What is the future of healthcare and when will it arrive? To explore these and similar questions I visited with Dr. Ben Locwin and Scott Endicott in a five-episode podcast series. Over this series we will explore why the future of healthcare is now; gene and cell therapy, the use and misuse of statistics, Hippocrates and modern healthcare and where healthcare will be headed down the road. In this Part 3, we turn to the specifics of managing obesity.

This episode of the podcast discussed the importance of personal behavioral health in managing obesity, which is a crisis in the US. Starting with the FDA’s Rumor Control Initiative to combat misinformation, Tom Fox, Scott Endicott and Ben Locwin discussed the need for critical thinking when evaluating pharmaceutical products, the importance of involving a healthcare provider in the discussion, and the use of telemedicine to manage obesity remotely. They also suggested that digital fitbits can be used to monitor activity and that physicians can use this data to make recommendations.

The FDA has recently released the Rumor Control Initiative to combat misinformation. This initiative encourages people to check the source of the information and cross-check it with reliable sources, and to look beyond the headlines to get full context. Drug companies are required to list potential adverse effects of treatments, so it’s important to consider the benefits and risks of treatments together. It’s also important to note that people spread misinformation for various reasons, such as wanting to protect those they care about or feeling connected.

Randomized clinical trials are required for all licensed and marketed pharmaceutical treatments. Hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and analysis of variance are used to evaluate the efficacy of a drug compared to a placebo. Tom suggested that a physician can track a patient’s activity with a digital fitbit and make recommendations during the patient’s 30 days of a month.

It is important to apply critical thinking and use common sense when evaluating pharmaceutical products. Pharmaceutical products are subject to advertising and branding, which can be difficult to evaluate. Pharmaceutical companies used to employ detailers to provide information to healthcare providers and try to get them to prescribe their product, but now they can buy television time to directly advertise to patients. There is a concern that patients may not have the knowledge to understand the biochemistry, biological impacts, and toxicology of the drugs they are taking, so it’s important to have a trusted healthcare advisor and provider to help interpret the data.

Key Highlights

·      Statistics in Healthcare

·      Managing Obesity Remotely

·      Obesity and Behavioral Health

·      Pharmaceutical Advertising

 Resources

Dr. Ben Locwin on LinkedIn

Scott Endicott on LinkedIn

Tom Fox on LinkedIn