Here's a heartening article about a coalition that has just completed negotiations which will permit antimalarial medication to be sold in five Nigerian states (together containing about one-fifth of the population) for as little as N60.00 per dose (that's about 27 cents). Previously, Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies had sold for anywhere between N800.00 and N2000.00. The Partnership for Transforming Health Systems, PATHS2, is a program of the United Kingdom Department for International Development. The initiative is a collaboration of PATHS2 with the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Health, and some pharmaceutical manufacturing firms, working through the Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria (AMFm) initiative. More details on the funding mechanism are here. Malaria accounts for 70% of all disease incidence in Nigeria; in 2008 there were 57,506,430 reported cases, of which 225,424 were fatal.
Showing posts with label access. Show all posts
Showing posts with label access. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Patient Access to Medical Records
I blogged briefly the other day about the new plan to give all NHS patients access to their own medical records online. A few more thoughts:
In the short run, making medical records available to patients will give rise to a great deal of GP/patient friction. Patients won't understand what they read, and will ask for explanation. Some patients will be shocked and offended at the way physicians have characterized them (as frightened, as uncomprehending, as unwilling to discuss certain topics, as obese, and so on). Patients may not understand why a doctor hasn't written down their whole story, or accepted their version of events. A certain number of hours will inevitably be given over to discussion of what patients find in their medical records when they are first made available. (Of course, some of this might be quite healthy--patients, for example, may well discover and correct various errors or omissions in their medical histories.) In the longer run, the availability to patients of medical records will cause doctors to write and to use them differently. Gone will be the comments on patients themselves, and the notes-to-self about options to think about trying. Medical records will become cleaner, clearer, public documents; and at the same time will become a bit less useful for doctors. For that reason, I predict, doctors will come up with other ways--perhaps even extra-legal ways, but in any case ways outside the four corners of the medical record--to note their informal impressions about patients and their families.
In the short run, making medical records available to patients will give rise to a great deal of GP/patient friction. Patients won't understand what they read, and will ask for explanation. Some patients will be shocked and offended at the way physicians have characterized them (as frightened, as uncomprehending, as unwilling to discuss certain topics, as obese, and so on). Patients may not understand why a doctor hasn't written down their whole story, or accepted their version of events. A certain number of hours will inevitably be given over to discussion of what patients find in their medical records when they are first made available. (Of course, some of this might be quite healthy--patients, for example, may well discover and correct various errors or omissions in their medical histories.) In the longer run, the availability to patients of medical records will cause doctors to write and to use them differently. Gone will be the comments on patients themselves, and the notes-to-self about options to think about trying. Medical records will become cleaner, clearer, public documents; and at the same time will become a bit less useful for doctors. For that reason, I predict, doctors will come up with other ways--perhaps even extra-legal ways, but in any case ways outside the four corners of the medical record--to note their informal impressions about patients and their families.
Monday, December 5, 2011
NHS to Share Patient Data With Industry?
Prime Minister David Cameron will give a speech today in which he'll announce plans for NHS to share its wealth of patient data with private industry, in order to boost the health sciences industry and speed up drug development. The government has assured critics that patient data will be properly anonymized, but there are already protests to the effect that privacy protections won't be adequate, firms will be able to re-identify private health information, and so on. In the same speech, Cameron will announce increased support for and use of tele-medical patient monitoring, and a program to give cancer patients and other seriously-ill patients early access to as-yet-unlicensed drugs.
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