While the specific term "placebo" didn't enter the medical lexicon until the late 18th century, ancient physicians were intimately aware of the effect. The ancient Greek, Indian, and Chinese traditions all leveraged the capacity of belief, trust, and suggestion to facilitate healing. However, with medicine’s scientific turn, the placebo has garnered a negative connotation of ‘all in the head…

It has proved to be a difficult endeavor to pin-down specific human universals. Exceptions appear to be the rule. Nonetheless, although the specifics vary, in broad terms it can safely be claimed that humans are universally social, symbolic, and ritualistic. Humans across time and space have and continue to be bound in webs of relationships that are suffused by symbols and rituals that engender belief, expectation, and bonds.

The philosopher Gilbert Ryle developed the framework of thick and thin descriptions as a means to describe and understand human behavior. He illustrated it via the parable of the wink and a twitch. Although both actions can be superficially described and categorized with a thin description such as ‘closing and reopening the eye,’ a deeper, more nuanced thick description would not only differentiate between the two, but would also make finer-grained descriptions such as a “conspiratorial wink,” a “flirtatious wink”, or a wink that serves as a “signal in a game.” In this framework, the former would be a thin description and the latter a think descriptions.

Ebers Papyrus Clinical documentation has a deep pedigree that dates back more than 4000 years to the ancient Egyptians. Transcribed onto papyrus in a format surprisingly  similar to modern day case presentations, clinical documentation appeared to have served the dual purpose of teaching apprentices and guiding the management of future patients. Subsequently, Greek physicians continued this practice of medical recordkeeping, but built on its content by introducing the notion of…

Are the best tools Swiss army knife-like - flexible, adaptable, multifunctional, and easy to use? Or is a knife-like tool - optimally sharpened, single-purposed for cutting - ideal? When framed as a simplistic dichotomy, it is obvious that tools do not have a universal or intrinsic “bestness,” but are context dependent and best viewed instrumentally - with purposes, goals, and outcomes in mind.

A new crop of companies is lining up to buy patient data from hospitals and sell it to those wanting to train AI or do research.

The HITECH Act was passed in 2009 to promote and expand the adoption of health information technology with the objective to improve care processes, the quality of care, and overall health system productivity. Although the push to digitize medical records has mostly been accomplished, as Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have become ubiquitous in healthcare, the policy has yet to realize its aims of improved quality and productivity.