Second Life and the Doctor-Patient Relationship

  I had my first experience in Second Life Recently.    I had to go to www.secondlife.com  and go through the registration process.  It was fairly easy as I am already a computer user and I am familiar with the registration process on other websites.  I think this website is a great invention.  This is a great online tool that will be very helpful as more people become familiar with what it has to offer.  I like the fact that it can be accessed from anywhere and it is very interactive.  You can interact with people from all over the world.  Once it becomes more popular with Physicians it will be a useful tool for Physicians to interact with patients from all over the world in any type of environment that the physician can build.  They can do demos, simulations and provide credible links to patients that are available in their own personal island.    Having such flexibility allows for a more engaging environment.  It is a way to have a cost effective virtual education solution as stated on Secondlife.com.

There are some Pros and Cons with using Second Life.   First I will describe some Pros and then I will go into the Cons.  One of the Pros that I found was that you can build a simulation that allows patients to experience a situation that they would not normally be able to experience.  Doctors can bring together patients from all over the world for group sessions.  They can create a simulation of their office and give a patient a tour of their office to make them feel more comfortable before they have their initial consultation in the real life.  There really is no limit to what you can do in Second Life once you become proficient with all the tools the site has to offer.  Now for the first Con you have to have a fairly new computer with voice and speaker capability.  In order for the patient to communicate with the Physician in a session they have to be willing to purchase a headset with microphone.  There are a lot of not so friendly people/islands in Second Life so you have to be aware.    The patient has to be willing to be patient enough to view the tutorials to learn how to navigate within the site.    There are people out there in second life that can pose as a Physician and be deceiving so the patient has to be knowledgeable enough to research the Physician and make sure they are a trusted source.  Overall the Pros do outweigh the cons and I think it is a great environment for Education and Doctor-Patient Relationships.

The Doctor, Patient and Pharmaceutical Companies

CNN Health posted an Article called "Does your doc get money from drug companies?". I've always wondered that same question. Many times visiting my Primary Care Physician I've seen the well dressed Pharmaceutical Rep with the very thick briefcase filled with samples. Thinking to myself "How do the doctors benefit from these interruptions in their office filled to capacity with impatient patients." There is a website called "ProPublica" that created a project called "Dollars for Docs" which reveals that "$258 million compensation from several companies went to health care providers in 2009 and 2010". This did not only include Physicians but Nurses and Pharmacists were also on the list according to ProPublica. ProPublica's database allows you to check if your Physician received any of this money. I went online and checked if my Physician was on the list and he was not.

According to another article written by Tom Detzel "About the Dollars for Docs data" this information is not easy to acquire. There is only a handful of Pharmaceutical Companies that are sharing this information. Beginning in 2013 all drug companies will have to report this information to the federal government.
Dollars for Docs is meant to be an educational tool. Patients can use this data to be informed and question their physicians on the drugs they are prescribing. If your doctor is on the list you may wonder if your on any of the drugs influenced by the Pharmaceutical Company. If your doctor is not on the list you can talk to them about it. You can also ask your Doctor if they've had any financial relationships with the pharmaceutical company.

There have been numerous lawsuits stating that drug companies illegally paid doctors to prescribe their drug from past employees who are spilling the beans.

These days it seems as if there is always a dollar assigned to healthcare. I remember listening to a radio show about this woman in a small town curing numerous people of cancer and one day she said these mysterious men came into her clinic and offered her a million dollars to sell her ingredients to the herbs she was using. She refused because they could not promise her that the treatment of these drugs would be free. I found her to be a true pioneer in the drug patient relationship. I understand if people don't get sick the pharmaceutical companies will not get rich but there should be a better way. We've become so dependent on fixing what is broken instead of preventing it from breaking in the first place.

The Internet and the Future of Patient Care

So far I have learned some new facts about the internet and healthcare.  According to Susannah Fox in the "Power of Mobile" most people respond to text messages in 3 minutes which is allowing Technology to initate the reponse to communicate faster than we have in the past.  These days if a patient wants to see what a procedure is and how it is done they can go on Youtube.  Physicians are using Youtube as a source of advertising to acquire new clients.  I think that is definately allowing patients to be able to prepare questions when they go for a consulation.