Goodbyes are hard to do, but Dr. Bloch and I would like to thank you for joining us for the Weekly Wellness blog. Reviewing and interpreting GE’s Centricity Database has been an eye-opening and thought-provoking experience for us, and we hope that you took something away from it as well.
“GOOGLING” WELLNESS
Right now, the ability to aggregate raw data that was formerly limited to paper charts represents a major step forward in Big Health Data. The old adage, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” has never been more true. Having access to these highly accurate and insightful clinical tools has the potential to revolutionize the healthcare system, from patients to hospitals to doctors and even insurance companies, much like Google trail-blazed the internet. What is crystal clear is that the healthcare system is falling in love with data – and the critical point of professional data collection is the Electronic Medical Record. With the federal government’s mandate and financial incentives to get physicians on the data grid, we are witnessing a sea-change in medical data collection.
However, before we delve into the way EMRs are redefining the way medical professionals examine data, we should take a step back and define one of the most basic, yet baffling, medical concepts out there. In fact, it’s the one that inspired this blog to begin with. In one word: wellness.
DEFINING WELLNESS
Is wellness the absence of illness, a sense of well-being, or an active process of engaging in healthy activities? Or, is it something entirely different? As physicians, we are traditionally trained to deal with illness; however, increasingly we are being charged with promoting wellness, which in many cases can seem nebulous and confusing. Meanwhile, entire industries have taken root promoting wellness ranging from supplements to diet books and meditation clinics. Whether or not these industries complement or compete with medical care is debatable. However, what is not debatable is many patients have turned to these health alternatives because they are better equipped to focus on discussing wellness rather than illness.
TAKE GOOD CARE
Wellness is a state of mind, one where physical and mental health converge. It goes beyond just eating good foods and going to the gym; it requires a holistic understanding of the profound complexities of the human condition. Simply put, it is a desire to participate with our body by listening to our body.
While EMRs enable medical professionals to gain insight from a vast resource of valuable information, it’s important that individuals use wellness as a proxy for caring about the self. It represents engaging in activities that prolong the sense of well-being while simultaneously valuing the concept of disease screening and surveillance. After all, we are complex physiologic organisms that require regular check-ups, tests and procedures.
KEEP IN TOUCH – IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS
It is known that, in many cases, we can prevent type II diabetes if we eat well and exercise regularly. Likewise, colon cancer is also preventable, if it’s detected early enough through tests. Preventative measures like a colonoscopy can find a young tumor and remove it before it turns into a nasty colon cancer.
Wellness is taking surveillance and detection seriously and not playing roulette with your health while making time to read, laugh, and socialize with levity. And certainly it does not require cutting costs today only to spend more money to combat disease once it becomes evident.
HEALTHPRINT IN YOUR HANDS
We all have a unique and dynamic health signature, or “healthprint,” that is the summation of our health illness status and wellness quotient. It is partly defined by genetic fingerprint, but many studies have found that our healthprint is also impacted by other forces, such income and social status, education and literacy, and employment/working conditions, as well as factors, like gender, culture, child development, physical environment, and coping skills.
PUTTING A TRACE ON YOUR HEALTHPRINT
Right now, in tandem with the shift toward EMRs, there is another movement gaining ground among individuals and groups interested in health. Started originally by the founders of Wired, the ‘quantified self-movement’ arms curious individuals with technologies such as sensors and calorie counters to monitor their our personal healthprint. Complementing the way doctors are studying the data of EMRs to take society’s status report, this type of individual monitoring puts wellness back into the hands of the accountable self. Diseases are not something that “just happens” to us, instead, they often have trackable pathologies, which medical professionals can follow in EMRs and individuals can trace as well. This interplay creates a balance between community and individual responsibility, which ultimately promotes the overall wellness of society as a whole.
HEALTH IS AT OUR FINGERTIPS
If we are to achieve a national wellness that pulls us out of the chronic disease ditch we’re falling headlong into, we will certainly be relying on data to point us in the right direction. EMR data combined with medical claims data and quantified self data will surely enable the accuracy of a healthprint.
Our trip into GE’s database has shown we may have an uphill journey ahead of us as a society. However, our bodies represent one of the most fascinating, complex, and resilient organic structures on Earth. As we hurdle into the 21st century, our ability to define, refine, and redefine our healthprint will become more dependent on how we measure ourselves. Before we bid you farewell, we leave you with some good advice for tough times from another ancient philosopher:
“The part can never be well unless the whole is well.”—Plato