I only know Nikola Tesla from his competition with Edison over electrification. However, Tesla, like Edison was an inveterate inventor. In this article, scientists recently deconstructed the gastrointestinal system of sharks, and found that they resemble Tesla valves.
What is that, you say? It has nothing to do with anything you think you know about Tesla. And it is a fascinating read. Here is a taste (video) of a Tesla valve system, illustrated with flames.
CMIO’s take? Super cool! But, what does this have to do with informatics, you say? I leave that for you to puzzle out. 🙂
I idolized Greg Lemond, the only US champion of the Tour de France, growing up. I even got his autograph at a bike shop in Colorado a few years ago. Star-struck, I surprised myself by having no words other than a stupid grin and “thanks!”
Greg is still kicking and looking to revitalize carbon fiber and re-invent e-bikes into something that recreates the pure joy and freedom of cycling when you were young.
This is a mind-blowing read. What is a hyper-object? It is a somewhat disturbing concept of something bigger than an object, something that transcends our understanding as a human. The concept’s inventor, Morton, defines it as: “phenomena too vast or fundamentally weird for humans to wrap their minds around.”
Okay. What?
Consider examples like “all the plastic in the world” or “climate change” or “a black hole” or “massive oil spills.”
Science fiction author Jeff VanderMeer has said “hyperobject” neatly describes the bizarre alien phenomenon he wrote about in Annihilation, his surreal novel turned 2018 movie.
from Jeff Vandermeer
OK, now that’s disturbing, as I read the book and felt chills during a summer evening. That guy can write. This is as close to a jump-scare that I’ve ever had, reading a book. Even had to put it down for awhile to calm down. =shiver=
Now, I’m thinking: the Epic electronic health record’s INBASKET is a hyperobject.
EHR Inbasket as Hyperobject?
Now, we’re talking. Something that is weird, difficult for humans to grasp, and alas, vast. To the uninitiated, the Epic EHR inbasket is a message center where much of our internal communication takes place: incoming phone calls from patients can be sent to inbasket for nurses, docs, assistants to help manage the request; incoming patient portal messages come here; prescription renewals from pharmacies, from patients; consultation reports from specialists, hospital discharge summaries; notifications that “you did not finish writing this note for this patient visit”; test results from blood tests, radiology studies, biopsy reports; nurse-doctor communications; provider-provider communications. Lots of things.
And, for our busy clinicians, some inbaskets have dozens, hundreds, and sometimes THOUSANDS of unread messages that can be weeks, months, YEARS old. Yikes.
Hyperobject.
Solving the Rubik’s (hyper)cube?
First, improve teamwork, huddles
Ok, but that is a future post. Aside from the idea that we need to improve our internal teamwork and fundamentally redesign how we use our internal tools, there are some simple changes we can start with.
Time to cut our hyperobject down to size. We know that incoming inbasket messages from patients has tripled (see previous post). We know that our healthcare professionals are suffering from burnout (see previous post). We (I) have been guilty of delivering automated messages to our docs that we originally thought were helpful. Maybe it is time for a re-think.
Our plan to re-size our Hyperobject:
Pick a date (in December 2021), a one time PURGE of all messages 6 months or older in our Inbaskets. This is 7 million messages. Seriously. Rationale: If the provider hasn’t handled this by now, either the patient has called or messaged again (a more recent message), already come for a visit, or perhaps even left the practice to go elsewhere; there is NO VALUE in keeping these.
In December, begin a 90-day expiration clock on all new incoming messages. If you haven’t addressed a concern or responded or read a message by 3 months, it will disappear. Yes, there are theoretical risks of deleting reminders to complete a task or respond to a patient. But, here we are in mid November; is it still relevant that a patient called for advice in August, before school started? Also it is theoretically possible that a provider will stop someday and spend a weekend reading and replying to thousands of messages, but this is not likely at all. We are aware of some inbaskets with messages that number in the thousands. Yes, we are not proud of it. Our current setting where we NEVER delete old messages, I consider a personal failure of bad EHR design and configuration on my part. Behold: the man who ruined healthcare. :(. But, we’ll fix it now.
We are discontinuing the delivery of automatic CC (carbon-copy) messages from consulting specialists back to the referring provider and PCP (primary care provider). In 2011, CT Lin and his merry band thought we were doing everyone a favor by CRUSHING the BLACK HOLE (a DIFFERENT HYPEROBJECT!) of the University docs who never remembered to send a consultation letter back to the referring doc. “Hey, we sent you a patient for this clinical question, and WE NEVER HEARD BACK FROM YOU.” We created a technical solution to AUTOMATICALLY send a specialist’s clinic note back to the referring doc AND the primary care doc (if different). In the beginning, this was a great idea! However, this rule now sends several HUNDRED THOUSAND messages a year to our 6000 internal and innumerable community providers. I am personally burying my colleagues. Asking one of my full time internal medicine colleagues, he tells me “I receive about 100 to 150 auto-CC notes per week. Every couple of weeks I take a Saturday and read through 200-300 messages of which about 5 are useful to me. But I can’t NOT read them, what if I miss something?” What an excellent, OCD (obsessive compulsive) physician. But also the way to burn out on patient care. You work 40-60 hours a week and then spend evenings and weekends “catching up” on the blizzard of messages and tasks in the EHR. We need to do Today’s work Today. By the way, specialists can always manually send an important note back to the referring doc or PCP “hey, calling your attention to this” with a single click. And, our specialists ALREADY do this, so I often receive the automated note AND a manually sent note for specific concerns.
Thus, I feel pretty good about stopping the automation. How often do you read that sentence from a CMIO?
Clearly insane CMIO
To be clear, we have “internal” providers who use our Epic EHR and can look up the consultant specialist’s notes the next time they see the patient. These are the folks who will benefit. ON THE OTHER HAND, we have “external” providers in our communities who do NOT have access to our Epic EHR, they use a different EHR or perhaps are still using paper: We plan to continue to eFax or otherwise deliver these notes UNCHANGED. Thus, still addressing the community need for information and stopping the internal clogging of our own pipes.
Whew! That was a lot more long-winded than I intended, but this is a big deal, a big movement, that has already generated a lot of heat, a lot of concern about “why are you moving my cheese?” So far, in our internal provider discussions, we are hearing 90% support and 10% anxiety from our colleagues. We plan on moving forward and creating innovative solutions for those who do not see this as an improvement.
CMIO’s take? Hang on everybody. This Inbasket Hyperobject is getting resized. We have lots more plans for reducing the burden of inbasket messaging, this is just phase 1 of 4 major phases to come. Stay tuned!
Here is a different take on AI in healthcare: train and only allow clinicians who understand the limitations of AI, to use AI. Make savvy clinicians better. Don’t give it to all clinicians.
This is a throwback to our experience with Dragon Speech recognition over the past decade: DON’T give Dragon speech to a clinician struggling with computer use; instead, give Dragon to a clinician who is computer-savvy and understands the limitations of Dragon.
But, (in the early years) give the non-computer savvy clinician an “opt out” to dictate their notes by dictaphone or telephone, and gradually bring them along.
Having given several non-computer savvy docs access to Dragon in those early years, our hair stood on end when we ended up reading their notes later: they were clearly NOT proof-reading their work and assuming the Dragon engine was perfect at transcription.
Back to the future.
CMIO’s take? Be careful out there, everyone, both on the road with Tesla, and in healthcare with AI.
I have followed Andy Goodman’s work (he teaches storytelling to nonprofit organizations), and have learned so much about how to be effective at my own work.
It is nearly an hour long, and who has an hour? You do, if you know what is good for you.
But, I know you’re busy, so, if nothing else, watch at 10:30 minutes for 7 minutes. It will be the best 7 minutes.
Then, since you’ll be hooked by then, watch the whole thing. You won’t regret it.
No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.
Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking, Fast and Slow
CMIO’s take? Storytelling by masters like this change lives. He did mine.
Some of you remember me, with pre-pandemic bow-tie.
Soooooo long ago. Good old days?
During the pandemic, our family went into full-on Joseph Lister anti-sepsis mode. I’d dress for clinic in a button down shirt, casual pants, mask and face shield, strip down in the garage on getting home, yell “contagion!” to clear my path to the laundry, and wash everything in hot water immediately. No dry cleaning piles, no laundry baskets. Right into the machine.
No watch, no bowtie, no glasses, no dress shoes. My shoes were washable Keens. My wallet became a paper-clip with $20, a credit card, my entry card and ID, and a folded letter that certified that I was essential personnel in case I got stopped at a quarantine checkpoint.
Here we are a year later, and clothing-wise, not much has changed. Casual seems dressy enough. We’re still masking, and starting Monday, I think we’ll be back to wearing face shields, as the Delta variant rages on.
I think the Loki variant is a lot more fun, personally.
This is a 28 minute podcast. The crucial moment (for me) is about 12:30.
Of the all the psychologies and tactics to address various subpopulations of the vaccine hesitate (for pediatrics, for adults, for COVID in particular), ONE tactic was most effective across all these subpopulations, use of “confirmation bias” as a tactic.
If you’re in a conversation about the vaccine, leave aside all the data and arguments.
Often we see people trying to persuade by saying ‘OK, here are the facts. Here’s why you should get vaccinated,’ ” Braude said. “But this research says actually what you should ask is ‘OK, why would someone want to get vaccinated?’ and have them go through the process in their own words. That works much better than the persuasion techniques we see people trying to use.
It turns out that 20-44% of people who answered this question, who were asked to TAKE THE EMPATHIC STEP of putting themselves in the shoes of someone wanting to be vaccinated, and then having to describe the reasons why, ended up changing their mind and agreeing to get vaccinated.
Huh. I think I have never done that. Time to learn and use something new.
CMIO’s take? There are so many interesting facets of the human mind. Even amongst physicians and healthcare workers, we have a lot to learn about how humans think, and how we make decisions. We need to harness this for the public good. Who is with me?
I love stories like this. Jimmy Choi has a TikTok page where he documents his athleticism. He also has Parkinson’s Disease, with an uncontrollable shaking in his arms. At one point, he complained about how difficult it is for people with Parkinsons to take their medications; the shaking often completely spills the pills from the bottle.
As a result, a community of TikTokkers began brainstorming and then modeling and then 3-D printing an innovative pill bottle design that ensures only ONE pill is dispensed at a time.
CMIO’s take? Having access to the brain power and creative energy of the world, via communication technologies like TikTok and other Social media tools, is, I think, a wonderful antidote to our recent experiences, and the best expression of humanism. How can we design to augment this, the better angels of our nature?
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The Undiscovered Country 