Healthcare Blog

By Zeyu Xia Introduction      What is Personalized Healthcare?     Personalized health care is an overarching framework for proactive, personalized health care that provides individuals with a personal health plan to maximize their health and minimize disease. It utilizes predictive technologies to establish each individual’s health risks and facilitates patients’ engagement in their health along with the development of plans and a care delivery system designed to achieve the best health outcomes.      Why Is Personalized Healthcare Important?      T he personalization of healthcare offers a wide range of benefits for both healthcare providers and their patients. These benefits include: 1)  Improved disease detection; 2) Lower health care costs for patients; 3)  Better clinical outcomes and patients' quality of life; 4) Increased patient activation and engagement.      There are three time pe...

 The shortage of healthcare professionals is a global issue, as many regions struggle to maintain an adequate workforce with the necessary skills to provide essential services. This imbalance between supply and demand leads to significant challenges in healthcare delivery.   Consequences of shortage of healthcare professionals Some consequences of this shortage is reduced access to quality care and limited health services.  Limited healthcare  professionals result in longer wait times and delayed treatments, sometimes may potentially worsening patient conditions. Additionally, healthcare costs may rise as hospitals and other facilities resort to hiring temporary or traveling staff, increasing expenses for both patients and insurers.  The quality of care may also decline due to overworked healthcare professionals experiencing high levels of stress and burnout. Ensuring a sustainable workforce requires comprehensive planning that prioritizes both patient need...

  About 8 in 10 users search the internet for health information, and 74% of those people use social media. Considering this shift in where the population goes for medical information, I believe there should be a change in regulations and requirements for what goes into online medical content, especially related to dietary supplements.  In 2023, senators introduced the Protecting Patients from Deceptive Drug Ads Online Act to empower the FDA to issue warnings and impose fines for false or misleading drug information posted on line by social media influencers and telehealth companies. However, this legislation does not apply to dietary supplements, only prescription drugs. This type of enforcement makes sense, but there should be something similar for dietary supplements, considering they are far easier to access and are often advertised with broad claims related to weight loss, energy, sleep, or hormonal balance. A review of 100 Instagram posts from March 2021 about suppleme...

 As we know, in the United States, we have one of the highest rates of maternal death out of all the developed countries. There are, unfortunately, many factors that play a role in this, but one of importance, that could help prevent maternal death, is having a doula in the room, especially for women of color (particularly Black women) and those who have low socioeconomic status; these populations are specifically effected due to the institutionalized racism in hospitals as well as insurance and health literacy status. There are a lot of people, especially those with more conservative views, that feel doulas are a more “hippie” approach to childbirth and you just need to “listen to the doctor”, my parents being one of these types of people, unfortunately. However, there has been data showing how much doulas can affect the maternal outcomes after birth, including preventing unnecessary or unwanted procedures to occur. For example, one study showed that women who had a doula had 52.9...

Credit to Anastasiia Gudantova    Healthcare and the costs that come with it are probably the most jarring thing to those outside of the US. With the US multiple-payor system, there are many layers to the maze that of which is billing the patient. That is not to mention the many CMS guidelines that help set the base standard of billing in the US. Even as I do research for this blog, I find out there are different markets for insurance you can explore to figure out what you are eligible to buy from.  Before getting into the markets, you have to consider the plans. For all intents and purposes, "in-network" means the provider specifically has a contract with a third-party insurance company: 1) EPOs EPO (Exclusive Provider Organizations) is a plan where you have to go to anyone in-network to be covered. 2) HMOs HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) is a plan that focuses on prevention and wellness with integrated care but it's limited. For example, if you had a Blue Cross Bl...

Physician-Assisted Suicide:  Taking Health Into Your Own Hands By Ziana Collins Introduction: While trying to find topics to write about for this entry, I tried to look back on topics I had learned about and didn't completely understand at first. Upon this reflection, I dug up one of my core memories from freshman year of high school. To set the stage: my family was an active participant in our local parish, a Roman Catholic church. As a child and teenager, this meant mass every week and youth group at least once a week. At these youth group sessions we'd talk about what you would typically expect from a religious organization, but one week we deviated from that to discuss the hot-topic (at the time) of euthanasia. If you can recall, around 2014 there was a patient with a terminal diagnosis who was choosing to end their own life due to their diagnosis. This was all over the news and was the first time I heard about physician-assisted suicide, and ultimately opened me up to idea...

     As a class, we learned about many different healthcare systems across the world. Every country seems to have their own approach to tackling the issue, shaped by culture, history, and a myriad of other factors. What surprised me the most was the variety of countries which operate a universal healthcare system, as I had previously associated this with more developed, first world countries. Upon watching everyone's presentations, it is clear that no such correlations exist; nations all across the world have succeeded in building these types of programs regardless of economic status.      The argument echoed over and over again is that universal healthcare is a totally impractical and unfeasible proposal within the United States. At this point in time, I find this argument to be somewhat invalidated. It would no doubt be a massive logistical challenge to implement, and there may be more barriers to overcome than there would be in smaller countries with a m...

     Much of my pessimism surrounding the healthcare system stems from my experience with women’s health as both a researcher and a patient. I chose to do my master’s thesis on endometriosis because I was so frustrated with the lack of knowledge my providers had about the condition, despite its prevalence of 10% of reproductive-aged women worldwide. It shares a similar prevalence with type 2 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis in the US. Again, despite its prevalence, the cause of endometriosis is unknown, it can only be diagnosed surgically, and there is no cure.      A friend recently sent me an article about new research surrounding the pathophysiology of endometriosis and the involvement of macrophages in the development of lesions. This research is incredibly exciting because it is starting to provide the foundation for work towards non-hormonal treatment options. Building off this, another team of researchers found endometriosis lesions in mice contain ...

Pharmacists are not currently recognized as providers, and have faced major challenges in attaining provider status. Though most people associate provider status with prescribing, lacking this designation at a federal level means that practicing pharmacists cannot be reimbursed by Medicare for services that they already provide ,  such as point-of-care screening.  There are some settings where pharmacists can provide services that a mid-level practitioner can provide (NP, PA, etc.), but this is determined by state. In some states, community pharmacists have the ability to provide based on a point-of-care screening results; for example, Colorado allows statin prescribing in the community setting . Other states allow pharmacists to prescribe under  collaborative practice agreements, though the terms are often more stringent than one an NP or PA might sign. Despite these, the proper recognition and reimbursement is sorely lacking.  Though most major pharmaceutical ...

  By Meghan Farrell When people think about deadly infections, they usually think of bacteria or viruses, or maybe a pandemic-style flu. This often excludes fungi because fungi have a difficult time growing at human body temperature, so we do not often see many systemic infections caused by fungi. However, since 2016, fungi have been quietly making a move, and we don’t have many weapons to stop them. One of the biggest threats right now is Candida auris , a small yeast that has been popping up in hospitals around the world. And the worst part is that it is getting harder and harder to kill. Discovered in Japan in 2009, C. auris has since spread to dozens of countries, including the U.S. It’s not your typical fungal infection. C. auris loves hospital settings, clinging to surfaces, spreading between patients, and resisting standard cleaning methods. Unlike common yeast infections, it doesn’t just stay on the skin. It can invade the bloodstream, leading to severe infec...

  By Kristen Giles The World Health Organization is a global agency that was founded in 1948 to help promote health and expand universal healthcare coverage. Additionally, they help supply important medicine and medical equipment across the globe in order to promote a better future for all. Recently, there has been an executive order signed by President Trump on January 20th of 2025 that will withdraw the United States of America from the WHO. This will have a large impact due to the US being the largest beneficiary by spending 958 million dollars from 2024-2025 with the second largest group being the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (689 million), the third being GAVI alliance (500 million) and the fourth being the European Commission (412 million). It is said that the United States pays around $116 million each year to WHO which is 24% of the organization’s budget. With the withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization a large part of its fundi...

In short, we’re doomed. The United States spends far more on healthcare than its counterpart first-world countries, all of which have universal healthcare. Of course there are many factors, but to me, a lot of this boils down to the United States’ insurance system. There are countless insurance companies offering coverage for individuals and they’re not working in our favor. Insurance companies are exactly that: companies. At the end of the day, their bottom line is to make a profit and increase shareholder value. Some medical practices like evidence-based medicine support cost-saving by using therapies that are effective, safe, and cost-effective. However, insurance goes beyond this in many cases through denials of therapy and prior authorizations, and step therapy. Insurance companies are further trying to lower costs using AI in the prior authorization process that often reject requests outright. Their cost-saving comes from denying patients necessary procedures, therapies, and medi...