ASH Clinical News January 2016 | Page 65

BACK of the BOOK Heard in the Blogosphere @DrMJoyner (Michael Joyner, MD) Four problems with #PrecisionMedicine: 1) Reader’s Digest biology 2) Bad public policy 3) Hypothesis? 4) Big science run amok @RichDuszak Don’t just measure what you can measure. Measure what matters. @CleClinic_Matt (Matt Kalaycio, MD) The most common medical procedure according to my boss @TobyCosgroveMD? COMMUNICATION @WilliamDale_MD (William Dale, MD, PhD) Do not regret growing older. It’s a privilege denied to many. --Anonymous #aging @Dr_Dhawale (Tejas Dhawale, MD) Seattle Sneakers Racing in the Orlando Sun Drunk on runners high. #ASHaiku15 #ASH15 @SeattleCCA In the Age of Digital Records, Paper Still Carries Weight The rush to electronic information was prompted by the best intentions. No one debates those goals; we struggle daily to accomplish them, and often, incredibly, we succeed. We succeed with the simple expedient of paper. Paper has become our lingua franca, our fallback and standby. In our new digital universe, we have peculiarly seen a retro explosion of paper. We may no longer write paper prescriptions, but we fax or hand-deliver paper versions of our electronic dealings routinely now. When you don’t know what electronic language the receiver speaks (and you never do), you go with paper.” —Abigail Zuger, MD, in The New York Times How the United States Could Cure Drug-Price Insanity @CarlSeashore Concrete perks of high academic achievement. #NobelPrize #notmyparkingspot @BloodJournal Blood EIC Dr. Bob Löwenberg and Deputy Editor Dr. Nancy Berliner celebrate Blood’s 70th anniversary at #ASH15. ASHClinicalNews.org “To make sure society keeps benefiting from specialty cancer drugs, we need to curb their soaring costs. If we link drugs’ prices to their value, we can continue the vital quest to lengthen and improve people’s lives. We can draw a bull’s-eye around the places where innovation is needed most. And we can mandate that treatments be affordable for patients. This last, vital part of the formula would require insurers to jettison the multi-thousand-dollar co-payments they often tack on to expensive specialty drugs. … If we want innovation, and we certainly do, the solution to affording it lies in paying only for its value.” —Peter B. Bach, MD, in Fortune “We can draw a bull’s-eye around the places where innovation is needed most. And we can mandate that treatments be affordable for patients.” ASH Clinical News 63