Articles

Though the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s collection of disaggregated genetic data for occupational surveillance and research raises numerous privacy concerns, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 allows genetic information to be used to develop personal pharmaceuticals.

Perhaps machine learning systems trained on patients’ electronic health records and social media footprints could be used as decision aids when patients lack capacity or face overwhelming decisions.

Graphic pathographies can illustrate how overreliance on statistics can obscure the clinical relevance of patients’ experiences of anxiety when they’re presented with prognoses.

This photograph of a kaleidoscope of potentially life-saving and potentially life-threatening pills suggests ethical conflict inherent in clinicians’ strivings to meet patients’ pain relief needs without contributing crises of drug diversion.

Social and behavioral data contained in electronic health records are essential for studying health disparities. Can researchers avoid bias when collecting, analyzing, and using such data?

Questions about data privacy need to be addressed when research institutions negotiate with companies developing mobile health applications. Commercial terms of use and data sharing notifications should be reviewed before use in human subject research settings.

Transitions in relabeling personalized medicine as precision medicine, precision health, or wellness genomics reflect shifting the locus of responsibility for health from individuals to clinicians and in shifting focus from genetic risk to genetic enhancement.

As billable procedures, advance care planning (ACP) conversations need measurable outcomes and training support. Integrating ACP into standard practice is key to ensuring clinicians deliver care that matters to patients.

Eliciting the patient’s motives and goals and helping the patient and her loved ones explore alternatives are essential to maintaining trusting relationships and open communication.

Physicians new to a case might object to an established care plan. Practice variation, clinical momentum, and how value is assigned by different parties to acute care and comfort measures can each contribute to conflict in these cases.