“Geography is destiny in medicine.” –Jack Lord, MD

In my undergrad English lit courses, I heard a lot about “character is destiny”. Which is a fancy way of blowing things out of proportion – e.g., Romeo and Juliet didn’t die via the quality of being “star-crossed”, but because they were super emo.

Well, this week, I watched a TED talk by Bill Davenhall (below) that claimed “geography is destiny”.

This idea is not so exaggerated. Just watch it (9 min.):

What it says: Where you’ve lived may determine how healthy you are.

There’s the classic equation:

health = genetics + lifestyle + environment

and of the three aspects, Davenhall argues that “environment” has been ignored for far too long by physicians.

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The success of electronic medical records (EMR) depends on much more than the EMR itself, but intuitive, smart software is still important. In this post (Merry Christmas!), I will talk about one tough issue in particular, the search problem, and why a “finder” like Google Wave (June, November) might be a good idea.

Larger electronic record projects may show us what’s needed.

Yesterday, I read an article (National Post) on MyLifeBits, a kind of Electronic “Life” Record. Since 1998, Gordon Bell, a principal investigator at Microsoft, has led a project to “go paperless”, essentially scanning, recording, logging every single thing in his life.

The motivation?:

I’m not cluttered with having to remember any of this stuff. I just have to remember that it’s in there, and that I’ve looked at it.

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