Trends in Technology, Mobile, and Education

Mary Meeker from KPCB recently delivered her gallery of “2013 Internet Trends” at the All Things D conference (#D11). I was originally directed to this data marathon from the mobile perspective via Brian Dolan (@mobilehealth). However, Meeker’s presentation is much more than that. It is a sprawling look at the Internet of Things, Traditional Industries Being Re-Imagined, and Sharing Everything. Fortunately, her mammoth 117-slide deck (that was delivered quickly in just 20 minutes; video here) has been placed on @Slideshare.

It is a lot to process, but here are just a few points that jumped out at me from Meeker’s presentation:

• The average smartphone user reaches for his/her device 150 times a day (what does this hint at for wearables?)
• Percentage of residents who ‘share everything’ or ‘most everything’ online: USA (15%) compared to Saudi Arabia (60%)
• JD.com offers same day package delivery with real-time map tracking…often by bike…in China
• Amazon was the third largest provider of tablets in 2012 (behind Apple & Samsung); overall tablet growth has outpaced smartphone growth
• 77% of academic leaders at 2,800 colleges perceive online education as the same or superior versus face-to-face education
• Top “Learning Tools” from “learning professionals” worldwide included: 1. Twitter 2. YouTube 3. Google Docs…7. Skype 8. PowerPoint…12. Evernote 13. Slideshare 14. Prezi
• Mary Meeker is funny, who knew?

Again, there is a lot of information here and some require a deeper dive, but this is a great resource to answer some questions and stimulate more.

@kevinclauson

If this level of creativity could only be used for ‘good’

The 10th annual ePharma Summit was held over the last few days in NY.  I was interested due to some of the scheduled speakers but could not make it, so I dipped in and out of the virtual conference stream as possible and found some pretty worthwhile content in there.  The most convenient way to follow was via #ePharma on Twitter, but the conference site also did a pretty good job of posting videos (although the audio was almost inaudible at times) and other information.

What ultimately prompted me to blog about it was a tweet (via @WendyBlackburn & @pjmachado) about a parody video produced by Kevin Nalty (@nalts) [see below].  It just struck me as creative, funny, and very strong work…and it made me think how great it would be if that kind of creativity could be unleashed to design social media/mobile/any type of health-related content aimed at informing, educating, and empowering patients.  Yes, the creativity behind this video is being used for ‘good’, but minus the shackles it could be used for a much greater ‘good’.  I think that social media, in particular, has a lot to offer on this front and it is unfortunate that the regulatory environment is such that this is largely not possible right now.  There have been some efforts along these lines and there was even a preliminary paper just published on the use of Facebook to deliver HIV education.  However, there remains a long way to go – and I’m not just talking about ‘official guidance’ in a single arena. 

More anon, for now…I hope you enjoy the video.

@kevinclauson

Note: If you click on the video it may say it is restricted on certain sites as it contains content from Universal Music Group and must be played on You Tube…so you can click ‘Watch on YouTube’ to play or go to the epharmify Channel to view it.

Neuroenhancer Use in Poker Players

This project is outside my normal research track, which is why I sought out several collaborators whose expertise encompasses cognition, cosmetic psychopharmacology, statistics, and poker. The idea for this research dates backs to conversations at the Bellagio poker tables several years ago. Some poker players were discussing prescription drugs that they had tried in order to help them concentrate or stay awake for marathon sessions. Later, there were anecdotes about using meds to enhance performance on some poker themed podcasts. ‘Name’ poker professionals like Paul Phillips, Gavin Smith, and Mike Matusow talked about the benefits of drugs like Adderall, Provigil, and Ritalin in poker and popular media sources as well.

At the same time we were putting together this project, a piece was published in Nature on the use of cognition enhancing drugs in scientists and researchers [1]. Several really interesting articles exploring the bioethics surrounding the issue were also published prior to and directly after this period of time [2-6]. Meanwhile, we had proceeded in developing our survey to assess the use of cognitive and performance enhancing medications (CPEMs), dietary supplements, and other substances by poker players for improvement of their game.

We returned to Las Vegas for the pilot administration, which yielded some great suggestions for improving our survey tool. We had largely designed the medications and substances we asked about in the survey tool based on pharmacology, indications, and previous literature on neuroenhancers. However, some of the poker players who helped us insisted we had to add a handful of items like marijuana, alcohol, and, hydrocodone to our list of items we asked about. In retrospect this was crucial as those substances were among the most frequently reported taken as CPEMs by survey respondents.

We recently presented preliminary results at the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists Annual Meeting and expanded results as part of the Research Division of Pharmacy Socioeconomic Initiatives at Nova Southeastern University. The slide deck of those expanded results is available on Slideshare, which can be accessed by clicking on the image above or here. Full results will be available in the coming manuscript.

Use of cognitive and performance enhancing medications in poker players

View more presentations from Kevin Clauson.

@kevinclauson

[1] Maher B. Poll results: look who’s doping. Nature 2008;452(7188):674-5.
[2] Farah MJ, Illes J, Cook-Deegan R, Gardner H, Kandel E, King P, Parens E, Sahakian B, Wolpe PR. Neurocognitive enhancement: what can we do and what should we do? Nat Rev Neurosci 2004;5(5):421-5.
[3] Chatterjee A. Cosmetic neurology: the controversy over enhancing movement, mentation, and mood. Neurology 2004;63(6):968-74.
[4] Chatterjee A. Is it acceptable for people to take methylphenidate to enhance performance? No. BMJ 2009;338:b1956.
[5] Harris J. Is it acceptable for people to take methylphenidate to enhance performance? Yes. BMJ 2009;338:b1955.
[6] Cerullo M. Cosmetic psychopharmacology and the President’s Council on Bioethics. Perspect Biol Med 2006;49(4):515-23.

A different kind of meaningful use

 There has been a lot of interest in the meaningful use debate surrounding electronic medical records (EMRs) of late, but I read a post by @TedEytan that got me thinking about a different kind of ‘meaningful use’.  The topic of his post was the differences between mHealth and eHealth, but what really caught my eye was the coined term “Internet’s Informant General” (to describe @SusannahFox of Pew Internet).  I had not come across the term before and I found it very striking.  I have recently been working on a project involving panels of key informants representing their respective countries and the idea of this combined with a ‘representative virtual office’ like Internet Informant General was oddly compelling for some reason….much more than another in a line of czars (little ‘c’).  The fact that this office was faux filled by someone on the strength of their research (and ability to communicate/disseminate it) made it even more interesting as an idea.  

Despite being a very competitive process, there are still volumes upon volumes of research published, which vary in quality and utility.  I think it is interesting to see when research transcends limited utility to help affect and drive other research and policy.  This is when ‘meaningful use’ of someone’s work can be said to occur (versus when it can only be harnessed by a handful of specialists who can comprehend it).  Don’t get me wrong, that type of work can be very significant as well – it simply requires a different type of translational process.  However, the efforts of the folks at Pew Research Center on the Internet and American Life Project is reminiscent of the early survey work of David Eisenberg on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) published in the New England Journal of Medicine.  Eisenberg’s survey paper was largely responsible for creating an awareness about CAM among healthcare professionals and spurring on unprecedented research in the area (and was possibly contributory to the cottage industry surrounding it).  This, too, was research that could be measured by the meaningful use of its findings to affect and drive work in healthcare.

Overall, it’s just very satisfying to see any type of research that ends up with this type of meaningful use.  Sometimes in the midst of the seemingly Herculean effort that it takes to get research funded, or navigated through approval boards, or even just written up – it is easy to forget how a study or a body of work can make such a direct and meaningful contribution.  Cue the old NBC music for...

[Note: I didn’t really mean for the post to end up like this, but what can I say…I can’t quite shake some measure of being an idealist]

@kevinclauson