What I Know about COVID-19

This article is the collection of knowledge / thoughts about COVID-19 that I find relevant to my everyday life.

Idea: Public Support Conversations

Use Case: people should be able to have public “support” conversations with companies.

Product: a site that would allow individuals to have public conversations with service providers in order to ensure social accountability.

EMDR for PTSD: My Understanding of Why and How It Works

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapy for PTSD that works surprisingly well.  I will discuss here my understanding of how and why it works.

MGH/MIT/Samsung Hackathon: Skin Diagnostics

Another hackathon I did recently ran by MGH, MIT Hacking Medicine, and Samsung.  I joined Vlad Ratushny‘s team to try to use the new Samsung Galaxy phone’s oximeter to do skin diagnostics.  Specifically, to tell benign conditions, from cellulitis, from necrotizing fasciitis, which, for lack of a better expression, is really scary sh*t.  Anyway, the PPT is here and below. 

AthenaHealth Hackathon: OTF / Outcomes Tracking Firm

When I started working on JoMI, my mind was blown by the state of medicine – and not in a good way.  I found particularly troubling that it’s impossible to get the batting average for your physician – for all the talk of outcomes, I expected to be able to ask the question: which physician would offer me the highest probability of the most desirable outcome?

I really like my dentist.

Had a cavity done.  This was probably one of the most fascinating things I’ve done in a while and this post may seem like bullshit, but, frankly, if someone would ever suggest that I would enjoy getting a cavity filled, I’d respectfully tell them they are nut.  But, I actually did enjoy it…  and so I am writing this review in my blog.

The dentist’s name is Dr. David Shapiro (Yelp – note that he is now in West Windsor, not Hightstown)and he not only explained what he was doing, but took pictures, which is what I think make the tremendous difference in the whole experience.

Here it goes:

First he anaesthetized the area.  Then he checked if the anesthesia was sufficient and, when I still felt discomfort, anaesthetized a bit more.  And then…

The following are various stages of the drilling the cavity.  Sorry, don’t have the tooth before the procedure – we got to talking about taking images after he started…

Then he went in with at a slower speed:

Research shows that meditation makes us smarter…

http://www.familyhealthguide.co.uk/mindfulness-meditation-leads-to-increases-in-brain-gray-matter-density-in-just-8-weeks.html

Interested Consumer

An example of an interested consumer outperforming doctors…  Interesting trend in that now treating people like idiots is not quite as acceptable as before…  The old differentiation was “consumer vs. specialist”.  Now there is “uneducated consumer vs. educated consumer vs. specialist”…

Idea: Air quality and Health

A system that facilitates collection of air quality data and enables correlation analysis with health-related data to attempt to identify causality between air and disease.

Link: Stop Doing Situps – Why Crunches Don’t Work

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2009/06/03/stop-doing-sit-ups-why-crunches-don-t-work.aspx