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We don't drink enough water, generally speaking. For children in critical medical care, receiving proper oral rehydration can be save lives. Oral Rehydration therapy has been around since the 1960s, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has been distributing packets of such therapy in healthcare emergencies whenever necessary. The trouble is that there never seem to be enough of the packets.

More than just water, the packets contain a specific mix of sugars in the right proportions in solution. You have to know how to make them correctly to have effect. Can medical staff out in remote areas create a good enough substitute when they can't get more? This logistics challenge could instead be solved by sharing the right information. After all, information today can travel easier, further, and faster than physical goods.

Dr. Jeff Burns, Chief of Critical Care at Boston Children's Hospital (BCH), and Associate Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School, shared this challenge with me in a recent conversation. He explained that doctors facing such challenges every day out in the field are discovering their own solutions: medical practitioners in Bangladesh and Kenya developing new rehydration techniques; or learning how to create a low-tech CPAP breathing devices in Cambodia to treat pneumonia, in lieu of hard-to-get high-tech medical devices.

As mentioned, the challenge now is to share that knowledge widely so more medical practitioners can try to save lives. Amidst the advocates of Health 2.0 and Education 2.0 trying to re-imagine these fields, lies a critical intersection: educating more medical practitioners.

The demand is high. According to BCH and IBM (see the infographic on the right), there is a critical lack of medical staff in 57 countries worldwide today, a shortage of over 4 million frontline health workers. Globally spending on healthcare is 9.3% of GDP, on par with Europe. In Africa it is only 6.3%, yet still higher than the Eastern Mediterranean (4.7%), and, weakest of all, South-East Asia (3.8%).

One level up, there is a core shortage of teaching hospitals. China, with about 6.5 million new people every year (0.48% growth rate per the CIA fact book), still only has 60 hospitals teaching pediatric care, training a sum total of 1800 pediatricians per year. By my rough calculations, that is an estimated 3600 new children for every new pediatrician.

This overall situation needs to change. With the degree of interdependence of humanity today, this affects us all. A pandemic knows no geographical or age boundaries. Thankfully, as Dr. Burns described, when it comes to pediatric care, many are happy to put aside differences and help each other, creating a great opportunity for collaboration globally.

Opening the Way

Dr. Burns is Program Director for OPENPediatrics, a recently launched virtual learning and knowledge exchange system for physicians and nurses who provide critical care for children. The global program aims to bring the systems to deliver the knowledge from reliable sources across the world of medicine to address one thing most of us can easily agree is necessary: good medical care for our children.

From our discussion, I learned a practical reality of medical school that I had never quite thought about. Post-graduate classes are often half-empty because some of the physicians and nurses are have duty hours at the same time. However much you try to rotate schedules this continues to be an issue. With this in mind, virtual learning is no longer just a convenience; it is a necessity to get the proper training in the time they have. Multiply this with an often lack of enough teaching faculty able to reach many locations in-person, you can see why virtual learning is of such interest.

At BCH and Harvard, a decade of research into adult education in the medical field has eventually led to the OPENPediatrics system. Designed with the help of IBM Interactive, this online professional education and medical community has been in field (alpha and beta) test with locations around the world since 2009. According to Dr. Burns, it is now open with over 1000 medical practitioners in 420 hospitals in 78 countries.

How OPENPediatrics works

Dr. Burns described the three key areas of OPENPediatrics: a Library of learning modules, a system of Curricular pathways, and Knowledge sharing exchange. In coordination with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, this learning library was designed around the Explain-Do-Now You Do approach. The modules each explain a medical procedure. It then shows how an experienced practitioner would perform it. Finally, it guides them to simulate to practice the procedure themselves.

The Curricular pathways are sequences and trees of related content designed by medical educators to progress learning. If you consider the modules as songs on iTunes, then the pathways are playlists of songs, said Dr. Burns. In the early versions, the staff at BCH designed the curriculum pathways.

However, priorities for medical topics certainly vary by region and the socio-economic environment. What matters in Malawi can be very different than what matters in Malaysia. Dr. Burns confirmed that they fully intend to allow others (e.g., heads of medical care) to create curriculum specific to their local context, utilizing existing content or even creating new content. They could close the information to their own medical community or open it to others across the OPENPediatrics network.

All the content is professionally curated and peer reviewed to ensure reliable, relevant and trustworthy information. When asked about the intellectual property rights of the information, Dr. Burns indicated that they believe in the Creative Commons approach of sharing and reusing knowledge.

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We don't drink enough water, generally speaking. For children in critical medical care, receiving proper oral rehydration can be save lives. Oral Rehydration therapy has been around since the 1960s, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has been distributing packets of such therapy in healthcare emergencies whenever necessary.

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Will pharma become consumer electronic companies?

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Will pharma become consumer electronic companies?

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https://learningpilgrims.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/enterprise-social-learning-in-the-pharma-industry-case-study-from-ibm/

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Enterprise Social Learning in the Pharma Industry - Case Study from IBM

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According to IDC, IBM Connections is the market leader in the Enterprise Social Collaboration market (aka Enterprise Social Learning). With a market share that is twice as large as Jive, IBM's product has widespread usage among notoriously difficult markets such as pharmaceutical companies that need strict controls on data security and conversational relevance.

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Miracles Happen When You Share Patient Stories
Post writen by Susan Mazer, Ph.D.
In the beginning, humans made up stories to explain the mystery of life. And, while we may call it mythology, whatever we have come to believe is more about the story than about scientific study.

The patient experience is revealing itself from patient stories. Stories coming from those who have lived it and want to talk or write about it.

And, although we are making every effort to reduce these stories into neat operational processes, they are far too complex and rich for this to be effective. Behind the story of an ICU patient, as well as in front of it, is a whole life that serves as a context for meaning and reflection. For this reason, an authentic respect for the patient experience means their stories are everything.

At our company, we are all about our shared humanity and the lived experience of each patient. So, we decided to document some of the stories that come to us from patients, families, and staff who have used and been served by The C.A.R.E. Channel.

The Story Project is transforming each of one of us at Healing HealthCare Systems. We get letters, emails, or telephone calls. We hear from people so moved that they reached out to us to share their story.

And, when a real person who is deeply interested in what happened to them listens, they tell a story of life, illness, and recovery - whether that recovery is real, or one that has brought them to the other side of an untimely death of a loved one.

From the time we started producing The C.A.R.E. Channel in 1992, we have been conspirators to heal. We knew that music is the magic carpet that can carry us through the most difficult of times, raise our joy to heights unknown, and comfort our tears when they wash down our sadness.

We also knew that music and nature, together, brings into our moment a reason to live, evidence of a world of stunning beauty and wonder.

Now, we are sharing the evidence, one person at a time, of how lives change.

The Story Project starts with the tale of Matt Hankey, a normal 16-year old who went to bed one night with a headache and woke up paralyzed. And, still, miracles can happen - and they did. Watch.

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Miracles Happen When You Share Patient Stories

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Post writen by Susan Mazer, Ph.D. In the beginning, humans made up stories to explain the mystery of life. And, while we may call it mythology, whatever we have come to believe is more about the story than about scientific study. The patient experience is revealing itself from patient stories.