Healthcare Costs = f(Patient Level of Understanding Condition and Treatment, Condition, Type of Treatment)
click to expand image
Archive for
Recent Tweets on #Dementia Nov 25 2013
https://twitter.com/MiWonder007/status/405015661753430016
Share this:
Dec 1 World AIDS Day
Share this:
11 22 1963 (and you are going to keep telling me we don’t need gun control?)
Share this:
Shoulda Woulda Coulda Gonna
Share this:
creativity … the riddle
Share this:
Visual Teaching via #MindMaps Enhances Learning
Click image to expand.
- Visual Learning Books for Kids (marcusdebbo.wordpress.com)
- Learning More About Visual Notetaking (Authorized Drawing in Class!) (speedofcreativity.org)
- #Sketchnotes and The Writing Process (gatheringinlight.com)
- Mapping what I’m learning (sachachua.com) <<<==== very good learning resource
Share this:
10 Warning Signs of Alzheimer’s Disease: A #MindMap
The first version was published a few posts ago and created in iMindMap 6. The original post has a discussion of the highly credible web sites from which the information in the map was developed.
This second version was created by reformatting the first using some new tools available in iMindMap 7 and capitalizing on the improvements in speed and ease-of-use of tools that had been available in iMindMap 6, but in a more primitive way. In particular, it is now much easier to work with text meaning that pulling text into positions on the canvas ringing the map may be a good way to store data related to the conclusions embedded within the mind map.
Related posts
- #CareMaps: Uses of #MindMaps in #Caregiving for Patients with #Dementia, #MCI, and #Neurodegenerative Disorders (hubaisms.com)
- #Dementia and “Typical” #Aging: Examples of (Better???) Ways to Present Online Health Information with #MindMaps (hubaisms.com)
Share this:
#iMindMap7: An Initial Review (with Map and Video of 3D Presentation)
As of last week, iMindMap 6.2 was the best mind mapping program available from any vendor. As of this week iMindMap 7.0 has blown 6.2 away, making a huge leap forward. The gap between iMindMap and the other mind mapping programs on the market has widened considerably.
iMindMap 7 is much more than a mind mapping program but rather a visual thinking/teaching tool and environment, within which mind maps are a large, but certainly not the only, component. In addition to the best mind maps available, the program can produce flow diagrams, path diagrams, concept maps, visual notes (like sketch notes), and combinations of all of the above.
iMindMap 7 is a visual thinking tool for a complete visual thinking environment. The app expands upon the mind mapping theory of Buzan and presents a much more elaborated environment for visual thinking and visual concept development than has been available before. And, just as importantly, to use apply this theory and use the tools of iMindMap 7 you need not be a “computer wizard,” “a professional mind mapper,” or a long time user of earlier programs and visual thinking theories.
I see the release of this program as the beginning of a period in which visual thinking and visual communication becomes even more important and used. Tony Buzan and Chris Griffiths have done a spectacular job in getting the theory and implementation so far along this path already. I hope they release a new book shortly.
Click the image below to expand and see my formal review. Note that I probably used less than 60 percent of the features of the program in the review map, and there is a lot more to explore in subsequent posts with differing types of information.
Oh, did I mention that iMindMap has a “presentation mode” which makes PowerPoint obsolete. Here is a video of the review above running in an automatic kiosk mode. There are a number of options for the presentations that can be applied depending upon the type of audience and the map content. And it can be presented in 3D which I chose to do. [For this example, a tiny file size with low resolution optimized for the web was used because the intent is simply to illustrate the feature, not crash the server. Note also that the low resolution does de-emphasize the 3D effect; 3D looks extremely good at HD resolutions. I also included a HD version which may give some servers trouble. Both presentations have the same content.] Click below to start the video (about 3 minutes).
low resolution
high resolution
If you don’t like the timing of the slides or the type of transition or the order, you can easily change these settings and reload the video.
[Footnote: I started programming mathematical algorithms in FORTRAN in 1970, published my first of several computer programs in peer-reviewed journals in 1973, and published an early mathematical algorithm and FORTRAN program in 1984 that was a precursor of what are now called concept maps (under the rubric in statistics of “path diagram” or “structural equations model”). Between 1977 and 1984 I published a large series of “visual mathematical models” of drug abuse etiologies and consequences using the LISREL programming environment. In comparison to all of my former experience with computer usage in real-world applications, this is the finest software application I have used in the 40+ years of my career. I am delighted I have the opportunity to use this app to explain some of my ideas and create new ones.]
Share this:
#CareMaps: #MindMaps in #Caregiving #Dementia
This post does not contain medical advice. None of the methods described are known to be therapeutic. What is described are possible note-taking or information-sharing models for patient-client-self management.
For the past few months, I have been focusing on the use of mind maps to assist people with dementia, cognitive impairment, or cognitive decline deal with various issues that arise as they work hard to maintain independence.
You can access those posts simply by using the search box at the bottom of each post with keywords like “dementia” or “cognitive.” Several dozen blog posts will pop up with most very recent.
But the reality is that as dementia or other cognitive problems progress, many patients will require increasing amounts of supervision and care. Mind maps may prove to be useful in assisting a caregiver to help in a more effective, and cost–effective, manner.
- Just as those with cognitive decline may be able to remember, plan, express themselves, and document their lives in maps, caregivers may be able to use these techniques themselves to provide better care and client management. Mind maps may potentially help the caregiver recall the preferences of the client, as well as the client’s life history, important events, significant people, and life style
- Caregivers may find that visual information recorded in mind maps provides a good way for the caregiver and the client to start discussions.
- Caregivers may find that clients can express themselves better with pictures, drawings, doodles than in words.
- Caregivers may find that their own notes from each day are more useful if captured in the format of mind maps.
- Caregivers may find that mind maps may be used for brainstorming by themselves, with healthcare providers, with family members, and with the client ways to organize daily events, select food and clothing, remember medications, and organize social events.
- Caregivers may find it useful to record their own feelings in mind maps as a way of dealing with the emotional and physical stress of caregiving.
- The daily calendar — including doctor visits and other appointments and visitors — may be easier to prepare as a mind map and much more useful to the client.
There are dozens of other ways mind maps might be useful in caregiving. I am going to write many posts on this topic in the next months. For now, here are a few examples with many more to come.
Click on each of the images to expand it.
Preparing a Mind Map (with the help of the client or family members) of the Client’s Preferences.
***
Preparing a Mind Map (with the help of the client or family members) of the Client’s Religious Beliefs.
***
Preparing a Mind Map (with the help of the client or family members) of Things the Client Especially Enjoys.
***
Preparing Mind Maps from the Warning Brochure that Comes with Each Prescription Refill.
OR
***
Preparing a Mind Map of Each Day for Your Use and That of the Client.
***
Technical notes. The sample mind maps here were all prepared in the computer program iMindMap, which I strongly prefer both for the way it facilitates mapping and the way it typically produces maps that can be very useful. There are alternate programs that can be used, although perhaps not with the same level of good results possible with iMindMap. Because the maps will be used by caregivers and clients, they will tend to be most effective if colorful, “bold,” graphically interesting, and with large typefaces all of which are easily done in iMindMap. Acceptable alternatives to iMindMap would be iThoughts, Inspiration on the iPad (but not on the PC or Mac), MindNode, and XMIND, although each of the alternatives will be more difficult to use to produce maps for clients with cognitive decline than is iMindMap. There are free mind map programs available or free demo versions. This is a case, however, where paid versions are far more cost-effective than the free versions or most free programs. There is a second type of mind mapping program more suitable for business purposes (the major one is MindJet MindManager and also MindDomo and MindMeister) than those caregiving applications discussed here.
Related articles
- #CareMaps: Uses of #MindMaps in #Caregiving for Patients with #Dementia, #MCI, and #Neurodegenerative Disorders (hubaisms.com)
- #Dementia and “Typical” #Aging: Examples of (Better???) Ways to Present Online Health Information with #MindMaps (hubaisms.com)
- #Cognitive and #Behavioral Tools for Fighting #CognitiveDecline: A #MindMap (hubaisms.com)
Share this:
A Way to Kickstart the Development of Effective Treatments for Rare Diseases without Taking Needed Resources from Research on Diseases that Affect Many
The only way I see to develop effective medical treatments and care models for many of the thousands of rare diseases is to pool the RESEARCH resources that individual countries are spending and the data countries are collecting about individual rare diseases and put those research resources under international control for prioritizing research agenda and ensuring public access to ALL results and research data.
Yes, I know the USA (probably the largest resource contributor) Congress will go in front of the television cameras and say that the failure of the United Nations and the disproportionate contributions to a pooled resource fund will ensure failure. They will point to the failure of the world to effectively coordinate collaborative research on HIV/AIDS and point to politics, homophobia, disrespect, and the hatred of American politics by certain national and fundamentalist groups and say we would be wasting our money by letting Africans and Arabs and the Russians and Chinese and Indians and Asians and South Americans collaborate with the USA on research and ensuring that research leads to effective treatments for at least some rare diseases.
Enough already. Let’s rise to the occasion of solving resource limitations in studying rare diseases and get an effective mechanism in place for expanding the impact of admittedly small research efforts by individual countries through international cooperation. I trust the governments of the world to collaborate, contribute as they can, and help us start to get some of these diseases treatable. Disease knows no boundaries.
In the last century we collectively developed very advanced medical research techniques. In this century we need to use these methods to solve all of the medical problems possible by putting aside the nonsense politics and nationalism and individual egos and predatory profits and focus on solving many medical issues and ensuring access to effective treatment world wide.
Here’s a way to start. Any yes, this is a test of our humanity and commitment to universal human rights of which medical treatment is but one. But let’s start somewhere that should be relatively easy to agree on (and let a few hundred angry politicians in the USA know that the world considers them bratty children and cannot tolerate their obstructionist and oppositional behavior).
Click on the image to expand. And let’s start the process of collaboration.
Related articles
- Rare Disease Treatments On The Rise: Will Big Pharma’s Focus On Orphan Drugs Benefit Us All? (medicaldaily.com)
- More Than 450 Innovative Medicines in Development for Rare Diseases (hispanicbusiness.com)
Share this:
Read This or That: #DrugWarnings and #MindMaps
THAT (clip from information sheet attached to prescription refill)
OR THIS (pictures could be added, fonts could be changed, colors could be changed, style could be changed)? [I am NOT advocating any specific design without pilot testing although I tend to like some of the designs near the top and near the bottom better, especially since I believe they will communicate more effectively to all ages but note that this has not been proven. And, note that a professional designer could undoubtedly do a better job on the artistic elements and a neurocognitive specialist would be quite valuable as a reviewer to maximize impact.]
Click on any image to expand through several levels of zooming.
Share this:
#Dementia and “Typical” #Aging: Examples of (Better???) Ways to Present Online Health Information with #MindMaps
In the past I have blogged about my suggestion that Public Health students learn to use methods like mind maps and other visualizations to make health brochures and posters more informative and compelling to the public. Here I am going to show some examples.
The information in this post derives from very credible web sites. [As a note, much of the information about Alzheimer’s disease and “normal” or typical aging appears to be accurately derived from the public domain information put online by various departments of the US government.]
For each image, click to expand.
The American Medical Association has this very informative page on its web site.
I believe that the following mind map is better for explaining the information.
[I acknowledge the fact that various mind map “artists” can make this map more visually appealing and I see this as a first draft.]
*********
The Alzheimer’s Association has posted this professionally valid information on its web site designed in a way as to be compelling through its high density of high quality warnings.
The “problem” with this brochure is that it is “too dense” for me (and probably anyone else without a professional background in medicine) to be able to understand and remember the information. How about including this graphic as a third page (ideally as the ENTIRE page 2) in the brochure. I would bet that the outcomes from the extra understandability and memory retention for this critical information would prove to far offset any additional printing costs.
[I acknowledge the fact that various mind map “artists” can make this map more visually appealing and I see this as a first draft.]
Related articles
- #Dementia and “Typical” #Aging: Examples of (Better???) Ways to Present Online Health Information with #MindMaps (hubaisms.com)
- #CareMaps: Uses of #MindMaps in #Caregiving for Patients with #Dementia, #MCI, and #Neurodegenerative Disorders (hubaisms.com)
- #Cognitive and #Behavioral Tools for Fighting #CognitiveDecline: A #MindMap (hubaisms.com)
Share this:
Hypocrisy of Some #MindMap Users
Mind mapping is a wonderful tool. Many use it to inform others of important facts and make sure those facts are remembered, understood within context, associated as appropriate with other knowledge, communicated well, and result in learning. I endorse the successful use of mind mapping.
Mind mapping is a wonderful tool for informing.
Mind mapping is a wonderful tool for misinforming.
Think about this. If the method makes the learning of “good” information faster and more accurate, it does the same thing for “bad” information, idea garbage, or propaganda.
You need good information to map. You know, the kind that is scientifically proven, well interpreted, important, replicable, unbiased. You know what I mean. (The kind of good information that would never make it onto the Fox Cable network.)
So it is really simple. Show me the source of the information and what evidence supports it. I will decide if it is a diamond or zirconium. Nourishing or poison. Message from heaven or hell. Mac or PC.
Do not tell me you have a map of some important psychological issue when you do not have a single citation to replicable science, or at least well-accepted theory, anywhere in the map or the accompanying text.
The problem of presenting bad information and helping others learn it well is probably the most important when the content is derived from medicine, healthcare, psychology, or education. Personally I care less if a business person hires the wrong management consultant and buys the Brooklyn Bridge, but that is a matter of personal preference and I still would not like to see shareholders hurt. You want to teach it in a way that improves the chances that it is learned? Make sure it is true.
A mind map is a METHOD. The mind map should be used as a METHOD to accurately report correct, important information. A mind map may make information look more valid or important than it is, so the author of the map has to be responsible fully researching the information to be presented BEFORE MAPPING. To map information that you do not fully understand is doing a disservice both to the reader and to your reputation.
Click on the image (twice) to fully expand.
Share this:
When There is Silence You Can Hear Better: A Computer Tale of the Digital Brain
These days I carry around a MacBook with a 15 inch retina screen and internal 768GB optical drive. Oh to think that I used to be sure I was in computing heaven a decade ago when I carried around a company state-of-the-art laptop (I always carried the top of the food chain machines as I owned the consulting firm and as the senior consultant was on the road a lot). The circa 2003 Lenovo probably had a 1600 by 1200 screen and probably about a 16GB internal drive.
So these days when I take the retina screen machine home with its enormous 768GB optical drive home, I immediately plug it into a Cinema Display and four external hard drives (2 3TB and a 4TB thunderbolt drives as well as a 2TB firewire 800 drive). 12 terabytes of external storage (the emails of a career and 100,000s of digital pics and many thousands of documents, gigabytes of statistical data and outputs, hundreds of older programs I no longer use, and of course a 100+ movies and 8000+ audio files). I often refer to the the external drives as my digital “brain” (although they do have the individual names of Groucho, Son of Groucho, Harpo, and Chico just like major brain structures have individual names). As I fire up the external drives, my “life” gets reattached to my digital “brain” and I can see many more things at once in multiple windows on the 27 inch screen than you can see on a 15 inch internal screen, even one with a retina (rating).
I note that after I plug in those mega-drives the room gets hotter and I sweat a little. And the noise level goes up many decibels. And I feel a little anxiety.
This week I forgot to plug in the 4 hard drives one evening and did not discover it until 5 hours later at midnight when I wanted to watch the most recent episode of Marvel Agents of Shield (*****, 2 thumbs and a big toe up) in iTunes which stores its files on an external drive. It had been silent in the room all evening (optical drives make no sound as compared to the diesel engines in external drives) and I wasn’t sweating and did not feel any anxiety at all. And since I and not used Aperture all evening to see the old photos of my successes and abject failures, I had not really missed the hard drives for anything that important.
Silence. Just data and information from the last year and the Internet. Silence (well almost since after a while I did stream music from the web a few hours into my sojurn). No big distractions. No multiple (distracting) windows open on the 15 inch monitor. A focus on today.
Hhhhhuuuuuummmmmmmm……..
I think I heard, saw, thought, and felt better that evening without having to confront my whole life in 7 windows all the time.
Share this:
A Few Things You Might Want to Document About Your Life as You Age (and Before Any #CognitiveDecline)
Here are links to some earlier posts about events, people, reactions, and other information you might wish to document as you age so that you (or a caregiver or younger family member) will have the information later. Each of these posts illustrates combining text and images. These examples are ones that can be done by you before you have any cognitive problems as a self history as well as with a caregiver after problems occur. Any whether you ever need to use to help you if there is a cognitive decline, these are great ways of passing down information from generation. I wish I knew much of this information about my parents and other family members. Click on links to see examples.
Share this:
Obama’s “Lies” About #Obamacare: A #MindMap
For the past three days I have seen the headlines on news stories and blog posts that state that Obama lied about Obamacare (According to GOP).
I don’t think that he lied (deliberately telling an untruth) but I do believe he repeatedly stated untruths deriving from the fact that neither Obama, the Dems, the GOP, Boehner, the Dem advisors, the GOP advisors, Sebelius, nor the Tea Party idiots really understood what they were debating on and off Fox News.
The screw up is that THEY RUSHED to pass the bill, to try to stop the law in the courts, to put up an untested web site, and to get in front of the cameras first. Nobody took 23 minutes to realize that the entire program was being set up for failure.
Realistically it should take 5-10 years to implement Obamacare in a way that is responsive to patients and healthcare providers, a responsible use of taxpayer money, responsible to all Americans who would like to have their lives be as free of disease and to live as long as possible.
I doubt that there is any experienced healthcare expert in the US who would have thought that the Congress, the States, and POTUS could spend several years in federal courts fighting, thousands of hours on cable tv news debating, no time thinking before opening their mouths, and then at the end implement a well-thought out, effective, responsible healthcare plan for 350 million people.
So really everybody is lying and nobody is lying because nobody understands the plan and its implementation well enough to be able to intelligently comment on it.
Maybe all parties, even the Tea idiots, should agree to take two weeks off, and then start expending energy on implementing a plan that will best benefit ALL Americans. Is this too much to expect from our employees?
Imagine.
PS. Get rid of Sebelius. As of this minute she still does not know what her department is supposed to do in its role as the administrator-manager of all US federal healthcare programs. There are at least 10,000 healthcare professionals in the US who can do a better job at DHHS than Sebelius has done.
Click image to expand.
