health Out­comes with Tech, Incen­tives and Com­par­a­tive Effec­tive­ness Research

Grand Rounds: 22 Health and Medicine Questions and Answers

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Wel­come to Grand Rounds, the week­ly col­lec­tion of best health and med­ical blog posts. This week we invite you to enjoy a broad range of insights, tips, and first-hand sto­ries, pre­sent­ed as a Q&A con­ver­sa­tion with blog­gers will­ing to answer, below, a total of 22 good questions.

On Health and Medicine

  1. What can one-word pre­scrip­tions deliver
  2. How does food pro­cess­ing change food´s nutri­tion­al value
  3. Can diet Increas­es Risk of ADHD
  4. Is alco­holism an illness
  5. What´s bet­ter: steady dete­ri­o­ra­tion over 10 years, or sym­p­­tom-free life for 9 years fol­lowed by rapid dete­ri­o­ra­tion in year 10

On Patient Life

  1. As we talk about wellness…what about devel­op­ing self-compassion
  2. Can patients with chron­ic pain still live a full life
  3. What is the patient-doc­tor eti­quette for using Face­book and Twitter
  4. Should patients in an ide­al world con­tract direct­ly with their doctors
  5. What are patient advo­cates focus­ing on these days

On Health Care pro­fes­sion­als [Read more…] about Grand Rounds: 22 Health and Med­i­cine Ques­tions and Answers

Update: Preparing Society for the Cognitive Age, and Industry Webinar

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Here you have the August edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and Brain Fitnessbrain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page.

Sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tion Fron­tiers in Neu­ro­science recent­ly pub­lished a spe­cial issue on Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion, and invit­ed me to con­tribute with an arti­cle titled Prepar­ing Soci­ety for the Cog­ni­tive Age. Ground­break­ing brain research has occurred over the last 20 years. The oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve brain health and per­for­mance is immense, but we need to ensure the mar­ket­place matures in a ratio­nal and sus­tain­able man­ner, both through health­care and non-health­care chan­nels. Click Here to read my article.

Announce­ments

In May 2009 Sharp­Brains pub­lished The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009, the main indus­try report for lead­ing orga­ni­za­tions prepar­ing their mem­bers, their clients, and their patients for the cog­ni­tive age. 150-pages long, the report includes a mar­ket sur­vey with 2,000+ respon­dents, detailed analy­sis of 20+ ven­dors, research briefs writ­ten by 12 lead­ing sci­en­tists and data and trends for 4 major cus­tomer segments.webinar

Below we share the full Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry of the report and announce an exclu­sive webi­nar on Sep­tem­ber 29th to dis­cuss the State of the Mar­ket in more depth with buy­ers of the report.

To order the report and access both the report and the webi­nar, you can click Here. (Only $975 ‑a 25% dis­count- using Dis­count Code Frontiers2009 before Sep­tem­ber 28th).

State of the Market

The brain fit­ness field holds excit­ing promise for the future while pre­sent­ing clear oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges today. The good news is that there are more tools avail­able than ever before to assess and train a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive skills. The bad news is that there are no mag­ic pills and that con­sumers, while sat­is­fied over­all, seem con­fused by com­pet­ing claims on how to reduce one’s “brain age.” We do see signs that this ear­ly-stage mar­ket can mature in a more ratio­nal, struc­tured man­ner; but there is much work to be done. We esti­mate that the size of the U.S. brain fit­ness soft­ware (i.e., appli­ca­tions designed to assess or enhance cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties) mar­ket in 2008 was [Read more…] about Update: Prepar­ing Soci­ety for the Cog­ni­tive Age, and Indus­try Webinar