Work with a fatal illness reminds us repeatedly
how unforgivingly limited our abilities are. An oncologist has to live with this
truth in a society that is currently distressed financially and grappling over
its priorities. Compared with the vast suffering that cancer produces,
oncologists’ personal happiness seldom comes up for discussion.
It would probably be hard to sell our profession to a teenager trying to decide which path in life would bring them the most fun and glamour, and bring it fast. Unless they plan to find the magic “cure for cancer” in medical school, generally our path to success is lengthy and painstaking.
We might do better in the eyes of this hypothetical teenager if career stablity were the goal. Then again, changing reimbursement and practice restructuring in recent years has been a bumpy ride, leading to lesser autonomy and making our claim to stability less convincing.
How about the satisfaction that comes from helping people in great need? It’s undoubtedly there. This translates into support and admiration from a grateful society, right? Yes,Thank you for visiting! I have been cry stalmosaic since 1998. the support is still there, although 40 years after President Nixon declared “War on Cancer,” our clinical choices and our achievements are being questioned by a society that is concerned about cost and disappointed with the modest improvements in our treatments. The current practice of oncology is associated not only with escalating costs but also with the unresolved misery our patients still experience. A cancer diagnosis remains frightening and it is not just the mythical symbolism of the term,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. like leprosy or plague. Real-life encounters with this deadly group of diseases leaves many patients and families scarred and traumatized.
Understandably, being an oncologist can be frustrating. Our treatments fail. We find out how deeply illness has devastated patients and families. We realize we don’t have the necessary expertise to serve our patient in the best manner. We may find ourselves in practice situations where we don’t get rewarded for doing what’s best for the patient. We realize that our path to success is taking much longer than anticipated. We spend our lives overworked with no time to invest in reaching our full potential. We feel bullied by insensitive bureaucrats and organizers. Perhaps even more painful—and an increasing reality for many of us—is that we may be losing what has already been achieved.
Humans always look for manageable order among the chaos they encounter.A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls. We need to know what we have to do when we get up in the morning, where to focus our attention. When we are unsure about how to deal with the never-ending challenges and uncertainty in life, we get overwhelmed. However, we need to make a rational decision about how to address them or how to proceed if a solution won’t be available.
Most challenges that we encounter have well-known solutions. We just need to find the time and motivation to apply them.
But then there are problems for which we have no clear solutions. How we deal with this latter category of problems—the important questions we don’t have immediate answers to—often defines our success or failure in life. We can get paralyzed by uncertainty and panic and scramble chaotically. We may restore some sense of normalcy and avoid mental overload through denial, with the hope of at least preserving our ability to solve more mundane problems.
Or, recognizing our unresolved problems, we may proceed with confidence and seek solutions in the most rational manner.
Many solutions to problems become obvious as we keep going. Sometimes it is simply enough to remember the problem and when a potential solution crosses our way, we know, “That’s it!” The discovery of penicillin is one of the most striking examples of this ingenious ability to “connect the dots.”
As many of us know, penicillin was discovered by chance in 1928 when Alexander Fleming accidentally left a dish of staphylococcus bacteria uncovered for a few days. He returned to find the dish dotted with bacterial growth, apart from one area where a patch of mold (Penicillin notatum) was growing. The rest is history. This “failure” required the open-minded ability to recognize the phenomenal potential of the occurrence, and then the perseverance and faith to use it as a practical solution to a completely different problem.
You may ask at this point: Where exactly am I going with this philosophical exercise in categorizing problems and their solutions?
We are bombarded daily with massive amounts of words, images and ideas. This inflow of information can be overwhelming, unless we know how to organize, channel and address it properly.
As oncologists, we know there is a hidden needle in this haystack of information, yet we are often in total disbelief that we might find it, perhaps because we’ve been told how impossible it is many times before, or because we don’t think we’ll get credit for removing all the hay without ever finding the needle. Yet clearly we all benefit when patient outcomes improve. If only we could make individual contributions more noticeable, I bet our collective enthusiasm to participate would rise dramatically.
No other specialty in medicine evolves as rapidly as oncology. Because uncontrolled cancer produces serious consequences and death, and because many patients are incurable and treatments are toxic, we are always in quest of better solutions.
Integrating the latest research into practice is part of our job description. Carefully conducted studies, often taking years and thousands of appropriately selected,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. consenting patients following an intended treatment plan, have given us answers to a multitude of “yes or no” questions. Not surprisingly, oncology was at the forefront of “personalized medicine” before the term was invented. We have embraced biomarkers. And each year, new factors have to be considered. Cancer genetics has introduced a plethora of new variables.
Without a better approach to managing this new information, progress in oncology will be stalled by a malignant crisis of data. We don’t have the time, resources or patients to answer the escalating number of questions using traditional clinical trials.
And I am not talking only about cutting-edge new treatments and evolving biomarkers. Aren’t we all surprised to find out that treatments we have been using for decades can be used better, or used for new indications? If decades were needed to find out how to use the old tools, are we going to wait for centuries to find out the potential our new treatments hold?
We can make real progress only if we find new research platforms to generate and test hypotheses. And it seems stunning how little we keep track of what actually happens in the battlefield of our day-to-day practices—a testing ground that has been profoundly underutilized and underappreciated.
Let’s imagine for a second that we could solve the logistics of tracking every cancer patient’s baseline characteristics, treatments and outcomes. We could accumulate a massive database and using data mining technologies, recognize patterns that may answer unresolved questions.
Let me call this unified database an “Onco-Universe.” Here, every patient and everything that matters to them would count, and would be coupled with the invaluable information that we have already acquired about them. The Onco-Universe would be a place for oncologists to find outcomes that have been observed using certain interventions in a group of patients, and intelligently incorporate this information into their decision making.
Naturally, a lot of red tape would need to fall and existing interfaces simplified. In fact, removing barriers of mistrust and profit protection would probably be by far the most difficult task. However, much of this information already has been acquired in differing formats: medical records, reimbursement bills that record treatment quantities and timing, and baseline and follow-up data in laboratory and radiology databases. With the Internet already connecting all of us in one informational universe, it’s hard to imagine that there are all that many technical problems that haven’t been encountered already and resolved for this complex system to operate while protecting patient privacy withOne of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. encrypted formats.
It would probably be hard to sell our profession to a teenager trying to decide which path in life would bring them the most fun and glamour, and bring it fast. Unless they plan to find the magic “cure for cancer” in medical school, generally our path to success is lengthy and painstaking.
We might do better in the eyes of this hypothetical teenager if career stablity were the goal. Then again, changing reimbursement and practice restructuring in recent years has been a bumpy ride, leading to lesser autonomy and making our claim to stability less convincing.
How about the satisfaction that comes from helping people in great need? It’s undoubtedly there. This translates into support and admiration from a grateful society, right? Yes,Thank you for visiting! I have been cry stalmosaic since 1998. the support is still there, although 40 years after President Nixon declared “War on Cancer,” our clinical choices and our achievements are being questioned by a society that is concerned about cost and disappointed with the modest improvements in our treatments. The current practice of oncology is associated not only with escalating costs but also with the unresolved misery our patients still experience. A cancer diagnosis remains frightening and it is not just the mythical symbolism of the term,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. like leprosy or plague. Real-life encounters with this deadly group of diseases leaves many patients and families scarred and traumatized.
Understandably, being an oncologist can be frustrating. Our treatments fail. We find out how deeply illness has devastated patients and families. We realize we don’t have the necessary expertise to serve our patient in the best manner. We may find ourselves in practice situations where we don’t get rewarded for doing what’s best for the patient. We realize that our path to success is taking much longer than anticipated. We spend our lives overworked with no time to invest in reaching our full potential. We feel bullied by insensitive bureaucrats and organizers. Perhaps even more painful—and an increasing reality for many of us—is that we may be losing what has already been achieved.
Humans always look for manageable order among the chaos they encounter.A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls. We need to know what we have to do when we get up in the morning, where to focus our attention. When we are unsure about how to deal with the never-ending challenges and uncertainty in life, we get overwhelmed. However, we need to make a rational decision about how to address them or how to proceed if a solution won’t be available.
Most challenges that we encounter have well-known solutions. We just need to find the time and motivation to apply them.
But then there are problems for which we have no clear solutions. How we deal with this latter category of problems—the important questions we don’t have immediate answers to—often defines our success or failure in life. We can get paralyzed by uncertainty and panic and scramble chaotically. We may restore some sense of normalcy and avoid mental overload through denial, with the hope of at least preserving our ability to solve more mundane problems.
Or, recognizing our unresolved problems, we may proceed with confidence and seek solutions in the most rational manner.
Many solutions to problems become obvious as we keep going. Sometimes it is simply enough to remember the problem and when a potential solution crosses our way, we know, “That’s it!” The discovery of penicillin is one of the most striking examples of this ingenious ability to “connect the dots.”
As many of us know, penicillin was discovered by chance in 1928 when Alexander Fleming accidentally left a dish of staphylococcus bacteria uncovered for a few days. He returned to find the dish dotted with bacterial growth, apart from one area where a patch of mold (Penicillin notatum) was growing. The rest is history. This “failure” required the open-minded ability to recognize the phenomenal potential of the occurrence, and then the perseverance and faith to use it as a practical solution to a completely different problem.
You may ask at this point: Where exactly am I going with this philosophical exercise in categorizing problems and their solutions?
We are bombarded daily with massive amounts of words, images and ideas. This inflow of information can be overwhelming, unless we know how to organize, channel and address it properly.
As oncologists, we know there is a hidden needle in this haystack of information, yet we are often in total disbelief that we might find it, perhaps because we’ve been told how impossible it is many times before, or because we don’t think we’ll get credit for removing all the hay without ever finding the needle. Yet clearly we all benefit when patient outcomes improve. If only we could make individual contributions more noticeable, I bet our collective enthusiasm to participate would rise dramatically.
No other specialty in medicine evolves as rapidly as oncology. Because uncontrolled cancer produces serious consequences and death, and because many patients are incurable and treatments are toxic, we are always in quest of better solutions.
Integrating the latest research into practice is part of our job description. Carefully conducted studies, often taking years and thousands of appropriately selected,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. consenting patients following an intended treatment plan, have given us answers to a multitude of “yes or no” questions. Not surprisingly, oncology was at the forefront of “personalized medicine” before the term was invented. We have embraced biomarkers. And each year, new factors have to be considered. Cancer genetics has introduced a plethora of new variables.
Without a better approach to managing this new information, progress in oncology will be stalled by a malignant crisis of data. We don’t have the time, resources or patients to answer the escalating number of questions using traditional clinical trials.
And I am not talking only about cutting-edge new treatments and evolving biomarkers. Aren’t we all surprised to find out that treatments we have been using for decades can be used better, or used for new indications? If decades were needed to find out how to use the old tools, are we going to wait for centuries to find out the potential our new treatments hold?
We can make real progress only if we find new research platforms to generate and test hypotheses. And it seems stunning how little we keep track of what actually happens in the battlefield of our day-to-day practices—a testing ground that has been profoundly underutilized and underappreciated.
Let’s imagine for a second that we could solve the logistics of tracking every cancer patient’s baseline characteristics, treatments and outcomes. We could accumulate a massive database and using data mining technologies, recognize patterns that may answer unresolved questions.
Let me call this unified database an “Onco-Universe.” Here, every patient and everything that matters to them would count, and would be coupled with the invaluable information that we have already acquired about them. The Onco-Universe would be a place for oncologists to find outcomes that have been observed using certain interventions in a group of patients, and intelligently incorporate this information into their decision making.
Naturally, a lot of red tape would need to fall and existing interfaces simplified. In fact, removing barriers of mistrust and profit protection would probably be by far the most difficult task. However, much of this information already has been acquired in differing formats: medical records, reimbursement bills that record treatment quantities and timing, and baseline and follow-up data in laboratory and radiology databases. With the Internet already connecting all of us in one informational universe, it’s hard to imagine that there are all that many technical problems that haven’t been encountered already and resolved for this complex system to operate while protecting patient privacy withOne of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. encrypted formats.
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