Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
It’s not great. From Nelson et al. (2009): Among those who received a first dose of varicella (n = 16 075), hepatitis A (n = 594 917), and hepatitis B (n = 590 445) vaccine, relatively few completed the series (55%–65% for hepatitis B vaccine and 40%–50% for hepatitis A and varicella vaccines in most…
Palau: A leader in health? The Great Bucatini Shortage of 2020. Bayesian fatigue. Illinois to cover undocumented seniors. Excess returns in Rx supply chain?
Victoria Krakovna of LessWrong provides some examples where artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms didn’t work out exactly as planned. In fact, she has put together a master list of these AI issues. Below I have listed some of these examples that are more (or less) related to health: Cancer. AI trained to classify skin lesions as…
Haven was a high-profile effort whereby three industry titans–Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan–created a joint venture with the hope of lower costs and improving quality. Today, Haven announced it is shutting down in February. What happened? I don’t know the answer, but below are a few possibilities. Scale. Although these are three large companies,…
What is better: public or private health care systems? This is a difficult question to answer. If we compare the British against the US health care systems, they differ for a large number of reasons beyond just public vs. private. Additionally, one must specify what one means by public vs. private. Is this public vs.…
That is the question by a recent paper in by Baugh et al. (2020) in JAMA Open. The authors surveyed nearly 300 current college football players from 4 teams in the 5 most competitive NCAA football conferences. They found that: Of the 265 participants for whom all relevant data were available, 111 (42%) underestimated their…
30. If you listen to successful people talk about their methods, remember that all the people who used the same methods and failed did not make videos about it. “100 Tips for a Better Life” from LessWrong.
No more snow days in medicine. Hospitals overwhelmed. Drug lag. Racial bias and treatment algorithms. Number of COVID-19+ individuals that will show up at your event.
In short, because we had built years and years of previous science, particularly work related to another corona virus, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus. As This American Life reports on the speed of vaccine development: That’s because the spike on this coronavirus that would cause the pandemic, it was very, very similar to…
The Economist has an interesting article on how Japan has been able to largely contain COVID-19. Part of the success has been a strong public health initiatives around avoiding the san-mitsu, or the “3Cs”. The 3Cs to avoid are: Closed spaces, Crowded places, and Close-contact settings. The phrase was blasted across traditional and social media.…