Chronic health conditions impact the lives of billions of people around the world each year.
Chronic illness accounts for approximately 60% of deaths globally each year.
World population: 6.8 billion. 2 billion people worldwide struggle with chronic illnesses like cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
Early and accurate diagnosis has the potential to improve patient success rates, but it can be difficult to establish.
Medical knowledge is growing more quickly than doctors can keep up with.
In the U.S. alone, up to 15% of medical diagnoses are inaccurate or incomplete.
Digitized medicine in North America alone will grow 400% by 2015 —reaching a total of 14,000 terabytes of data, or 7,500 times the data in all U.S. libraries combined.
To give physicians better insight to help improve patient outcomes, WellPoint is pioneering the use of DeepQA technology—otherwise known as IBM Watson—in healthcare.
Imagine a patient describing her symptoms to a physician who has immediate access to Watson through his laptop.
Based on the symptoms described, Watson provides probabilities for five possible diagnoses.
Watson then considers explicitly absent symptoms to reassess these probabilities.
Correlating the symptoms with family and patient histories, Watson is able to refine the hypotheses further.
The process is repeated with a focus on the patient’s current medications.
Final probabilities are determined, and the physician moves on to testing.
Every patient represents a wide spectrum of variables.
Symptoms
Fever
Dizziness
Abdominal pain
Back pain
Cough
Family history
Diabetes
Breast cancer
Colorectal cancer
Coagulation disorders
Grave’s Disease
Patient history
Hypertension
Hyperlipidemia
Hypothyroidism
Frequent urinary tract infection
Smoking
Clinical findings
Blood pressure
Heart rate
Restoration rate
Temperature
Pain score
Medications
Pravastatin
– Lasix
Aspirin
Chemotherapy
Antiemetics
Watson: An expert diagnostic system
This groundbreaking system can pore though the equivalent of 200 million pages of medical data and formulate a response in less than 3 seconds, enabling healthcare professionals to make more informed decisions more quickly than ever before.
Natural language processing – Breaks down the communication barrier between humans and computers.
Hypothesis generation – Offers various probabilities rather than attempting a single “right” answer.
Adaptation and learning – Builds knowledge iteratively over time, in much the same way that humans learn.
Correlated patient information
Possible conditions
Renal failure
UTI
Influenza
Esophagitis
Diabetes
Stage 1 lung cancer
WellPoint is using Watson to help physicians become better at what they do — delivering improved care more quickly and confidently than ever before. The potential of Watson doesn’t end there. The same capabilities hold enormous promise for financial services, transportation and more.
Whosover pulleth this sword from this stone, and can eat just two or three of these double-chocolate Amaretto things without finishing the whole box, shall be king born of England!
Preheat oven to 180C. Place mushrooms in a large baking tray, dot with butter and scatter over thyme sprigs. Add wine, stock and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Cover tray with foil and cook for 15 minutes, or until the mushrooms are tender.
Meanwhile, in a small saucepan bring two cups water to the boil, add quinoa, reduce heat, cover with a lid and cook for 10-15 minutes until the liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat and fluff the quinoa with a fork.
To serve, spoon the quinoa over the mushrooms, add a dollop of goat’s feta and scatter over the micro herbs. Season with extra salt and pepper if required.
At its simplest, this traditional Lebanese dish is made with lentils, rice, onion and water. I have added spices. The onions should be cooked really well with lots of blackened, crunchy bits. To make a creamy, thickened yoghurt, drain through a colander or sieve lined with muslin or a new Chux kitchen cloth.
Serve this simple, traditional Lebanese dish with thick yoghurt and mint.Photo: Marina Oliphant
Ingredients
6 tbsp olive oil
6 onions, halved and finely sliced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
5 cups water or vegetable stock
1 1/2 cups brown lentils, washed and drained
1 cup long grain rice, washed and drained
1 cup plain yoghurt, drained through muslin-lined colander for 30 minutes
Fresh mint sprigs, to garnish
Method
Heat 2 tablespoons oil in large saucepan over medium heat.
Add one onion, garlic, cumin, cinnamon and allspice and saute for four minutes until onion is softened and lightly coloured.
Add water (or stock) and lentils and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Stir in rice, return to boil, then reduce heat to low, cover and cook until liquid has been absorbed and rice and lentils are tender, about 15 minutes.
Season well with salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, heat remaining oil in pan and cook remaining onions until soft, well coloured and beginning to caramelise and blacken at the edges, about 30 minutes.
Arrange rice and lentils on a platter and sprinkle with caramelised onion. Serve with yoghurt and mint.
This is a great dessert to share with friends around the barbecue, as the pomegranate sauce can be made well ahead, leaving only the mangoes to be sliced and cooked for a few minutes before serving. Scarlet pomegranate seeds add an exotic tart crunch. Buy firm mangoes and leave to soften for a day or two in the fruit bowl.
Combine caster sugar and water in a jug and stir until sugar dissolves. Add pomegranate molasses and Grenadine and stir well. Rest at room temperature.
Heat barbecue to medium. Cut cheeks from each mango and brush cut sides with melted butter. Cook mangoes cut side down on barbecue, for about 3-4 minutes or until golden.
To serve, place mango cheeks on serving plate, drizzle with sauce and sprinkle with pomegranate seeds.
It’s all very well to be impressed by the extent to which the capacity of a 5 year old to delay the consumption of a marshmallow so that they receive two marshmallows later can predict their success in life.
What I’m less impressed by is the extent to which the same qualities result in ungratified lives?
I’ve seen many doctor friends successfully delay their gratification indefinitely to the point where they just miss out, on fun, and ultimately on life.
When I was a kid, I read a book called The Listmaker. It’s about a young girl who uses lists to organize and make sense of her life. At the time I didn’t read any more into it besides the fact that this was an odd hobby for a pre-teen girl to spend so much time on.
Now, although I don’t remember the book that well, I do see much more significance in the humble list–especially after researching where they come from and why we make lists.
As I researched this post I realised how hard it is to pinpoint the origin of something as simple and widespread as the list (to-do or otherwise), but I did find out some interesting stories about how lists have been used in the past and why we find them useful in everyday life.
WHY DO WE MAKE LISTS AS HUMANS IN THE FIRST PLACE?
Philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco is a big fan of lists and has some fascinating ideas about why they’re so important to humans:
The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible… And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists…
Umberto Eco
Umberto explained in an interview that lists are often seen as relics of primitive cultures–simplistic devices that don’t belong in our modern day and age. However, the simple form of the list prevails again and again over time, because, as Umberto says, it has “an irresistible magic.”
Not only that, but we also form and challenge definitions of the things around us by making lists of their characteristics. For instance, if we were to describe an animal to a child, we would do so by listing characteristics like color, size, diet and habitat. Regardless of whether this matches the scientific definition of the animal or not, that’s how we make sense of it.
The list is the mark of a highly advanced, cultivated society because a list allows us to question the essential definitions. The essential definition is primitive compared with the list.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, THE GODFATHER OF THE TO-DO LIST?
Benjamin Franklin is a great example of someone known for using lists to encourage his own self-improvement. He famously detailed a thirteen-week plan to practice important virtues such as cleanliness, temperance, etc. Each day he tracked his progress on a chart.
Benjamin also set himself a strict daily routine, which included time for sleeping, meals and working, all set for specific times of the day. Unfortuantely, the demands of his printing business made it difficult for him to always stick to his routine, but this image shows how he aimed to spend his time:
The to-do list in particular is one that we spend a lot of time and energy on perfecting. Somehow, we don’t seem to struggle when it comes to making a shopping list and buying everything on it, but getting the tasks on our to-do list done is a whole other ball game.
4 TOP TIPS TO WRITE A TO-DO LIST THAT WILL ACTUALLY HELP YOU GET THINGS DONE
Looking at the history of lists and how they’re used, we can glean some insights about how to create a to-do list we can actually complete.
1. Break projects into tasks, don’t succumb to the Zeigarnik effect
We kind of have a reminder system built-in to our minds that nags us about unfinished tasks, called the Zeigarnik effect. It sounds pretty cool that we already have this, but it’s actually not that reliable or healthy for us.
What really happens is that there’s a disconnect between our conscious and unconscious minds–the unconscious mind can’t plan how to finish the task, but it gets annoyed with the feeling of it being unfinished. To shake off that feeling, it nags the conscious mind with reminders about the task–not to finish it, but simply to encourage us to make a plan.
If you’ve heard of David Allen’s GTD method, you’ll be familiar with his concept of “next steps,” which is pretty much the same thing. It’s the process of breaking down a project or task into smaller tasks, and planning which one will be the next step towards completing the whole thing.
This abates the nagging of the unconscious brain, as it’s satisfied that at some point we’ll get onto that task, and we know exactly how we’ll do it.
Maria Popova at Brain Pickings says the essentials of creating these do-able next steps are to make “a few very specific, aactionalbe, non-conflicting items.”
2. Prioritize ruthlessly
Maria’s post on the history of the to-do list also describes the story of a psychologist who gave a talk at the Pentagon about managing time and resources. Before the talk began, the psychologist asked everyone in the group to write a summary of their strategic approach in 25 words.
Apparently, 25 words was too little for the men to express their strategies, and the only response came from the single woman in the group, whose summary read as follows:
First I make a list of priorities: one, two, three, and so on. Then I cross out everything from three down.
I’ve heard this approach suggested before in various places, and it always reminds me of the CEO I worked with at my previous company, who had a Post-It on his desk that read, “prioritize until it hurts.” in other words, learning the powerful skill of saying no. I’m not sure if he ever managed to do that, but I liked the approach.
To-do lists invariably crop up when we have so many things to do that we can’t keep track of them all in our heads (Aha! We’re back to Umberto’s thoughts on how lists help us to create order from the chaos of our lives!). Which means that we end up with lists far too long for us to complete.
Prioritizing ruthlessly seems to be the only way to actually get done what’s most important in the little time that we have.
3. “Plan ahead”–advice for which Charles Schwab paid $25,000
Here’s another cool story of how to-do lists evolved in the workplace:
Almost 100 years ago, the president of the Bethlehem Steel company in the USA was Charles M. Schwab. His company was struggling with inefficiency and Schwab didn’t know how to improve it, so he called in Ivy Lee, a well-known efficiency expert at the time.
Lee agreed to help the company, with his fee being whatever Schwab felt the results were worth after three months.
Lee’s advice to each member of the company’s management team was to write a to-do list at the end of each day, which consisted of the six most important tasks to be done the following day. Then they were told to organize the list based on the highest priority tasks.
The next day, the employes worked through the list from top to bottom, focusing on a single task at a time. At the end of the day, anything left on the list would get added to the top of tomorrow’s list when the employees once again planned for the following day.
In your own planning, you can take Lee’s advice for free and use the night before to plan your workday. Setting out the most important tasks you want to complete the following day will help you to avoid time-wasters and distractions by knowing what to work on immediately.
4. Be realistic in your planning
Sometimes it’s nice to know that even our great heroes are fallible. This story about Benjamin Franklin’s struggles to keep up with his daily to-do list shows how important it is to be realistic about how much time we have and what our priorities are.
Franklin was known to be a meticulous tracker of his daily routine and his work towards the virtues he prioritized.
Unfortunately, the demands of his business meant that he didn’t always keep up with his ideal daily routine. He often got interrupted by clients and had to ignore his schedule to meet with them.
He also noticed that some of the virtues he aspired to practice, such as frugality–not wasting anything–took up too much time for him to live life as he wanted to. Preparing his own meals and mending his own clothes all the time, for instance, meant that he didn’t have enough time for business or his side projects.
The result of these conflicting priorities was unhappiness over not completing the tasks he set for himself. As a result, he had to re-prioritize, which is something we should keep in mind.
If we’re struggling to complete our to-do lists on a regular basis (we’ve all been there at some point!), we need to make a change to the list–make it more realistic.
Although a to-do list can be infinite, our time is not. We need to match the tasks we require of ourselves to how much time and energy we can afford to spend on them. This is where prioritizing can really come in handy, as well.
Starting to develop your own, personal daily routine is one of the most powerful ways to become a great list maker. You might find some inspiration from these seven famous entrepreneurs and their routines.
Find a way that works for you
As with pretty much any kind of lifehacking or productivity topic I write about, individual mileage will vary. We all need to take into account our unique situation when experimenting with advice like this. For me, prioritizing and planning the night before has really helped. For you, being realistic might be more useful.
BONUS: JOHNNY CASH’S PERFECT, SEMI-EFFICIENT TO-DO LIST
As a last example, I found a to-do list from Johnny Cash. This wouldn’t necessarily be one we’d advocate to help you become more efficient. But then again, we can’t argue with Johnny Cash’s success, can we?
—Belle Beth Cooper is a Content Crafter at Buffer and Co-founder of Hello Code. Follow her on Twitter at @BelleBethCooper.
