Articles about creativity and invention
If I am a doctor....
A doctor's job is to diagnose what ails the patient and to prescribe the forms of medication to cure the ills. How often does he follow up with the patient to see whether his prescription works or not? Rarely indeed, unless the patient were to inform him, or perhaps, the patient showed up for another session. Then again, the patient might go to see another doctor, half thinking that his first doctor did not get it right. So it looks like a case of aiming blindly! If I am a doctor, I will do it this way. First, I will do the usual diagnosis with asking a lot of questions about my patients. If it is a new patient, I would have to spend more time to access their characters as it is important to know whether the patient will follow exactly what I will prescribe or will they abandon halfway the course of the medication. This is important where antibiotics are prescribed because most people tend not to finish all the prescriptions given to them, thinking that they have already recovered from the illness. Wrong usages of antibiotics can cause bacteria to become drug resistant. It is thus important to prescribe the appropriate medicines and equally important to know what transpired after the patient leaves home with the medication. Preferably, doctors should have an effective follow-up system; otherwise he will have to continue to shoot blindly. They have actually done this for far too long, and I would like to contribute my two cents worth. The second thing I would like to do is to introduce a system for the doctors to check their patients and for the patients to report back to the doctor. This system will require a simple reporting method using sms. But we have a problem with patients that are not bothered to reply to the doctor's inquiry, so if legislation is not possible, then perhaps a form of monetary rebates is considered. Patients who diligently report their conditions will be given a rebate to be offset of on their next visit to the doctor. The idea is not only to find out the effectiveness of the prescribed medicines, but also to improve the rapport between the doctor and the patient. In order to make the whole process acceptable to both doctor and patient, simple software will have to be designed for embedding in both cell phones. The interface should be simple and intuitive as well, and the program can be designed for use in most cell phone. Using sms for data inputs will make the system viable and affordable as well. As doctors don't have much spare time to send sms individually, the program should be run from the pc and queries sent out automatically on a scheduled time. From the doctor's side, he should also get automatic alerts in case the patients are not responding well to the medication. There should be cell phones with advance features that is able to detect the temperature and blood pressure of patients and to routinely report to the doctor using sms or GPRS signals. If the doctor can be alerted in time, then the patient will stand a better chance of surviving unpredicted ailments like heart attacks. With medical fees inflating at a high rate, insurance companies offering medical insurance policies should offer rebates to those embracing such a system. At the end of the day, we should see a more efficient use of medical facilities and a cut in unnecessary use of medicines. I would think that an overhaul of the medical system be made as soon as possible as a large majority of poor are facing anguish with the escalating medical cost. Thirdly, I would like to say that there is a real waste of resources in the training of medical doctors. There should be a differentiation as to ordinary private medical practitioners and specialist. Ordinary practitioners should not need too many years of training because they don't need specialized training if all that they are going to administered is only some painkillers and analgesics. Reducing the period of general practitioner trainings will help increase the pool of doctors. Medical fees will be reduced and it would become more affordable for the poor. Fourthly, I would like to introduce a system of patient information that can be put in a public assessable data bank. It is a form of medical tagging. Here, the patient's medical record and the types of prescription will be recorded. In time of emergencies, from any place, this medical information can be accessed. A coding system will be used to safe guard privacy issues, and the patient will carry with him this code wherever he goes. Such a system will however need to be mandated by the authorities.
Yap Tat Meng
Author of the invention book entitled “Inventing: The moment before the spark came.”