The Doctor Kiosk will see you now…

Medical automation is getting into new levels. Among the latest developments is the unmanned Medical Kiosk. Yes that’s right, it’s literally a stand-alone booth kitted with the appropriate hardware and software to prompt medical interactions between humans and machines. All you do is walk in, pay a nominal charge, and get your consultation going. No doctor, no nurse, no fuss.

It may sound like science fiction stuff, but it is indeed real. Doctor Kiosks are springing up in selected cities, workplaces and impoverished villages. It’s a self-directed process, with an interactive screen and self-examination medical gadgets sprouting from incorporated pouches. At the other end is a medical specialist, connected to you remotely and ready to enhance the consult. It’s telemedicine at its best. The machine will evaluate your symptoms, and connect you to the remote physician if required. If a remote medical exam is required, the availed gadgets will make it a breeze. You finally exit with appropriate advice, and print off a prescription if required.

The advantages of Doctor Kiosks are obvious. The traditional doctor’s appointment is fraught with bureaucracy and ever rising costs. You can walk into a Medical Kiosk on demand, no need for prior appointments. You don’t even need time off work if one is located close to your workplace. You only pay a small fee. Medical Kiosks only need to be manned by a single individual, a nurse or a paramedic will do. This translates into savings on medical staff, and a ripple savings effect to employers and medical insurers. Remote areas have the potential to accrue major benefits too. Patients having ready access to Medical Kiosks can access specialists who would otherwise be unavailable to them.

But all this requires some initial investments. Customized Medical Kiosks will cost an initial tidy sum. Setting them up requires some sizable bandwidth for high-definition video connectivity. They need to run on uninterruptible power connections. There must also be some arrangements in place to facilitate telemedicine with the relevant specialists. Of course a degree of literacy among those seeking Medical Kiosk services is required, you can only interact with one if you can follow basic instructions and key in some data.

Be on the lookout for a Medical Kiosk round the corner. You won’t need to physically see your doctor for mundane ailments. Get the Kiosk to sort your aches and pains, the odd itch, colds and flus, and a multitude of all those other recurrent but benign symptoms. Claim back your time from all those hospital and pharmacy queues. You will also inevitably free your doctor to attend to more deserving cases. In times to come Medical Kiosks will become commonplace, possibly taking the place of the now antiquated telephone booths that once populated our neighborhoods.

Just put down the phone already.

If you wake up every morning groggy, it might not be your pillow or the temperature in the room that’s keeping you from getting a good night’s sleep: It could be your smartphone addiction.

A new study from Deloitte found that one third of adults check their phones if they wake up in the middle of the night, as do nearly half of those under the age of 35.Researchers have known for years that the blue-ish light smartphone screens emit can make it harder to fall back asleep.

A small subset of this late-night phone-checking group makes it even harder on themselves, though, reading and even responding to work emails during the wee hours, a behavior that’s more common among users under the age of 35.

Roughly one in 10 smartphone users will check text messages in the middle of the night, a figure that climbs to more than one in five for the under-35 age group.Deloitte, which surveyed the habits of more than 4,000 mobile phone users in the U.K., also found that 10% of people look at their phone the instant they wake up, and a third do so within five minutes. More than a quarter of us look at our phones within five minutes of going to bed. That’s far too short a window, according to the report. “Exposure to light, including that from a screen just before going to sleep, can confuse the brain into thinking it is still daytime, and inhibit the process of falling asleep,” the study said. Experts have recommended an hour of screen-free time before bed, but Deloitte found that fewer than 25% of people actually do this.

One suggestion the study offers is to put the phone out of reach instead of right on the nightstand to resist the temptation, but for many people, that would also mean having to jump out of bed and go across the room to turn off their alarm in the morning. Another option would be to download an app that tracks your screen time—some, meant for parents who want to limit their kids’ time with electronic devices, even have a lockout function after a set time period—or rewards you for staying off your device.

Alternately, if you can’t resist late-night email-checking, you might want to consider swapping out the blue screen tint for a reddish or orange one, which scientists say is less disruptive to sleep. Apple’s iOS 9.3 has a feature called Night Shift that switches to a red-hued background; a similar app for Android users is Twilight. But really, you should just turn it off. That email from your boss will still be there in the morning.

Decrypting medical jargon

It is my bet that at some point in your medical encounters, you have come across situations when what your doctor said made no sense to you. You probably went along with an incomprehensible discussion, and adhered to the advice finally given. Such mumbo jumbos have no place in modern healthcare. Every discussion with you as a lay person must always be simplified to crystal clarity. There is always a simple way of explaining your diagnosis, and treatment options.

Yes doctors go through rigorous training, with lots of complex words and phrases to describe multitudes of disease conditions. But so does everyone one else in their own specific professions. If we all gathered together and conversed in career-specific technical terms, none of us would really understand the other one. True, some medical terms have no direct equivalent translations to commonly used languages. But that’s never an excuse not to get stuff explained in an easy to understand manner.

You have many options to help decrypt medical jargon. The easiest one is to get your doctor to explain everything in simple language. If anything is mentioned in medical terminology, ask that it gets broken down into a comprehensible format. All it takes is an extra few minutes, which you are owed when seeking medical care. You want to take in as much as you can to facilitate decision making on your part. Ask for a leaflet that you could look up later, this backs up what might have escaped your ears.

You could of course access freely available online medical encyclopedias to look up what you haven’t really understood. Just simply searching for a medical word or phrase on your browser will bring up hundreds of hits. Be selective on the ones to read through. Wikipedia, Matapedia Wiki and information portals run by health organizations like the WHO should top your list. Explanations found on such sites tend to be directed to lay people, and are written in an easily understandable way.

Your healthcare providers have a duty to get you to understand everything they say. If you find one bloated with medical jargon, it may be a telltale sign of their confidence levels. Ask them politely to tone down and speak in common language. If they don’t budge, you could always play a trick card and ask if they mind you bringing in a medical translator. If that doesn’t go down very well, you are better off seeing somebody else who cares to explain everything in plain language.

Never allow yourself to contend with undecipherable medical information in this day and age. It should all be plain and simple, always. Anything colored with some unintelligible jargon may be a mask for something else. If you can’t understand it, then you can’t really make informed medical decisions.

Free medical camps, worth your health?

Ever heard of free medical camps?

There are plenty of reasons for the existence of free medical camps. They are good avenues for sensitizing the populace about certain diseases, for example preventable cancers. If well-resourced, certain simple screening tests can be offered, and those turning positive can be specifically followed up. Those who turn up with simple ailments can be treated on the spot. It’s also an avenue for preventive initiatives like vaccines, and promotion of healthy behavior.

Are you really up for any tangible health benefits if you spare some time for a free medical camp? There are no straight answers here. It all depends on your prevailing health, and the focus of the camp organizers. If a specific disease is being targeted, you may be the wrong gender or the wrong age. But still, you will benefit from general health knowledge, which you could always pass on to others. You may think the opportunity to attend will expose you to some specialists who may fish out something that has been bothering you for a while. But still, you might come out of a free medical camp empty handed, with a sick feeling that your day was wasted.

What’s in it for the camp organizers? Never for once think that they are all well-footed philanthropists, losing their sleep for the sake of your health. There’s always an appended agenda riding along the supposedly free camp. Look around and see who organizes free medical camps. Tends to be politicians, local businesses, private healthcare facilities, and other privately sourced ventures. And what do you find in the free camps besides a handful of medics? Lots of promos, stands with assorted goods on sale, enticements to sign up to certain services, and all manner of ads to attract your custom. Well, look at it as a health-business day out.

From an individual’s health point of view, you will not gain much in a free medical camp. From the wider perspective of community health, there are some gains to be gotten. This is more so for initiatives targeting ailments that tend to be widespread. Think of infectious diseases, or lifestyle-related illnesses. If the focus is to market certain aspects of interest to the camp organizers, all you might end up with is unsolicited pieces of advice. You may even find yourself signing up to something completely unnecessary, or committing to an ill-advised medical endeavor forthwith.

As the saying goes, there is never a free lunch. Think again when a free medical camp beckons.

Beware of medical misadventures

Two separate pieces of write-ups doing the rounds mostly in social media have again brought to fore the dark side of medical care. One is a depressing read from a popular Asian destination for medical tourism. The other piece relives cautionary tales of subjecting ourselves to too much medical care, with doctors who should know better driving along unnecessary interventions. This is based on worrying trends on the other side of the Atlantic, the good old US of A.

Let’s start with the first piece. Easily available national stats will quickly tell you how many Kenyans are hopping onto planes in search of healthcare in a popular destination in Asia. Some have genuine reasons to pursue care that is either locally unavailable, or comes much cheaper in the destination of choice. But others are unsure of themselves, and are unguardedly pursuing a utopian state of health. They have subjected themselves to needless health screens. The tests have inevitably unearthed something, or have all turned out normal. As the write-up details, you give out your test samples, and they all get binned. No tests are actually carried out. You get a nicely printed out, but fabricated set of results! Massive profits are made, you are none the wiser.

The other side of the Atlantic now. You see, the practice of medicine should have some valid scientific basis, what is commonly referred to as evidence-based medicine. Every intervention, including diagnostics, prescription medicines, surgical procedures etc, should be based on valid proof of benefit. Where scientific data is lacking, there are other avenues to guide objective interventions. But as it turns out patients are getting so much stuff done that is either completely unnecessary, or potentially harmful. Why is this happening? Look up the piece by a staff writer with The New Yorker.

You might ask yourself why all this matters to you. The business of medicine should have your interest and wellbeing at the forefront. All that gets done to you should have some tangible benefits. You should never be subjected to tests or treatments that have questionable value. There is a huge economic burden to you as an individual when you end up paying for unnecessary interventions. Not to mention potential harm which can occur with ill-intentioned tests, and subsequent poorly informed medical interventions.

What can you do about it?