It’s the artificial holiday that celebrates the play on words from Star Wars movies – a rallying cry

The list of suggested actions from the Starwars site may not be to everyone’s taste and includes everything from

• Holding movie marathons
• Dress up as a Star Wars Character
• Star wars food including blue milk!
• Getting a Star Wars Tattoo

 
But this year I follow Yoda’s advice:

“Pass on what you have learned”

Specialty Pharmacy

This year I attended the Asembia Specialty Pharmacy Summit held this time each year in Vegas at the Wynn/Encore resort. This is the largest conference for specialty pharmacy but as Alex Fine noted and I agreed –

Agree with @Drugchannels there will be no Specialty Pharmacy in the future – it will just be "Pharmacy" #asembia17

— Nick van Terheyden, MD – The Incrementalist (@drnic1) May 1, 2017

All pharmacy is moving rapidly in the direction of specialty as we head into a world filled with precision medicine customized to the individual. On the one hand, this is an exciting proposition – at least to me. I am always reminded of the great scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian

You are all individuals…..we are but medicine has not treated us that way. Historically the path to understanding disease was based on grouping patients, diseases, signs, and symptoms into logical groups that helped decode underlying cases of a disease.Just think of the seminal work of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch who established the germ theory of disease and the resulting incredible advance in outcomes that derived from that block of work when Joseph Lister published in 1867 his Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery (met by substantial skepticism and took years to be widely accepted and adopted). This was just the start as we came to understand causative agents behind diseases that had vexed the profession. Treating someone with an infection with Penicillin thanks to Alexander Fleming’s work in 1928 was just one of many advances that grouped patients based on similarities of their disease. This methodology has served us well but the sequencing of the human genome- completed in Jun 2000 would have a big impact on this thinking.
Just think of the seminal work of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch who established the germ theory of disease and the resulting incredible advance in outcomes that derived from that block of work when Joseph Lister published in 1867 his Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery (met by substantial skepticism and took years to be widely accepted and adopted).
This was just the start as we came to understand causative agents behind diseases that had vexed the profession. Treating someone with an infection with Penicillin thanks to Alexander Fleming’s work in 1928 was just one of many advances that grouped patients based on similarities of their disease. This methodology has served us well but the sequencing of the human genome- completed in Jun 2000 would have a big impact on this thinking.

Over the course of the last few years, we have seen a clear move towards the individualized understanding of patients and disease accompanied by the inclusion of patients (Patient Engagement).

Patient Engagement and Access

There was a clear theme in the messages from various presenters that offered a clear vision of the push towards the consumer and patient engagement and a clear desire to find a path to delivering access to everyone that was captured by Liz Barrett from Pfizer in her keynote presentation and summarized with her slide – The 4 Tenets for Healthcare:
[stextbox id=”black”]Access to quality
Incentives
Long-Term Value
Competitive principles[/stextbox]
Providing access that overcomes the current challenges but builds in incentives for everyone in the system – not just the providers and hospitals but also patients and everyone involved in healthcare. This is the principle of competition without which systems tend to decline and ultimately stop working. There are people who perceive competition and capital principles as contraindicated in healthcare that we want to provide to everyone. I think these ideals can and should co-exist – without competition motivation disappears and efficiency will decline.
To achieve this we should take a book out of Yoda’s wisdom to pass on this wisdom and my key message for this day. Benefiting from the extended community. Our ability to connect and access people and resources has never been better. The need to remember data is much reduced:
[stextbox id=”warning”]GIYF[/stextbox]
This access goes far beyond the data and to people and resources. Can you imagine making a purchase without looking at ratings and reviews on sites – I can’t. Yet the reviews are from people I don’t know and have not met – yet I trust them. This works because of the human desire to help others (this, by the way, is the reason that social engineering as carried out by hackers is so successful – this will be the subject of a post coming up in the future). But this creates an incredible set of resources and talent available to you.

Patient Communities

Some of it is formalized like the early website entry in this area: Patients Like Me. But extends to informal interactions on social media channels like facebook and one of my favorite: Paying till it Hurts. Then there is your extended family and friends who all want to help. You will find people who have been through similar experiences, will have tips and ideas on how to deal with problems that others have faced and have conquered
I was lucky to hear Arnold Schwarzenegger present as the keynote at this recent conference – his recurring theme was that he was not a self-made man but his success was the result of all the help and support he received from others

So use the power of the Force – it is your network, your friends, family and those around you.
Derive strength from them, have them provide tips on what small changes you can make to improve your health and then help keep you on track – nothing like knowing that you are being watched to help keep you on track.
One of my most successful personal health drives was base don a weekly self-reported weigh in for myself and two colleagues. Anytime I felt I was going to make a poor choice on food or exercise I just thought of the weekly chart and where my line would be relative to my colleagues and I did not want to be the outlier.
Have you had success helping friends and family? What works and what doesn’t. Is there a special trick or insight you could share that might help someone else – share it now and help the community.
 

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Tagged as asembia17, Genome, May 4, MaytheFourthbewithyou, Starwars