Tag

Tagged: commentary

Sponsored
9 years, 1 month ago

Slim lessons in diabetes understanding and management

HealthPad
Directory:
Diabetes
Tags:
Carlos Slim
commentary
diabesity
diabetes management
diabetes research
DNA
genome research
genomics
 
 
  • 16% of Mexico’s population has type-2 diabetes (T2DM) and each year it kills 70,000
  • Mexican mothers feed their children sugary beverages from birth and create soda addicts
  • In 2014 a national sugar tax on fizzy drinks was introduced, but sales on untaxed sugary beverages increased
  • The Carlos Slim Foundation (CSF) takes fundamental action to dent Mexico’s T2DM epidemic
  • The CSF collaborates with MIT’s Broad Institute to conduct the largest and most comprehensive genomic study on T2DM in Mexican populations
  • Three years later CSF announces the discovery of the first common genetic variant shown to predispose Mexicans to T2DM
  • Findings could lead to improved diagnostics and new therapies for T2DM, say experts
  • The Broad Institute and the CSF make their genomic studies and other data freely available to scientists worldwide
  • Organizations with bureaucratic walls that restrict the free-flow and sharing of knowhow and information significantly impede the advancement of our understanding and management of globally important chronic conditions such as T2DM
 
Slim lessons in diabetes understanding and management

What can a self-made 77-year-old son of Catholic Lebanese immigrants to Mexico contribute to our understanding and management of T2DM?
 
77-year-old Carlos Slim built a business empire, which today is worth the equivalent to 6% of Mexico’s GDP. His company Grupo Carso is influential in every sector of the Mexican economy, and he is currently the chairman and CEO of telecom giants Telmex and América Móvil. Slim believes that businessmen should do more than just give‍ money, and says they "should participate in solving problems".

An important aspect of reducing the significant burden of chronic health conditions such as T2DM, is to reduce the bureaucracies of key organizations, which impede the sharing of important knowhow that help our understanding and management of these globally important disease.
 
Slim has turned his attention to Mexico’s vast and escalating diabetes epidemic, which devastates the lives of millions, and significantly dents the Mexican economy. Recently, the Carlos Slim Foundation (CSF) started applying the knowhow and skills used to build world-class companies to tackle the Mexican diabetes burden, and in less than three years, discovered a gene, which contributes to the significantly higher incidence rate of T2DM in Latin Americans. The CSF intends to build on this to develop new treatments.
 

Diabetes in Mexico

Each year, T2DM related complications kill 70,000 Mexicans. In 2015, there were 11m people with diabetes in Mexico - almost 12% of its adult population - projected to rise to some 16m by 2035. Mexico has one of the world’s highest rates of childhood obesity, a significant contributory risk factor of T2DM. The prevalence of overweight or obese children and adolescents between 5 and 19 years is 35%. This is believed to be the result of mother’s feeding their babies sugary drinks: partly because of the lack of clean water, and partly cultural since many Mexicans consider chubby babies to be good. According to Dr. Salvador Villalpando, a childhood obesity specialist at the Federico Gomez Children's Hospital in Mexico City, “about 10% of Mexican children are fed soda from birth to six months, and by the time they reach two it's about 80%." Mexico has become the No. 1 per capita consumer of sugary beverages, with the average person drinking more than 46 gallons per year: nearly 50% more than the average American.
 
Over the last 20 years, the prevalence of T2DM in Mexico, a country with a population of 122 million, has increased rapidly. The Mexican health system is struggling to effectively adapt to the diabetes burden facing the nation. Healthcare spending represents approximately 6% of GDP and is divided near equally between the public and private sectors. The former, supports mostly low-income non-salaried workers, accounting for about 60% of those in work: some 30m. The latter, is an employer-based scheme linked to salaried workers.

Sugar tax

So acute is the problem of T2DM in Mexico that in January 2014, the government introduced a 10% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. Research published in the British Medical Journal in 2016 suggests that the tax resulted in a 6% reduction in the purchases of taxed beverages in the first year, increasing to 12% by the end of the second year. The study also reported increases in purchases of untaxed beverages. Findings are disputed by the drinks industry. “Fizzy drinks only account for 5.6% of Mexico's average calorie consumption so can only be a small part of the solution to obesity and diabetes,” says Jorge Terrazas of Anprac; Mexico's bottled drinks industry body.
  
Carlos Slim Foundation and diabetes

The obesity epidemic, aging population and escalating health costs have increasingly strained resources and exacerbated Mexico’s diabetes burden, which the CSF is intent to reduce. In 2010 the Foundation formed an association with MIT’s Broad Institute. With an investment of US$74m it formed the Slim Initiative in Genomic Medicine for the Americas (SIGMA). It was a natural fit because Slim knows just how big data strategies transformed retail businesses and also cancer research and therapies; and the Broad Institute specialises in developing big genomic data sets and making them available to molecular scientists in premier research centres throughout world in order to transform medicine. From its inception SIGMA set out to systematically identify genes underlying diabetes.
 
The development of T2DM depends on complex inheritance-environment interactions along with certain lifestyle behaviors. Previous HealthPad Commentaries have described such complexities. One described the lifetime research endeavors of Professor Sir Steve Bloom, Head of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism at Imperial College London, on obesity and the gut-brain relationship.
 
SIGMA believed that having access to genomic research undertaken by a network of world class scientists holds out the possibility of discovering fundamental aspects of the biological mechanisms linked to T2DM. And this could form the basis for more effective diagnostics and new and improved therapies for the condition. Until recently, only a select group of specialists had full access to such data. The CSF was also mindful that their relationship with the Broad Institute would help build Mexico’s capacity in genomic medicine.
 
T2DM risk gene found in Latin Americans

A major focus of SIGMA’s 2010 research agenda was to identify the genetic risk factors that contribute to the significantly higher incidence rate of T2DM in Mexico compared with the rest of the world. SIGMA conducted the largest and most comprehensive genomic study to date on T2DM in Mexican populations, which involved scientists at 125 institutions in 40 countries, and resulted in the discovery of the first common genetic variant shown to predispose Latin American’s to T2DM.

Findings show that people who carry the higher risk version of the gene are 25% more likely to have diabetes than those who do not. People who inherit copies of the gene from both parents are 50% more likely to have diabetes. The higher risk-form of the gene is present in half of the people with recent Native American ancestry, including Latin Americans. The elevated frequency of this risk gene in Latin Americans could account for, as much as 20% of the populations’ increased prevalence of T2DM. The gene variant also is found in about 20% of East Asians, but is rare in populations from Europe and Africa.
 
Doing science with one eye closed

"Most genomic research has focused on European or European-derived populations, which is like doing science with one eye closed,” says Eric Lander, Professor of Biology at MIT and President and Founding Director of the Broad Institute, who went on to say, “There are many discoveries that can only be made by studying non-European populations." José Florez, a principal investigator of the SIGMA study adds, “By expanding our search to include samples from Mexico and Latin America, we’ve found one of the strongest genetic risk factors discovered to date, which could illuminate new pathways to target with drugs and a deeper understanding of T2DM.”
 
The impact of evolutionary science on healthcare systems

Roger Kornberg, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in chemistry, "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription", describes how human genome sequencing and genomic research fundamentally changed the way healthcare is organized and delivered. “Genomic sequencing enables us to identify every component of the body responsible for all life processes. In particular, it enables the identification of components, which are either defective or whose activity we may wish to edit in order to improve a medical condition,” says Kornberg.
 
 
Website helps translating genomic discoveries into therapies

Three years following their discoveries; the CSF launched SIGMA 2 with a mandate to complete its genetic analysis of T2DM, improve diagnostics, and develop therapeutic roadmaps to guide the development of new treatments. SIGMA 2 also planned to ramp up scientific capabilities in both the US, and Mexico by developing a unique resource. In 2016 SIGMA 2 created a website of open-access genetic data on T2DM. The site contains data available from all the SIGMA studies, plus information on major international data networks, including more than 100,000 DNA samples, and the complete results of 28 large genome association studies. Scientists throughout the world have free access to these data.
 
The importance of the open exchange of information

The new web portal represents a breakthrough, because it allows scientists throughout the world access to genetic information, and this is expected to accelerate progress of our understanding and treating diabetes. “The open exchange of information is essential for scientific progress, but it is not always easily achievable. This site not only helps us to overcome this barrier – by allowing access to patient data from around the world – but also will allow directing scientists to the most prevalent genetic risk factors among the populations of Latin America and others who have been underrepresented in large-scale genomic studies,” says Lander who believes that, "It is essential that the benefits of the genomic revolution are accessible to people throughout the Americas and the world."

“The SIGMA project has been a story of total success. Our extraordinary partners, both in Mexico and the US, have made it possible to make historic advances in the understanding of the basic causes of T2DM. We hope that through our contributions we will be able to improve the ways in which the disease is detected, prevented and treated,” says Roberto Tapia-Conyer, CEO of the CSF.
 
Takeaways
 
So, for an investment of US$25m a year for three years SIGMA made a significant discovery, which could beneficially affect the diagnostics and treatment of T2DM, and it also enhanced Mexico’s capacity for genomic research. Such success was due, in part, to the leadership of a 77-year-old Mexican businessman intent on solving problems, who thought globally, partnered with world-class institutions, understood and supported the potential of big data strategies and genomic research, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Eric Lander against healthcare organizations, which build and defend bureaucratic walls that significantly restrict the open access of knowhow and data.
 
 
view in full page
9 years, 1 month ago

Improving diabetes education to enhance patient outcomes

HealthPad
Directory:
Diabetes
Tags:
commentary
diabetes courses
diabetes education
diabetes management
diabetes prevention
diabetes prevention program
healthcare costs
 
 
  • Diabetes UK’s (DUK) 2016 State of the Nation Report calls for diabetes education to be improved
  • Effective education can reduce the vast and escalating burden of diabetes and is significantly cheaper than treatment
  • Traditional diabetes education is failing miserably
  • DUK’s education only reaches a small percentage of people with diabetes
  • Self-management is the only realistic way forward to better diabetes management, but will require a transformation of the current patient-educator relationship
  • Could DUK play a leading role in this transformation?
 
Improving diabetes education to enhance patient outcomes
 
For the past decade at least, the charity Diabetes UK (DUK) has been “calling for governments to do more” to improve diabetes care in order to stem the vast and escalating burden of the condition. Currently, 4m people or 6% of the population are living with diabetes in the UK, and this is projected to rise to 5m by 2025. It is estimated that around 10% of the NHS yearly budget is contributed to the treatment of diabetes; which equates to £10.3bn a year.

The prevalence of type-2 diabetes (T2DM) in particular has been increasing rapidly, and is now one of the world’s most common long-term health conditions. Life expectancy on average is reduced by up to 10 years for people with T2DM. Experts say effective education can prevent the onset of T2DM, help with its management once diagnosed, and slow the onset of complications, such as heart failure, blindness, kidney disease and lower limp amputations. The 2016 DUK State of the Nation report called for diabetes education to be improved.
 
Traditional diabetes education is failing

In the video below Richard Lane, Ambassador and Immediate Past President of DUK, describes the significant improvements in diabetes education since he was first diagnosed in the 1970s, and briefly describes DAFNE (Dose Adjustment For Normal Eating), one of the official UK adult courses for managing type-1 diabetes. Also, a patient with type-1 describes how helpful she found some voluntary diabetes educational courses.
 
 

Notwithstanding individual successes, traditional diabetes education programs are failing to reach a sufficient number of people to be effective in reducing the overall burden of the condition. Only 2% of people diagnosed with type-1 diabetes and 6% with T2DM attend official diabetes educational courses. Each year there are 24,000 early deaths from diabetes-related complications, and also 7,000 avoidable amputations. DUK wants 50% of people living with diabetes to receive education over the next five years.
 
DUK's education and support

DUK spends about 50% of the money it raises annually on diabetes education. Of the £37m it raised in 2015 it spent £8.0m on its “Better Care Everywhere” program that works with healthcare institutions, “to make sure people had access to the 15 healthcare essentials”; £7.0m on its “Not Alone with Diabetes” program, which is its helpline; £1.5m “Reducing the Risk of Diabetes”, which is DUK’s participation in the National Diabetes Prevention Program; and £8.2m, “Growing the Impact of DUK’s Work”, which develops “networks of healthcare professionals,” to “work with local community groups and volunteers all over the country”: a total of £24.7m. 

Here we describe these expenditures as education and support services. Despite over £20m worth of diabetes educational and support services delivered by DUK each year, and the £10.3bn spent by the NHS on diabetes care and education, diabetes in the UK remains the largest and fastest growing health challenge of our time. “Diabetes is a very serious and complex health condition that requires constant self-management,” says Chris Askew, DUK’s CEO. 
 
A fundamental transformation is required

Increasing self-management is relevant, especially as resources for diabetes are shrinking as the prevalence of the condition is rapidly increasing, particularly among children. However, achieving effective self-management requires a fundamental transformation of the way diabetes education is delivered. 

It is projected that 66% of people in the UK will have smartphones by 2017. It seems reasonable to assume therefore that the majority of people  living with diabetes will have smartphones by 2017. People regularly use their smartphones for 24-hour banking, education, entertainment, shopping, and dating. Diabetes education has failed to effectively leverage this vast and rapidly growing free infrastructure and peoples’ changed lifestyles to introduce effective educational support systems to enhance the quality of diabetes care, increase efficiency, and improve patient outcomes. Today, mobile technology is part of everyday life and people expect to be connected with their relevant service providers 24-7, 365 days of the year from anywhere. 

Here is just one example of a simple evidence-based  dashboard designed to help re-engineer primary care management of diabetes by (i) increasing the connectivity between health professionals and patients, (ii) enhancing patient knowledge of diabetes, (iii) encouraging people to self-manage their condition, (iv) increasing the efficiency of GP clinics, and in the medium to longer term, (I) keep people out of A&E, and (ii) slow the onset of complications. 
 


Click on the image to see a demonstration of the dashboard
 

At very little cost, such a system could be rolled-out nationally through Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG), integrated into GP clinics, and provide the basis of a national platform for diabetes education. Once patients and health professionals become engaged and familiar with the initial service offering, CCGs can bolt on additional services to further help people ward-off or manage their diabetes. This follows the model of digital champions, which succeed by using a core service to engage, and build a user base, and then add more services, so continuously increasing their users’ familiarity with their services. Engaging patients and health professionals any other way tends to fail.

The  diabetes education dashboard ensures that people either at risk of diabetes or living with diabetes will always be part of an educator-patient network, which should increase the variety; velocity, volume and value of educational healthcare information patients receive.
 
The escalating incidence of diabetes is not new

Data reported by DUK in 2015 revealed that over the past decade the number of people living with diabetes increased by 60%, and the charity’s leaders claimed that the public health situation in the UK with regard to diabetes is being allowed “to spiral out of control”. “Diabetes already costs the NHS nearly £10bn a year, and 80% of this is spent on managing avoidable complications,” said Barbara Young, then the CEO of DUK. Such findings, while shocking, are not new. 
 
The vast and escalating burden of diabetes

Tackling diabetes is important for the future of the NHS as there are over 4m people living with diabetes in the UK at present. This represents 6% of the UK population, or 1 in every 16 people. About 90% of the cases have T2DM. 90% of people with T2DM are overweight. Lifestyle changes and weight loss can help to prevent T2DM from ever occurring. Obesity is 40% more common among people living in deprived areas. 11.9m people in the UK are currently at risk of developing T2DM, but more than half could delay or even prevent a diagnosis by improved diets and lifestyles. This requires effective education that engages people and encourage them towards healthier lifestyles. About 10% of the cases are Type-1, which usually develops in childhood, and is often inherited. The NHS spends £10.3bn every year on treating diabetes, which equates to 10% of its entire budget. 80% of this is spent on diabetes medication. The annual indirect costs, such as productivity loss and informal care, are estimated to be £13bn. Effective education is cheaper than treatment.
 
The government will not spend more on diabetes

DUK’s repeated calls for the government to do more for diabetes care have been unsuccessful. This is largely because the NHS is struggling to cope with a surge in demand for care while suffering a major budget squeeze. In 2016, the government took back control of overspending semi-autonomous hospitals as part of its crackdown to tackle a NHS deficit of £2.45bn; the biggest overspend in its history.
 
DUK is a significant provider of diabetes education

To look at some aspects of DUK’s educational achievements we have taken a selection of extracts from its 2015 Annual Report. Against each extract is a short comment.

DUK: “11,000 people learnt how to better understand and manage their condition through our Type 2 online education course.” 
 
COMMENT: This represents about 0.3% of the people in England diagnosed with T2DM.
 
DUK: “Our care line supported 22,361 people who needed encouragement, information or someone to talk to”. 
 
COMMENT: This represents about 0.6% of people in England living with diabetes.
 
DUK: “5.9m visits to the Diabetes UK website in 2015 – almost 10 per cent more than the year before – giving people the opportunity to learn more about the condition, what we do and how to get involved.”               
 
COMMENT: The key question here is the quality of the visit to the DUK website. Questions include inter alia: What is the average ‘dwell time’ for each visitor to DUK’s website? How many repeat visits does the website receive? What is the average number of pages viewed by visitors to DUK’S website? What are the most popular website pages viewed? What are the least popular website pages? How many visitors to the website come from the UK? What percentage of the people who visit the website “get involved”? How long do they stay involved? What percentage of the website’s visitors register with the site?
                                            
DUK: “15,196 people found out their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes at one of our Roadshows – and can now take steps to avoid it.” 
 
COMMENT: This represents about 0.1% of the people in the UK at risk of T2DM.
 
DUK: “Educated more than 17,000 healthcare professionals to better work with and support those living with diabetes.”
 
COMMENT: Is this cost-effective? Would not online engagement be more appropriate?
 
DUK: “11,000 people registered to educate themselves about managing their Type 2 diabetes via our online course Type 2 Diabetes and Me.”
 
COMMENT: This represents about 0.3% of people in England diagnosed with T2DM.
 
DUK: “11.9 million people in the UK are currently at risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, but more than half of those people could delay or even prevent a diagnosis . . . In 2015 we worked with NHS England and Public Health England to develop the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme. This partnership has the potential to help people in England who are at high risk delay – in some cases even prevent – Type 2 diabetes, and is being watched by the rest of the UK with interest.
 
COMMENT: In 2015 the UK government's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) observed that the national prevention initiative, which costs over £35m each year, lacked urgency, and recommended that it should, “develop a better and more flexible range of education support for diabetes patients.”
 
A HealthPad Commentary reviewed the national prevention program, described an innovative and successful US diabetes prevention initiative, and concluded that because the UK program employed 19th century technologies to address a 21st century epidemic it would likely fail. The Commentary further argued that preventing T2DM entails winning the battle against obesity, reducing poverty, and changing peoples’ diets and lifestyles. To do this, education programs need to employ modern behavior techniques to engage people and coax them to change their behaviour.
 
A further HealthPad Commentary, described the growing frustration of the government’s PAC and the National Audit Office (NAO) with the country’s diabetes establishment.
 
DUK: Our ‘Know Your Risk’ volunteers helped over 15,000 people find out their risk of Type 2 diabetes at one of our events, while our online tool was used over 240,000 times.”
 
COMMENT: This represents 0.47% and between 6 to 7.5% respectively of people living with T2DM in England.
 
DUK should report costs and outcomes not costs and the distribution of services

Two points about DUK’s statements of its educational achievements:
  1. The majority of the charity’s education and support services only appear to reach a small percentage of the total number of people either at risk of T2DM or those living with diabetes. We have drawn attention to the fact that a large percentage of people with T2DM are over weight and 40% of obese people reside in deprived areas of the UK. To be effective diabetes education must have the Heineken effect.
  2. For the past decade at least, the DUK has tended to report the costs and distribution of its education and support services. More relevant would be for the charity to report costs and the effects its services have had on reducing the burden of diabetes, slowing complications, improving efficiencies, and enhancing patient outcomes.
Diabetes education providers should adopt school performance measures

For years the UK’s state education service has been using pupil outcome measures to rate the performance of its schools. Why is this not the case for diabetes education? Can you imagine if year-after-year millions of children in England were failing their public examinations, and year-after-year education officers only reported the costs and distribution of their services?  Can you imagine if the public education services only taught a very small percentage of the children eligible for education and there was no information about children’s performance in examinations?
 
Would people accept an education report that said, “This year Worthy schools spent £20m on physics teaching, which only reached 0.3% of pupils who would benefit from the subject, and we have no idea what percentage of those that were taught either took or passed the recommended physics exams”?
 
Technologies facilitate and transform diabetes education

With failing education programs people with diabetes are being driven to self-manage their condition with inadequate support. Inexpensive and ubiquitous technologies facilitate this, and increasingly people are demanding tools that track weight, blood pressure, daily exercise and diet. From apps to wearables, healthcare technology lets people feel in control of their health, while also providing health professionals with more patient data than ever before. 
 
With more than 100,000 health apps, rapid growth in wearables, and 75% of the UK population now owning a smartphone, digital technology is well positioned to significantly improve diabetes education and management. Such technologies while ubiquitous, are ineffective if only used as an adjunct to traditional education. Traditional diabetes education programs have failed to introduce widespread digital support strategies, which significantly enhance the quality of care, increase efficiencies, and improve patient outcomes for the majority of people living with diabetes.
 
In the first video below Richard Lane describes how digital technology is helping people self-manage their diabetes. In the second, Lane and a patient diagnosed with T2DM suggest that the biggest challenge for diabetes care is actually engaging people who are either at risk of the condition or living with diabetes. Only once people are engaged do you stand a chance to raise their awareness of the disease, and encourage them to change their diets and lifestyles in order to slow the progression of the condition and even prevent it.
 
How can mHealth help in the management of diabetes?
 
What are the biggest challenges of diabetes care?
 
Changing the patient-educator relationship
 
Self-management of diabetes should not be viewed simply as developing a website and providing a portfolio of techniques and tools to help people living with diabetes choose healthy behaviours. A necessary pre-requisite for effective education to reduce the burden of diabetes is the actual engagement of people who are either at risk of T2DM or living with diabetes. (Where are the national diabetes registers?). Once engaged education should inform and empower people, and provide them with access to continuous self-management support. This is substantially different to the way traditional diabetes education is delivered as it transforms the patient–educator relationship into a continuous, rich, collaborative partnership. A future HealthPad Commentary will describe an innovative and cost effective Mexican mHealth program, which has radically changed the patient-educator relationship by encouraging people, who are either at risk of T2DM or living with the condition, to take ownership of their own health, and become an integral member of their care team.
 
Takeaways

Diabetes is an out of control killer disease, which experts belief could be stemmed, reduced and prevented with effective education that is significantly cheaper than paying for treatment. Current diabetes education programs are failing miserably, and the prevalence of the disease is increasing rapidly, especially in young children.

Diabetes education and support require a radical overhaul to prevent the disease from spiralling out of control and bankrupting the NHS. This needs leadership to shape and drive a new and effective diabetes engagement/education model. Could DUK provide this?
 
view in full page
9 years, 2 months ago

Future healthcare shock

HealthPad
Directory:
Health Policy
Tags:
big data
chronic disease
commentary
genomics
healthcare costs
healthcare data
human genome
medical technology
  • Healthcare systems throughout the world are in constant crisis
  • Attempts to introduce digital infrastructure to improve the quality of care, efficiency, and patient outcomes have failed
  • Modern healthcare systems were built on the idea that doctors provide healthcare with meaning and power, but this is changing
  • Advances in genetics and molecular science are rapidly eating away at doctors’ discretion and power
  • People are loosing their free will and increasingly being driven by big data strategies
  • An important new book suggests that a biotech-savvy elite will edit people's genomes and control health and healthcare with powerful algorithms, and that people will merge with computers
  • Homo sapiens will evolve into Homo Deus
 
Future healthcare shock
 
This book should be compulsory reading for everyone interested in health and healthcare, especially those grappling with strategic challenges. Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow, by Yuval Harari, a world bestselling author, published in 2016 is not for tacticians responding to their in-trays, but for healthcare strategists planning for the future.

The book is published a year after an OECD report concluded that NHS England is one of the worst healthcare systems in the developed world; hospitals are so short-staffed and under-equipped that people are dying needlessly. The quality of care across key health areas is “poor to mediocre”, obesity levels are “dire”, and the NHS struggles to get even the “basics” right. The UK came 21st out of 23 countries on cervical cancer survival, 20th on breast and bowel cancer survival and 19th on stroke.

Harari pulls together history, philosophy, theology, computer science and biology to produce an important and thought provoking thesis, which has significant implications for the future of health and healthcare. Homo Deus, more than the 2015 OECD Report,  will make you think.
 
Healthcare’s legacy systems an obstacle for change

While a large and growing universe of consumers regularly use smartphones, cloud computing, and global connectivity to provide them with efficient, high quality, 24-hour banking, education, entertainment, shopping, and dating, healthcare systems have failed to introduce digital support strategies to enhance the quality of care, increase efficiency, and improve patient outcomes.

Why?

The answer is partly due to entrenched legacy systems, and partly because digital support infrastructure is typically beyond the core mission of most healthcare systems. Devi Shetty, cardiac surgeon, founder and CEO of Narayana Health, and philanthropist, laments how digital technologies have, “penetrated every industry in the world except healthcare”, and suggests doctors and the medical community are the biggest obstaclesto change.
 
 
Doctors’ traditional raison d'être is being replaced by algorithms

Notwithstanding, modern medicine has conquered killer infectious diseases, and has successfully transformed them, “from an incomprehensible force of nature into a manageable challenge . . . For the first time in history, more people die today from old age than from infectious diseases,” says Harari.
 
Further, modern healthcare systems were built on the assumption that individual doctors provided healthcare systems with meaning and power. Doctors are free to use their superior knowledge and experience to diagnose and treat patients; their decisions can mean life or death. This endowed doctors and healthcare systems with their monopoly of power and their raison d'être. But such power and influence is receding, and rapidly being replaced by biotechnology and algorithms.
 
Healthcare systems in crisis

This radical change adds to the crisis of healthcare systems, which lack cash, and have a shrinking pool of doctors treating a large and growing number of patients, an increasing proportion of whom are presenting with complicated co-morbidities. Aging equipment in healthcare systems is neither being replaced nor updated, and additionally, there is a dearth of digital infrastructure to support patient care.
  
A symptom of this crisis is the large and increasing rates of misdiagnosis: 15% of all medical cases in developed countries are misdiagnosed, and according to The Journal of Clinical Oncology, a staggering 44% of some types of cancers are misdiagnosed, resulting in millions of people suffering unnecessarily, thousands dying needlessly, and billions of dollars being wasted. Doing more of the same will not dent this crisis.
 
Computers replacing doctors
 
As the demand for healthcare increases, healthcare costs escalate, and the supply of doctor’s decrease, so big data strategies and complex algorithms, which in seconds are capable of analysing and transforming terabytes of electronic healthcare data into clinically relevant medical opinions, are being introduced.
 
Such digital infrastructure erodes the status of doctors who no longer are expected solely to rely on their individual knowledge and experience to diagnose and treat patients. Today, doctors have access to powerful cognitive computing systems that understand, reason, learn, and do more than we ever thought possible. Such computers provide doctors almost instantaneous clinical recommendations deduced from the collective knowledge gathered from thousands of healthcare systems, billions of patient records, and millions of treatments other doctors have prescribed to people presenting similar symptoms and disease states. Unlike doctors, these computers never wear out, and can work 24-7, 365 days a year.
 
The train has left the station

One example is IBM’s Watson, which is able to read 40 million medical documents in 15 seconds, understand complex medical questions, and identify and present evidence based solutions and treatment options. Despite the resistance of doctors and the medical establishment the substitution of biotechnology and algorithms for doctors is occurring in healthcare systems throughout the world, and cannot be stopped. “The train is again pulling out of the station . . . . Those who miss it will never get a second chance”. For healthcare systems to survive and prosper in the 21st century is to understand and embrace “the powers of biotechnology and algorithms”. People and organizations that fail to do this will not survive, says Harari.
 
The impact of evolutionary science on healthcare systems

Roger Kornberg, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in chemistry, "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription", describes how human genome sequencing and genomics have fundamentally changed the way healthcare is organized and delivered. “Genomic sequencing enables us to identify every component of the body responsible for all life processes. In particular, it enables the identification of components, which are either defective or whose activity we may wish to edit in order to improve a medical condition,” says Kornberg.



 
The new world of ‘dataism’

Harari’s “new world” describes some of the implications of Kornberg’s discoveries, and suggests that evolutionary science is rapidly eroding doctors’ discretion and freewill, which are the foundation stones of modern healthcare systems and central to a doctors’ modus vivendi. Because evolutionary science has been programmed by millennia of development, our actions tend to be either predetermined or random. This results in the uncoupling of intelligence from consciousness and the “new world” as data-driven transformation, which Harari suggests is just beginning, and there is little chance of stopping it.
 
Over the past 50 years scientific successes have built complex networks that increasingly treat human beings as units of information, rather than individuals with free will. We have built big-data processing networks, which know our feelings better than we know them ourselves. Evolutionary science teaches us that, in one sense, we do not have the degree of free will we once thought. In fact, we are better understood as data-processing machines: algorithms. By manipulating data, scientists such as Kornberg, have demonstrated that we can exercise mastery over creation and destruction. The challenge is that other algorithms we have built and embedded in big data networks owned by organizations can manipulate data far more efficiently than we can as individuals. This is what Harari means by the “uncoupling” of intelligence and consciousness.
 
We are giving away our most valuable assets for nothing

Harari is not a technological determinist: he describes possibilities rather than make predictions. His thesis suggests that because of the dearth of leadership in the modern world, and the fact that our individual free-will is being replaced by data processors, we become dough for the Silicon Valley “Gods” to shape.
 
Just as African chiefs in the 19th Century gave away vast swathes of valuable land, rich in minerals, to imperialist businessmen such as Cecil Rhodes, for a handful of beads; so today, we are giving away our most valuable possessions  - vast amounts of personal data - to the new “Gods” of Silicon Valley: Amazon, Facebook, and Google for free. Amazon uses these data to tell us what books we like, and Facebook and Google use them to tell us which partner is best suited for us. Increasingly, big-data and powerful computers, rather than the individual opinion of doctors, drive the most important decisions we take about our health and wellbeing. Healthcare systems will cede jobs and decisions to machines and algorithms, says Harari.
 
Takeaways

For the time being, because of the entrenched legacy systems, health providers will continue to pay homage to our individuality and unique needs. However, in order to treat people effectively healthcare systems will need to “break us up into biochemical subsystems”, and permanently monitor each subgroup with powerful algorithms. Healthcare systems that do not understand and embrace this new world will perish. Only a relatively few early adopters will reap the rewards of the new technologies. The new elite will commandeer evolution with ‘intelligent’ design, edit peoples’ genomes, and eventually merge individuals with machines. Thus, according to Harari, a new elite caste of Homo sapiens will evolve into Homo Deus. In this brave new world, only the new “Gods”, with access to the ultimate source of health and wellbeing will survive, while the rest of mankind will be left behind.

Harari does not believe this new health world is inevitable, but implies that, in the absence of effective leadership, it is most likely to happen.
 
 
view in full page
9 years, 2 months ago

A major 21st century health challenge is under-reported for 40 years

HealthPad
Directory:
Weight Management
Tags:
behavioural science
behavioural techniques
children obesity
commentary
diabesity
diabetes
healthcare expenditure
healthy lifestyle
obesity
obesity prevention
  • It is one of the most serious global health challenges of the 21st century
  • It causes high incidence of morbidity, disability and premature mortality
  • It affects 30% of children and 62% of adults in the UK
  • It costs the UK £47bn a year
  • For 40 years official statistics have under-reported its main cause
  • Doctors have neither been able to reduce nor prevent it
  • Behavioural scientists are well positioned to reduce it
  
A major 21st century health challenge is under-reported for 40 years
 
A 2016 study by the UK’s Behavioural Insight Team (BIT) found that, for the past 40 years, official UK statistics have under-reported the main cause of it. The Office for National Statistics failed to pick up the fact that people consistently under-report the principal cause of it. “Such a large underestimate has misinformed policy debates, and led to less effective strategies to combat it,” says Michael Hallsworth, co-author of the study. Jamie Jenkins, head of health analysis at the Office for National Statistics, replied, “We are actively investigating a range of alternative data sources to improve our understanding of the causes of obesity”.
  
Obesity should be treated like terrorism

Although we know how to prevent obesity, it devastates the lives of millions and costs billions. In the UK obesity affects 33% of primary school children, and 62% of adults. Its prevalence among adults rose from 15% to 26% between 1993 and 2014. In 20 years, obese adults are expected to increase to 73%.
 
The UK spends £640m on programs to prevent obesity. Each year, the NHS spends £8bn treating it, and obesity has the second-largest overall economic impact on the UK; generating an annual loss equivalent to 3% of GDP. 
 
The World Health Organization warns that obesity is, “one of the most serious global public health challenges of the 21st century”. The UK’s Health Secretary says obesity is a “national emergency”, and the UK’s Chief Medical Officer argues that obesity should be treated similarly to “terrorism”.
 
Here we suggest how behavioural science rather than doctors can help to reduce and prevent obesity.
 
Vast, persistent and growing

Although we know how to address obesity, there are few effective interventions in place to reduce it. According to a 2014 McKinsey Global Institute study, the UK Government’s efforts to tackle obesity are, ''too fragmented to be effective'', while investment in its prevention is, ''low given the scale of obesity''. Being obese in childhood has both short and long-term consequences. Once established, obesity is notoriously difficult to treat. This raises the importance of prevention. Obese children are more likely to become obese adults, and thereby have a significantly higher risk of morbidity, disability and premature mortality. The global rise in obesity has led to an urgent call for action, but still its prevalence, which is significant, is rapidly increasing.
 
The incidence of certain cancers is significantly higher in obese people, and is expected to increase 45% in the next two decades. Professor Karol Sikora, a leading cancer expert, describes the association, but says we do not know the reasons why, and Dr Seth Rankin, Founder and CEO of the London Doctors Clinicsuggests that virtually every health problem known to mankind is made worse by obesity:
 

Prof. Karol Sikora - Cancer linked to obesity


Dr Seth Rankin - Can being overweight lead to health problems?
 
 The success and growth of Nudge Units

A previous Commentary drew attention to the fact that obesity is connected with a relationship between the gut and brain. Gut microbiota are important in the development of the brain, and research suggests that an increasing number of different gut microbial species regulate brain functions to cause obesity. Notwithstanding, the UK’s Behavioural Insight Team (BIT), which started life in 2010 as a government policy group known as the "Nudge Unit", revolutionized the way we get people to change their entrenched behaviours, and this has important implications for public policy strategies to reduce and prevent obesity.
 
Under the leadership of David Halpern, the BIT has been very successful and has quadrupled in size since it was spun out of government in 2014. Now a private company with some 60 people, the Nudge Unit permeates almost every area of government policy, and also is working with Bloomberg Philanthropies on a US$42m project to help solve some of the biggest problems facing US cities. The UK’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has set up its own nudge unit, and nudge teams are being established throughout the world.
 
The genesis of Nudge Units

It all started in 2008 with the ground-breaking publication on behavioral economics, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, written by US academics Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. Their thesis suggests that simply making small changes to the way options are framed and presented to people “nudges” them to change their lifestyles without actually restricting their personal freedoms. Politicians loved the thesis, not least because it was cheap and easy to implement, and ‘Nudge’ became compulsory reading among politicians and civil servants. “Nudge Units” were set up in the White House and in 10 Downing Street to improve public services and save money by tackling previously intractable policy issues.
 
Nudging people to change

The UK’s Nudge Unit has, among other things, signed up an extra 100,000 organ donors a year, persuaded 20% more people to consider switching energy provider, and doubled the number of army applicants. Now it is turning its attention to health and healthcare, and already has implemented behavior change strategies that motivate individuals to initiate and maintain healthier lifestyles. The Unit’s strategies that have demonstrated self-efficacy and self management are examples that can be further incorporated into lifestyle change programs, which help people maintain healthy habits even after a program ends and thereby be a significant factor in reducing and preventing obesity.
 
Takeaway
 
Doctors understand the physiology of obesity, but they do not understand the psychology of people living with it. Doctors are equipped to treat the morbidities and disabilities associated with obesity, but ill-equipped to reduce and prevent it. The sooner the Nudge Unit is tasked with reducing and preventing obesity the better.
 
view in full page
9 years, 2 months ago

Diabetes and cardiovascular disease

HealthPad
Directory:
Diabetes
Tags:
blood pressure control
commentary
CVD
diabetes complications
diabetes management
glycaemic control
insulin therapy
type 1 diabetes
type 2 diabetes
  • Diabetes is closely associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD)
  • Heart attack and stroke cause premature death in people with diabetes
  • People living with type-2 diabetes can prevent or slow the onset of CVD
  • Lower CVD risk by exercising, eating healthily, controlling your weight, and giving up smoking
 
Diabetes and cardiovascular disease

Diabetes is treatable, but people with diabetes have a greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) than people who do not have diabetes. Indeed, adults with diabetes are two to four times more likely to develop heart disease or a stroke than adults without diabetes. The reason for this is because people with diabetes, particularly type-2 diabetes (T2DM), may have specific conditions that contribute to their risk of developing CVD. These include high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol and high triglycerides, obesity, physical inactivity, high and poorly controlled blood sugars, and smoking.

Keeping your diabetes under control by managing the risk factors will help protect your heart health. Most people with T2DM are prone to accelerated atherosclerosis, and could ultimately die of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Many will die prematurely. Overall, the incidence of CVD is declining, but for people with diabetes it is increasing.

Much of diabetes care is the prevention of CVD by modifying blood pressure, blood glucose, and lipids, and this involves both medical therapies, and lifestyle changes, as Dr Roni Sharvanu Saha, Consultant in Acute Medicine, Diabetes and Endocrinology at St George's Hospital, London, explains:
 
 
Blood pressure and glycaemic control

Blood pressure and glycaemic control often require multiple drug therapies, which are less likely to produce side effects than a signal agent. Glycaemic control is important for controlling both macro and micro vascular disease. The former includes myocardial infarction and stroke; the prime causes of excess mortality in diabetes. Preventing microvascular complications is important to reduce the risk of retinopathy, and nephropathy. 
 
Insulin therapy

Increasing numbers of people with T2DM are using insulin therapy to achieve tight glycaemic control. The challenge is to reconcile reduced HbA1c with the risk of hypoglycaemia. There is an important debate between tight and adequate glycaemic control.  A 2014 Australian study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that there is no evidence that tight glucose control leads to long-term benefits with respect to mortality or macrovascular events. 
 
Antihypertensive medication
 
The majority of people with T2DM whose blood pressure is not within the 140/80-range will require antihypertensive medication, which is usually an angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor. If the target blood pressure is not achieved, a calcium channel blocker or diuretic can be taken in combination. ACE inhibitors are inappropriate for pregnant women, and may be a less effective alternative for those of Afro Caribbean descent where a calcium channel blocker may be more effective.
 
Lipid lowering
 
Lipids are fat-like substances in the blood, and cholesterol is one type of lipid. In order for lipids to travel in the blood they must be coated with protein: lipoprotein. Excess cholesterol is detected by measuring lipoprotein. High cholesterol is a major controllable risk factor for CVD. As blood cholesterol rises, so does the risk of CVD. Recommended targets for cholesterol lowering in diabetes are total cholesterol bad cholesterol,

People with high cholesterol may be prescribed a statin, which is a group of medications that can lower bad cholesterol, and thereby reduce the risk of CVD, as Professor Olaf Wendler,Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon at King’s College Hospital and  Professor of Cardiac Surgery at King’s College London explains :
 

However, high cholesterol is just one risk, and statins are usually offered to people who have been diagnosed with a form of CVD, or whose personal and family medical histories suggest they are likely to develop CVD at some point over the next 10 years.
 
Side effects

Statins are tablets to be taken at the same time once a day, and in most cases, will need to continue for life, as stopping the medication will cause high cholesterol levels to return within a few weeks.
 
There are significant risks associated with mixing statins and grapefruit, which include muscle breakdown, liver damage and kidney failure. Statins also carry other risks, such as digestive problems, increased blood sugar and neurological side effects, including confusion and memory loss.
 
Lifestyle

In addition to drugs, people with T2DM experiencing hypertension, and high cholesterol are encouraged to eat a healthy diet low in saturated fats, exercise regularly, stop smoking, and reduce salt and alcohol. Smoking is particularly harmful for people with diabetes since it increases the risk of macrovascular disease and microvascular complications.
 
Takeaways

Diabetes is closely associated with CVD. Heart attack and stroke are the major causes of premature death in people with diabetes. With the rising prevalence of diabetes, especially in developed countries, the double jeopardy of diabetes and CVD is set to result in an explosion unless preventive action is taken.
 
Managing T2DM involves a combination of drugs and lifestyle. Self-management is enhanced by increased knowledge of the condition. People living with T2DM can either prevent or slow the onset of CVD by increasing their physical exercise, eating a healthy balanced diet, controlling their weight, and giving up smoking.
 
view in full page
9 years, 3 months ago

Diabetes and kidney disease

HealthPad
Directory:
Diabetes
Tags:
chronic kidney disease
CKD
commentary
diabetes complications
diabetic kidney disease
kidney damage
renal function
type 1 diabetes
type 2 diabetes
 

  • Diabetic kidney disease is an epidemic
  • People with severe kidney disease often do not realize it as its symptoms are non specific
  • People living with the condition need to become more active in its management
  • GPs often do not recognise diabetic kidney disease and fail to refer patients to specialists
  • Kidney failure is one of the most severe and life-threatening complications of diabetes
  • Kidney damage from diabetes accounts for 35% of people with end stage renal disease
  • Chronic kidney disease  (CKD) is diagnosed through specific blood and urine tests
  • CKD can be treated with medicines and lifestyle changes
  • Management of CKD includes glycaemic control, blood pressure control and smoking cessation

Diabetes and kidney disease

Diabetic kidney disease has become an epidemic; people living with diabetes need to become more active in its management in order to either slow the onset of kidney disease or to stabilize it.
 
It is not easy.
 
People with severe kidney disease often do not realize it. Primary care doctors often do not recognise it, and fail to refer patients to specialists. According to the US Renal Data System, 42% of patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) had not seen a kidney specialist or nephrologist prior to beginning therapy.  

Kidney failure is one of the most severe and life-threatening complications of diabetes. About 30% of people with type-1 diabetes, and between 10% and 40% of those with type-2 diabetes eventually will suffer from kidney failure. Over the next decade, it is projected that twice as many people will suffer from diabetes related kidney failure.
 
Silent killer

"There is an explosion of kidney disease, but a lot of doctors are not aware of the strong association with diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension," says Dr Robert Stanton, chief of the kidney and hypertension section at Harvard’s Joslin Diabetes Center. "You can slow down kidney disease, and maybe stabilize it. But if you wait too long, very little can be done," says Stanton.
 
Kidney damage from diabetes (diabetic nephropathy) accounts for 35% of people with ESRD. In 2015 some 35,000 people in the UK required kidney dialysis. In the US, more than 100,000 people are diagnosed with kidney failure each year, and an estimated 31 million people have chronic kidney disease (CKD). In India there are some eight million people suffering from chronic kidney failure. Lloyd Vincent, Senior Consultant Nephrologist at Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore, India, here explains how diabetes control is related to kidney function:
 

 
The only way to find out for sure whether you have CKD is through specific blood and urine tests. Once detected, CKD can be treated with medicines and lifestyle changes. These treatments usually decrease the rate at which CKD worsens, and can prevent additional health problems.
 
Your kidneys and diabetes

Your kidneys perform vital functions such as filtering your blood and stimulating your red blood cell production. Diabetes damages small blood vessels in your body, including those in your kidneys. This means your kidneys cannot clean your blood properly, and wastes cannot be removed from your blood, which means kidney failure. Diabetes may also result in nerve damage, which can cause difficulty in emptying your bladder. The pressure resulting from a full bladder can back-up and injure your kidneys. Also, if urine remains in your bladder for a long time, you can develop an infection from the rapid growth of bacteria in urine, and this can affect your kidneys.
 
Early signs

An early sign of diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is an increased excretion of albumin in the urine. Albumin is present long before usual tests show evidence of kidney disease. Weight gain, high blood pressure, ankle swelling, and the need to use the bathroom more at night are also signs. A person with diabetes should have their blood, urine and blood pressure checked at least once a year. Maintaining control of diabetes can lower the risk of developing severe kidney disease.
 
Late signs

As kidneys fail, blood urea nitrogen (BUN) levels rise, as do levels of creatinine in your blood. Signs of late stage kidney disease include nausea, vomiting, appetite loss, weakness, fatigue, itching, muscle cramps (especially in the legs), and anaemia. Also, a person with diabetes might find they need less insulin, which is because diseased kidneys cause less breakdown of insulin.
 
Takeaways
 
Diabetic kidney disease is essentially a microvascular complication, which triggers a vicious circle by promoting macrovascular processes as well. Early intervention is crucial and prevention encouraged. The most effective strategies include: glycaemic control, blood pressure control, and smoking cessation.
 
 
view in full page
9 years, 4 months ago

Slowing the steep rise of antimicrobial resistance

HealthPad
Directory:
Medical Technology
Tags:
AMR
antibiotics overuse
antimicrobial resistance
biosensors
biosensor technology
commentary
diagnostic biomarkers
diagnostic device
sensing technology
wide spectrum antibiotics

  • Currently 700,000 people die each year from Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) and this could rise to 10 milion by 2050
  • AMR could make routine surgeries and childbirth as dangerous and lethal as in the pre-antibiotic era killing millions and costing trillions worldwide
  • Doctors inappropriately prescribing antibiotics for minor aliments shorten the useful life of antibiotics threatening modern medicine as there is an antibiotic pipeline deficiency
  • 90% of GPs feel pressured by patients to prescribe antibiotics
  • 70% of GPs are unsure whether sore throat and respiratory infections are viral or bacterial resulting in 50% of sore throats receiving antibiotics
  • Clinical diagnosis leads to 50% of patients with a sore throat being prescribed antibiotics without having Group A Streptococcal infection
  • 30% of patients with pharyngitis will not be treated but will be infected with Group A Streptococci
  • 24% of doctors say they lack easy-to-use diagnostic tools
  • 10m prescriptions for antibiotics are handed out in England each year to patients who do not need them
  • A Nobel Laureate has developed a new technology to provide rapid, accurate, cost-effective diagnosis of bacterial sore throat resulting in informed prescribing and reducing unnecessary antibiotic usage
 
Slowing the steep rise of antimicrobial resistance
 
Should we listen when a professor of medicine and a Nobel Laureate says that the technology already exists to develop a cheap hand held device, which can rapidly and accurately diagnose a bacterial sore throat?  
 
Without such a device to determine whether minor ailments require antibiotics, doctors will continue to prescribe them, and thereby contribute to the steep rise in Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). In 2016 the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the UK government’s NHS watchdog, reported that as many as 10m prescriptions for antibiotics are handed out in England every year to patients who do not need them. According to a 2016 report on AMR, by 2050 a staggering, “10m people will die from AMR each year . . . . The world needs rapid diagnostics to improve our use of antibiotics,” says the report.
 
Sore throat
 
Acute throat infections are among the most common infectious diseases presented to primary healthcare and A&E departments and are frequently misdiagnosed. They are responsible for 2 to 4% of all primary care visits. Viruses cause 85% to 95% of throat infections in adults and children younger than 5. For those aged 5 to 15, viruses cause about 70% of throat infections, with the other 30% due to bacterial infections, mostly group A β-hemolytic streptococcus (GAS), which can cause 0.5m deaths a year. There are challenges in diagnosing GAS because its signs and symptoms are often indistinguishable from viral and other causes of sore throat.
 
If a doctor intends to treat suspected GAS pharyngitis, it is generally recommended that laboratory confirmation of the presence of GAS be sought to limit unnecessary antibiotic prescription. The gold standard laboratory investigation is of a bacterial culture of a throat swab. However, this is expensive, and there is a relatively long lag time between the collection of the specimen and final microbiological diagnosis: so doctors tend not to it. 
 
Rapid antigen diagnostic tests (RADTs) are an alternative to the gold standard laboratory test for GAS. However, widespread use of RADTs has been hindered by low sensitivity for most commonly used RADTs (immunoassays). Reviews of RADTs performance have identified significant variability in the diagnostic accuracy, especially sensitivity, between different test methodologies.
 
Urgent need for rapid and accurate diagnostic test
 
A principal recommendation of a 2016 report on AMR is to ban doctors from prescribing antibiotics until they have carried out rapid tests to prove the infection is bacterial. The report also stresses that doctors need urgent help to temporise their use of antibiotics if AMR is to be reduced.

Notwithstanding, the AMR challenge is bigger than doctors overprescribing antibiotics. Farmers feed antibiotics to livestock and poultry, and spray them on crops to make our food supply ‘safer’. We dump antibiotics in rivers, and even paint them on the hulls of boats to prevent the build up of barnacles. However, it seems reasonable to suggest that successfully reducing doctors’ over prescribing antibiotics would represent a significant contribution to denting the burden of AMR. To do this, “We need a step change in the technology available . . . Governments of the richest countries should mandate now that, by 2020, all antibiotic prescriptions will need to be informed by up to date surveillance and a rapid diagnostic test,” urges the AMR report.
 
The technological ‘step change’, which the report says is essential, has already been achieved, says Roger Kornberg, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and Nobel Laureate for Chemistry. “Advanced biosensor technology enables virtually instantaneous, extraordinarily sensitive, electronic detection of almost any biomarker (protein, nucleic acid, small molecule, etc.). With relatively modest resources it would only be a matter of months to develop a simple, affordable handheld device, which not only would tell you immediately and accurately whether a sore throat requires antibiotics or not, but would also tell you which antibiotics you require, and for how long you should take them,” says Kornberg. See videos below in which Kornberg describes how tried and tested biosensor technology could facilitate rapid and accurate diagnosis of a sore throat.
 
 
Bionsensors in diagnosing a sore throat
 


Instant diagnosis of a strep throat
 
Serious and growing threat
 
Each year, millions of people throughout the developed world present themselves to their doctors with minor ailments, such as a sore throat. 97% of these patients demand antibiotics although 90% of their ailments are viral and therefore do not require antibiotics. 90% of doctors, who do not have the means to rapidly and accurately determine whether a minor ailment requires antibiotics, feel pressured by patients to prescribe them.
 
A 2014 study of four million NHS patients from 537 GP practices in England found that more than 50% of those presenting with a minor ailment were prescribed antibiotics, despite warnings that the medication will not help, but increases their risk of developing resistance. The study, by scientists at Public Health England and University College London, published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, found that antibiotic prescriptions for minor ailments increased by some 40% between 1999 and 2011. 70% of GPs surveyed said they prescribed antibiotics because they were unsure whether patients had viral or bacterial infections, and 24% of GPs said it was because of a lack of an easy-to-use, rapid and accurate diagnostic device.
 
Superbugs will kill millions and cost trillions
 
Concerned about the rising levels of drug resistance whereby microbes evolve to become immune to known drugs, in 2014 the UK Government, in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, commissioned a review of the large and growing global burden of AMR. Jim O’Neill, a former Goldman Sachs chief economist who coined the phrase “BRICS”, was appointed to lead the endeavour and propose actions to tackle AMR. In 2015 O’Neill was elevated to the House of Lords, and appointed Secretary to the UK government’s Treasury.

During the 18 months it took O’Neill to complete his final report, one million people worldwide died from AMR. At least 25,000 people die each year in Europe from AMR. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 2m people in the US become infected with resistant bacteria every year, and at least 23,000 of them die. According to O’Neill, “If we don't do something about antibiotic resistance, we will be heading towards a world with no-antibiotic treatments for those who need them.”
 
A threat to modern medicine
 
O’Neill’s findings are congruent with warnings from the World Health Organization (WHO), which suggests AMR is a crisis worse than the Aids epidemic – which has caused some 25m deaths worldwide – and threatens to turn the clock back on modern medicine. The misuse of antibiotics has created, “A problem so serious that it threatens the achievements of modern medicine. A post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can kill, far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the 21st century,” says a 2014 WHO report. “Superbugs risk making routine surgery potentially lethal, killing millions and costing the world economy US$100 trillion a year by the middle of the century,” says O’Neill.
 
These dire warnings are supported by a case study of AMR published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in 2016, which suggests that we might be closer to a "post-antibiotic era" than we think. A particular group of bacteria (Gram-negative) have become increasingly resistant to currently available antimicrobial drugs. Colistin is one of the only antibiotics that still show some effectiveness against such infections, but the study suggests that even Colistin may no longer be effective.
 
Takeaways
 
AMR is widely recognized as a serious and growing worldwide threat to human health. New forms of AMR continue to arise and spread, leaving doctors with few weapons to bring potentially life-threatening infections under control. The injudicious use of antimicrobials, and the proliferation of AMR pathogens are compounded by the inability to rapidly and accurately diagnose minor ailments such as sore throats. Professor Kornberg has an answer.
view in full page
9 years, 5 months ago

Lung cancer and cutting edge stem cell therapy

HealthPad
Directory:
Cancer
Tags:
cancer reasearch
cell-gene therapy
commentary
lung cancer
stem cell bank
stem cells research
stem cell therapies
  • Stem cell study aims to improve prospects for lung cancer sufferers
  • Professor Sikora suggests that lung cancer is associated with poverty
  • Current therapies for lung cancer extend life by only a few months
  • Lung cancer kills more people than any other cancer

Lung cancer and cutting edge stem cell therapy

In 2015 a combined stem cell and gene therapy for lung cancer started its first clinical study in the UK. Professor Sam Janes of University College London, the study’s leader, said: “This will be the first UK cell therapy for lung cancer, and the biggest manufacturing of cells of its kind.” 

Dr Chris Watkins, director of translational research at the Medical Research Council, which is funding the study, said: “Lung cancer kills more men and women than any other cancer, and improving the outcome for patients with this terrible disease is one of the biggest challenges we face. This new therapy, which uses modified stem cells to target the tumour directly is truly at the cutting edge.”
 
Few studies
 
The use of stem cells for treating lung diseases has increasing appeal, but as yet, little is known about the effects of administering stem cell therapy to patients with lung diseases. Currently, there are only a small number of approved clinical studies in the US and Canada investigating cell therapy approaches for lung diseases. Patrick O’Brien a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at University College Hospital, London describes an initiative to create a national stem cell bank in the UK: 
 
       
 
Lung cancer
 
Lung cancer is the most common cancer worldwide, accounting for 1.8 million new cases and 1.6 million deaths in 2012. This year, an estimated 224,210 adults in the US, 40,000 in the UK, and 169,000 in India will be diagnosed with lung cancer, 90% of which are and caused by smoking. Of those diagnosed, 95% will die within ten years, although early stage lung cancer has a much better survival rate. Professor Karol Sikora, a world respected oncologist, and campaigner for better universal cancer treatment, suggests that lung cancer is associated with poverty:
 
    

Traditional therapies
 
Cell-gene therapy holds out new hope. “Lung cancer is very difficult to treat because the vast majority of patients are not diagnosed until the cancer has spread to other parts of the body. One therapy option for these patients is chemotherapy, but even if successful this treatment can normally only extend lives by a handful of months,” says Janes. Current therapeutic strategies of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and clinical studies with new-targeted therapies have only demonstrated, at best, extension in survival by a few months.
 
Innovative approach
 
“We aim to improve prospects for lung cancer patients by using a highly targeted therapy using stem cells, which have an innate tendency to home in on tumours when they’re injected into the body. Once there, they switch on a ‘kill’ pathway in the cancer cells, leaving healthy surrounding cells untouched,” says Janes. His study will test the treatment in human volunteers, firstly to check that the treatment is safe, and then in 56 lung cancer patients to see how effective the gene-cell therapy compares with standard care. Each patient in the study will receive three infusions comprised of billions of cells in parallel with chemotherapy.
 
Takeaways

A key advantage of Janes’ proposed treatment is that the cells do not have to be closely matched to a person’s tissue type or genetic profile. They are simply taken “off the shelf” from existing bone marrow supplies. This is because the cells have relatively few proteins on their surface, and do not induce an immune response in the recipient.
 
view in full page
9 years, 5 months ago

Can the obesity epidemic learn from the way Aids was tackled?

HealthPad
Directory:
Diabetes
Tags:
behavioural techniques
chronic disease prevention
commentary
diabesity
healthcare costs
healthy lifestyle
obesity
Type 2 diabetes

 
  • Obesity is common, serious and costly
  • Obese adults in the UK will soar by a staggering 73% to 26m by 2030
  • Obesity generates an annual loss equivalent to 3% of the UK’s GDP
  • Obesity cost NHS England £8bn in 2015
  • The obesity epidemic will only get worse unless we take effective action
  • Innovative research to control appetite could provide a cheap and scalable answer to the obesity epidemic
  • The UK’s obesity crisis should learn from the way AIDS was tackled 

Can the obesity epidemic learn from the way Aids was tackled?
 
Obesity is a common chronic health challenge, which is serious and costly.It is one of the biggest risk factors for type-2 diabetes (T2DM) and together - obesity and T2DM - form a rapidly growing global diabesity epidemic, which today affects some 9m people in England.
 
Experts forecast the incidence rate of obesity will rise sharply, and bankrupt the NHS. Conventional strategies to reduce obesity and prevent T2DM have failed. According to the Mayo Clinic it is common to regain weight no matter what weight loss treatment methods you try, and you might even regain weight after weight-loss surgery. This Commentary suggests that extra resources are urgently needed to accelerate and broaden innovative obesity research.
  
Efforts to tackle obesity are low priority and fragmented
 
Overweight and obesity lead to adverse metabolic effects on blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance. Risks of coronary heart disease, ischemic stroke, and T2DM increase steadily with raised body mass index (BMI). High BMI also increases the risk of osteoarthritis; sleep apnoea, gallbladder disease, and some cancers. Cancer Research UK predicts that obesity related cancers are expected to increase 45% in the next two decades, causing 700,000 new cases of cancer. Mortality rates will increase with increasing degrees of obesity. It is therefore important that obesity is treated aggressively. According to a 2014 McKinsey Global Institute study, the UK’s Government efforts to tackle obesity are ''too fragmented to be effective'', while investment in obesity prevention is ''relatively low given the scale of the problem''.
 
A multi-generational problem
 
The 2014 Health Survey found that 61.7% of adults in England (16 years or over) are either overweight or obese, and the prevalence of obesity among adults rose from 14.9% to 25.6% between 1993 and 2014. The number of obese adults in the UK is forecast to soar by a staggering 73% to 26m over the next 20 years.

In 2014-15, there were 440,288 hospital admissions in England due to obesity: 10 times higher than the 40,741 recorded in 2004-5. In England one in five children in their first year at school, and one in three in year 6 are obese or overweight. Also, in the past 10 years there has been a doubling of children admitted to hospital for obesity. Over the past three years 2,015 overweight youngsters needed hospital treatment, and 43 of these have had to undergo weight-loss surgery to reduce the size of their stomachs. Today, diabesity is a multi-generational problem, which suggests that far worse is still to come.
 
Costs and spends
 
The UK spends less than £638 million a year on obesity prevention programs - about 1% of the country's social cost of obesity. But the NHS spends about £8bn a year on the treatment costs of conditions related to being overweight or obese and a further £10bn on diabetes.
 
Obesity is a greater burden on the UK’s economy than armed violence, war and terrorism, costing the country nearly £47bn a year, the 2014 McKinsey study found. Obesity has the second-largest economic impact on the UK behind smoking, generating an annual loss equivalent to 3% of GDP. The current rate of obesity and overweight conditions suggest the cost to NHS England alone could increase from £8bn in 2015 to between £10bn and £12bn in 2020.
 
19th century technologies for a 21st pandemic
 
A year after the publication of the McKinsey study, the UK government launched a national Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) led by NHS England, Public Health England (PHE), and the charity Diabetes UK (DUK). The program offers people at risk of T2DM an intensive personalised course in weight loss, physical activity and diet, comprising of 13 one-to-one, two-hour sessions, spread over nine months, and is expected to significantly reduce the estimated five million overweight and obese people in England, and thereby prevent them from developing T2DM. A previous Commentary predicted that the DPP would fail because it is using a 19th century labour intensive method to address a 21st epidemic.
 
This suggests that the diabesity epidemic will only get worse unless we take more urgent and effective action. A view supported by Majid Ezzati, Professor of Global Environmental Health at Imperial College, London, and the senior author of the most comprehensive review of obesity ever undertaken, and published in The Lancet in April 2016. According to Ezzati, “The epidemic of severe obesity is too extensive to be tackled with medications such as blood pressure lowering drugs or diabetes treatments alone, or with a few extra bike lanes”.
 
Radical action: weight loss surgery
 
The gravity of the UK’s obesity epidemic is demonstrated by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) 2016 suggestion to lower the threshold at which overweight people are offered weight loss surgery. The UK lags behind other European countries in this regard, and experts argue that lowering the threshold would mean the number of people who qualify for weight loss surgery would increase significantly.

According to a report prepared by English surgeons, weight-loss surgery would make people healthier and save the NHS money. The report concluded that after weight loss surgery obese people are 70% less likely to have a heart attack, those with T2DM are nine times more likely to see major improvements in their condition, and also the surgery has a positive effect on angina and sleep apnoea. If all the 1.4m most severely obese people in the UK had weight loss surgery, which costs the NHS around £6,000 per operation, the total cost would be £8.4bn.
 
Weight loss surgery and the brain
 
Initially it was thought that weight-loss surgery worked by reducing the amount of food that can be held by the stomach. However, some patients were found to have elevated levels of satiety hormones, the chemical signals released by the gut to control digestion and hunger cravings in the brain. Patients who had undergone surgery were also found to prefer less fatty foods, which supports the thesis that the hormones also change the patients’ desire to eat, and reinforce the gut brain relationship. This finding reinforces the important link between the gut and the brain on which some of the most promising obesity research is predicated.
 
Gut brain relationship
 
Dr Syed Sufyan Hussain, Darzi Fellow in Clinical Leadership, Specialist Registrar and Honorary Clinical Lecturer in Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism at Imperial College London describes the gut-brain relationship and explains why we eat and why we stop eating:
 

 
Cheap, safe and scalable treatment for obesity
 
The person who has spent most of his professional life searching for cheap, safe and scalable alternatives to weight loss surgery and ineffective weight loss therapies is Professor Sir Steve Bloom, Head of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism at Imperial College London. Bloom believes that the answer to the UK’s obesity epidemic lies in the gut-brain relationship, and is working on two innovative methods of appetite control, which he and his colleagues believe could significantly reduce the burden of obesity.
 
Method 1: an implantable microchip
 
One method is comprised of a small implantable microchip attached to the vagus nerve to suppress appetite in a natural way. The chip reads and processes both electrical and chemical signatures of appetite within the vagus nerve, and then sends electrical signals to the brain to either reduce or stop eating. Bloom has proven the method’s concept, and in 2013 was awarded €7m from the European Research Council to continue his research. Early findings suggest that chemical rather than electrical impulses are more selective and precise, and the chip reduces both consumption and hunger pangs. All things being equal, it will take another 10 years before this treatment gets to market.
 
Method 2: naturally occurring hormones
 
Bloom is also working on another method to treat obesity, which uses naturally occurring hormones that reduce appetite. Early clinical studies suggest that people will consume 13% fewer calories when they eat a meal after taking the hormones. In 2013 Bloom received £2m from the Medical Research Council to develop this research. One of the significant challenges he faces is hormones normally last only a few minutes in the human body. To overcome this Bloom and his colleagues have had to develop versions of the hormones that can last up to a week before they start breaking down. This suggests that patients could take a single weekly injection to control their appetites. Another approach would be to develop a device, which delivers the hormones continuously. While promising, this method too will take 10 years to get to market.
 
Takeaway: treat obesity the same as Aids
 
Bloom believes that if we approached obesity as we did Aids, the time to develop a cheap, effective and scalable drug for weight control could be cut by half. "The obesity pandemic is the biggest disease that has hit mankind ever in terms  [of] numbers. It is killing more people than anything else has ever killed, . . . . . . . in terms of disease [there are] more deaths from obesity than anything we have known about. The time needed to develop an effective drug could be cut by more than half if conservative checks and balances were loosened. I think we might need to treat obesity in a hurry, and we are being held up. The Aids lobby forced Aids’ drugs on to the market before they had finished testing, but they turned out to be useful and lives were saved. Something similar should be considered for obesity,” says Bloom.
 
view in full page
9 years, 6 months ago

Behavioral scientists not doctors will prevent CVD

HealthPad
Directory:
Vascular Disease
Tags:
behavioural science
behavioural techniques
cardiovascular disease
Cardio vascular risks
commentary
CVD
risk calculator
 
  • 90% of the 17m heart related deaths each year are preventable
  • Not preventing heart disease will cost US$47 trillion over the next 20 years
  • UK and US cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk calculators found to be faulty
  • Doctors play a leading role in CVD prevention
  • Doctors well equipped to diagnose and treat CVD, but ill equipped to prevent it
  • Behavioral scientists not doctors should spearhead CVD prevention strategies


Behavioral scientists not doctors will prevent CVD
 
Should we trust clinicians to devise and implement preventative healthcare strategies?
No!
Behavioral experts with knowhow and experience in techniques that successfully nudge people to initiate and maintain healthy lifestyles, rather than doctors should lead chronic disease prevention strategies. Clinicians are programed to diagnose and treat according to strict guidelines, and preventing disease is not in their DNA.
 
What is in this commentary?
 
This Commentary focuses on CVD, but its message applies to any disease prevention strategy. It reviews a number of high profile CVD tools from the UK, USA and India, and found that a CVD risk calculator developed by world-renowned UK cardiologists is over engineered, and its inventors show little appreciation of the significant practical challenges associated with its implementation via UK GPs, who are in crisis. Another CVD risk calculator, which has been used extensively by British GPs since 2009 has been found to have a software glitch, which may have led to thousands of patients being misdiagnosed and wrongly treated. A similar software problem was found in a US CVD risk calculator popular among primary care doctors, which overestimated the risk of a CVD event, and led doctors to unnecessarily prescribe cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins. A more successful CVD prevention calculator has been introduced in India by a former cardiologist and healthcare entrepreneur. The calculator’s success is associated with its simplicity, accessibility, and the fact that it effectively engages and influences people’s behavior. The Commentary describes behavioral techniques, which are necessary to engage at risk people, and nudge them towards permanently adopting healthier lifestyles.
 
Overall our review suggests that doctors are well equipped to diagnose and treat CVD, but ill-equipped to prevent it.
 
An English academic approach to preventing CVD
 
The Joint British Societies Risk Calculator, the JBS3, was launched in 2014 as a tool for the prevention of CVD. It was the result of a collaborative effort of 11 British cardiovascular societies chaired by Professor John Deanfield, the British Heart Foundation Vandervell Professor of Cardiology at the University of London. The calculator embodies the UK’s national guidelines for the prevention of CVD, and is managed by the British Cardiovascular Society, and supported by the British Heart Foundation. Although available as an app, the calculator is designed for use by doctors and practitioners with their patients.
 
Unlike conventional risk assessment devices, which focus on high-risk patients, the JBS3 emphasises lifetime risk of CVD events, such as a heart attack, ischemic stroke or dying from coronary artery disease. To achieve this, the calculator’s algorithms are predicated upon a large data pool of people who have a relatively low 10-year risk of a CVD event, but who nevertheless have a high lifetime event risk.
 
The JBS3 allows doctors to assess a person's heart age compared with a person of the same age, gender and ethnicity with optimal risk factors. It also generates estimates of 10-year CVD risk, and average CVD event-free survival.  Results are intended to facilitate an informed discussion with patients in which doctors can show, in different graphical formats, how lifestyle modifications and other interventions, such as drug treatment, can increase a patient’s years of healthier life. Such discussions are expected to motivate patients to make lifestyle choices, which help them prevent future CVD events.
 
A cautionary note
 
Developing a risk calculator mediated by GPs is no guarantee of producing a significant reduction in the vast burden of CVD. It is too early to assess the effectiveness of the JBS3 Risk Calculator, but it appears to have underestimated the challenge associated with getting overstretched and demoralized UK primary healthcare professionals to use a new tool to engage large numbers of people at risk of CVD.
 
Previous Commentaries have described the UK’s primary care crisis. Over the past decade GPs’ workloads have increased significantly, as a result of the government’s decreasing investment in primary care, and the increasing prevalence of chronic multi-morbidity lifetime conditions, such as CVD. Trainee GPs are dwindling, newly trained GPs are seeking employment abroad, and increasing numbers of experienced GPs are taking early retirement. “GPs in the UK are so fatigued and overworked that they are at risk of harming patients by misdiagnosis”, says Dr. Maurine Baker, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners.
 
A software glitch in a popular British CVD calculator
 
In May 2016 about 33% of UK doctors were instructed by the government’s Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to warn thousands of patients that their treatment plans, developed from the results of a computer algorithm embedded in a CVD risk calculator could be wrong, and people at risk of a CVD event may have been mistakenly prescribed or denied statins.
 
The risk calculator, called the QRISK2, was introduced in 2009 by the IT company TPP to calculate the risk of CVD, and currently is used in some 2,500 primary care surgeries throughout the UK to help GPs to determine which patients are at risk of CVD. The calculator is embedded in another TPP product; SystmOne, which is a software system extensively used by GPs to access a single source of information, detailing a patient’s contact with the health service across a lifetime.
 
A faulty American CVD risk calculator
 
Recently, a widely recommended American risk calculator for predicting a person's chance of experiencing a CVD event was found to overestimate the actual five-year risk in adults overall, and across all socio-demographic subgroups, leading doctors to unnecessarily prescribe statins. The study, by Kaiser Permanente, was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in May 2016.  It suggests that the incidence of heart disease over the period between 2008 and 2013 “was substantially lower than the predicted risk in each category". According to Dr Alan Go, a lead author, "Our study provides critical evidence to support recalibration of the risk equation in 'real world' populations, especially given the individual and public health implications of the widespread application of this risk calculator.”
 
An Indian entrepreneur’s approach to preventing CVD
 
Billion Hearts Beating  is an open, and easy-to-use website launched in 2010 by Dr. Prathap Reddy, an Indian cardiologist turned entrepreneur who founded the Apollo Group of hospitals, with the mission of bringing world-class affordable healthcare to India. Reddy is mindful that there are some 65m people in India with CVD, but each year only about 100,000 of these receive specialist treatment. Unsurprisingly, about 2.4 million people die each year in India from CVD related events. The Billion Hearts Beating website identifies five simple solutions for lowering the risk of CVD: (i) cessation of smoking, (ii) a healthy diet, (iii) increased physical activity, (iv) a reduction in stress, and (v) regular heart checks.
 
The Billion Hearts Beating campaign fares better than the British JBS3, not least because it employs a simpler way to engage at risk people directly and encourages them to follow recommended solutions to reduce their overall CVD risk. To date, over 505,000 visitors to the Indian website have used its embedded risk calculator and importantly, pledged to improve their diets and lifestyles in order to reduce their risk of CVD.  
 
 
CVD a leading silent killer
 
CVD is often asymptomatic, caused by atherosclerosis, and represents a family of conditions linked by common risk factors, and includes coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, peripheral arterial disease and vascular dementia. Many people who have one CVD condition commonly suffer from other related conditions.
 
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), each year CVD accounts for more than 17.5m deaths worldwide, despite the fact that 90% are preventable. Deaths from CVD are projected to grow to some 24m by 2030. Direct and indirect costs of CVD total more than US$316.6bn. The economic costs of not preventing CVD are estimated to be US$47 trillion over the next 20 years.
 
CVD is the UK’s single biggest killer. There are seven million people living with CVD in the UK. Annual healthcare costs associated with CVD amount to some US$14bn, while the UK’s annual economic burden of CVD, including indirect costs from premature death and disability, is over US$20bn. About 85.6m Americans are living with CVD, which is responsible for killing over 370,000 Americans a year. By 2030, 40.5% of the US population are projected to have CVD. Between 2010 and 2030, total direct US medical costs of CVD (2008 US$) are projected to triple, from US$273bn to US$818bn. CVD is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in India, where an estimated 65m people suffer from the condition.
 
Despite the improvements in outcomes for CVD in the UK and US over the last 20 years, it remains the major cause of morbidity and mortality in population throughout the world. More patients are surviving their first CVD event, and they remain at high risk. Further, levels of certain risk factors such as obesity, and diabetes are increasing. More focus on effective prevention is therefore required.
 
 
How “nudge” can prevent CVD
 
CVD prevention strategies are too important to be left to clinicians. To be successful prevention strategies have to nudge people to change their lifestyles, and this requires experts in behavioral techniques. Over the past decade behavioral scientists have revolutionized the way we encourage people to change entrenched behaviors, which are not in their interest.
 
It all started in 2008 with the ground-breaking publication on behavioral economics, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, written by US academics Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. The authors argue that by simply making small changes to the way options are framed and presented to people - “choice architecture” - provides a cheap and easy way to “nudge” people to change their lifestyles without actually restricting their personal freedoms. Politicians loved the thesis, and ‘Nudge’ became compulsory reading among policy makers. President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron set up “nudge units” in the White House and 10 Downing Street to improve public services and save money by tackling previously intractable policy issues.
 
Small personal touches make a big difference
 
One of the first tasks Cameron gave the Downing Street nudge unit was to encourage more unemployed people to turn up for job interviews. The unit found that the standard impersonal written request to attend a job interview only yielded an 11% response rate.  Adding the person’s name, for example, “Hi John”, increased the response rate to 15%. But when the request was ended with a personal phrase and signed off such as, “I’ve booked you a place, Good luck, (signed) Margaret”, the response rate jumped to 27%. These small personal touches were so successful that now they are used in every job center in the UK.
 
Understanding human behavior is key
 
Under the leadership of David Halpern, the UK’s nudge unit has quadrupled in size since it was spun out of government in February 2014. Now a private company of 60 people jointly owned by its employees, the Cabinet Office, and Nesta, the nudge unit permeates almost every area of government policy, and also is working with Bloomberg Philanthropies on a US$42m project to help solve some of the biggest problems facing US cities. The UK’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has set up its own behavioral insights unit, and nudge teams are being established throughout the world in Australia, Singapore, Germany and the US.
 
Halpern’s unit has, among other things, signed up an extra 100,000 organ donors a year, persuaded 20% more people to consider switching energy provider, and doubled the number of army applicants. Also, it has implemented behavior change strategies that motivate individuals to initiate and maintain healthy behaviors that fit their lifestyle in approachable and convenient ways. The unit’s behavior change strategies that have demonstrated self-efficacy and self management are examples that can be incorporated into lifestyle change programs, which could help people maintain healthy habits even after a program ends, and thereby be a significant element in CVD prevention strategies.
 
Takeaways
 
If the UK’s nudge unit has discovered anything, it is that an understanding of human behavior is vital for almost all public policy, and this includes healthcare and CVD prevention strategies. Clinicians leading CVD prevention programs understand the disease, but they do not understand the psychology of the people with the disease. Clinicians are well equipped to diagnose and treat CVD, but ill equipped to prevent it. The sooner David Halpern is tasked with preventing CVD, the sooner the devastating personal and economic burden of CVD in the UK will be reduced.
view in full page
load more Loading..