Evidence in the care continuum - one of the keys to the telemedicine’s success or failure?

Josep M. Picas

It’s notorious that there are a great number of experiments, publications and studies on the application of telemedicine. Over the last few years, this phenomenon that we could label as the "apps revolution" has given telemedicine a great boost. However, the results, in many cases, have not reached the expectations. 

Many studies have tried to identify the causes of this unsuccessful outcome. In a brief reference, we could mention the professionals’ inertia and resistance to change in their work processes, errors of design, i.e. not being focused on patients, regulatory aspects, lack of resources and patient adherence problems caused by, to name just two, little health literacy or the digital gap issue.

Justice and equity in the health system

Xavier Bayona

Should we review the principle of justice from an ethical perspective? If so, we’ll notice that it’s a principle of minimums (of coexistence) faced with the principle of happiness – a principle of maximums ("individual justice") and, unfortunately, we’re often erring by thinking we speak of justice when in fact we speak of happiness (or individual convenience). Similarly, from the bioethical standpoint, justice can be defined as the fact of treating each one appropriately, in order to reduce situations of inequality (ideological, social, cultural, economic, etc.). On the other hand, equity is defined as giving each individual no more and no less of what they need. Following these definitions, when we speak of justice and equity, deep down, we are doing a reiteration, because they are synonymous.

Dying in the hospital: some considerations

Glòria Galvez

Health inequalities are related to individual and social factors. The way people live, work and grow old as well as the political, social or economic factors that accompany them, vary greatly according to the place where they live. Death, which could be "the great equalizer", doesn’t appear to be equal at all, as Dr. Puri states in his article "Unequal Lives, Unequal Deaths," in which she argues that social and health differences during life, are also present at the time of death. As a group of Danish authors suggest in BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care: "Socioeconomic position and place of death of cancer patients” for people with fewer resources it’s more difficult to benefit from a worthy death in their own home.

When a patient chooses to die in a health institution he does it for different reasons. Higginson et al., In "Dying at home - is it better: A narrative appraisal of the state of the science" identified, besides the socioeconomic level, other determinant elements as the preferences of the patients, the access to the home attendance or the support of the family. Let's look at each one separately.

Cancer committees - a brake on shared clinical decisions?

Cancer committees are instruments for the coordination of cancer practice that have existed for many years. Now, however, a joint German-US research group (with the collaboration of Glyn Elwyn) wanted to know not only the quality of the work of these committees but also how they address the demand for greater involvement of patients in clinical decisions, and an observational study has been carried out on 15 cancer committees of the University Cancer Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. From the publication of this paper, I would like to highlight two key aspects: a) the reality of the organizational quality of cancer committees, and b) how these committees contemplate patients' preferences.

a) Organizational quality of cancer committees

The first observation is that the majority of the tumour committees’ members are doctors in senior positions and, on the other hand, the presence of young doctors is scarce. The participation of other professionals, also important for cancer patients, such as nurses or psycho-oncologists has not been observed in any of the cases. Researchers believe that the hierarchical influence of key members of the committees and the need to close many cases in a short time are limiting factors for productive and quality multidisciplinary work. In summary, the observation notes that guidelines and recommendations are generally applied with margins too scarce for other considerations.

Buurtzorg, a nurse work project with blue ocean strategy

10 years ago, the home care scenario for people with complex social and health needs in the Netherlands followed a bureaucratic scheme based on nursing work on one hand, social work on the other, in addition to the home support actions offered by companies, many of them from the cleaning service world. Jos de Blok, a community nurse, dissatisfied with this fragmented model, put an entrepreneur hat on, assembled a small group of nurses with whom he shared vision and discussed as much at large about a new model of care based on real needs of people. In an interview, Jos de Blok says, "What I wanted to show was that if you are a good nurse, you should know how to focus on the relationship and to build trust with patients in order to make them live with the maximum of independence possible. "

I do therefore I am or the bias of intervention in medicine

Cristina Roure

This week, thanks to a post of Sergio Minué in the blog "El Gerente de Mediado", I discovered the recent publication of "Ending Medical Reversal" The book refers to situations in which new studies more robust than the pre-existing ones contradict the standards of commonly accepted practices, which have now proved ineffective or even harmful.

Some will recall such vivid examples as the use of protein C activated in sepsis, high dose chemotherapy combined with autotransplant of stem cell in metastatic breast cancer, the aprotinin in cardiac surgery, or hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women. All of them were used for years until proven harmful.

I have not been able to read the book yet, but I read a report by the same author; Dr. Vinay Prasad in Mayo Clinical Proceedings exposes his vast research. Over ten years, 363 studies evaluating established practices were published, out of which 146 (40%), between 12 and 19 per year, were revoked (1). The author explains in the following video that such revocations usually occur after the precipitous adoption of new therapies based on incomplete or inadequate studies.

Chronic Complex Patients and the Blue Ocean Strategy

The book "Blue Ocean Strategy" by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne has been celebrating 10 years, having sold more than three and a half million copies, and now, to celebrate, a revised edition has just been published. The central thesis of the book is that today's markets are characterized by oversupply and therefore, companies must compete fiercely between them and the oceans (It’s a metaphor) are stained red with the blood of the fight. For this reason, the authors propose to companies to go on the search for blue oceans, like Cirque du Soleil or Ikea, where their products or services will be incontestable because people will see them as novel and useful. The strategy of these companies is clear: their contribution must be perceived as a value innovation, and as a consequence would able to open new unexplored markets like oceans that will not go red.

Leaving aside the commercial aspects of the theory, the book left me with the (attractive) vision of a blue ocean that, inevitably, I have contrasted with the difficulties that all health systems have when it comes to implementing convincing programs of patients’ care and I thought that perhaps at this point a blue ocean strategy would be beneficial when aiming to implement new projects that would arise from overcoming current difficulties. I have to admit that applying Chan and Mauborgne's theories to complex chronic patients is a bit far fetched, but I am convinced that there are some strategic methodology proposals that could be of some use.