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GeriPal’s very own Alex Smith recently gave an absolutely fabulous “Ted-like” talk in which he made the statement that “prognosis needs to be a part of everyday medical care.”  Unfortunately, as he so eloquently states in the video (which can be watched here), it isn’t always taken into account.

To dive a little deeper into the lack of prognosis in health care decision making, lets just take a look at cancer screening.   Individuals with a limited life expectancy are exposed to all the immediate harms from a screening test, yet may not live long enough to see any of the benefit (the concept of lag-time-to-benefit).   Yet, people with limited life expectancy still get these screening tests as evident by the following studies:

This is part of the reason that we created the ePrognosis: Cancer Screening decision support app to help guide conversations with elderly patients of whether to start, stop, or continue breast cancer and/or colorectal cancer screening. We recently updated it to give it a new look and feel, and for all you non-iPhone users, we are close to releasing a version that can be used on any mobile device (and yes, it will remain free of charge).

In Alex’s video, he leave the audience with a challenge, one that I’ll give to the GeriPal viewers as well.  Alex asks the audience to use “ePrognosis once a week for the next month.   See how it changes your perspective.   See how it changes the conversations you have with your patients.”

by: Eric Widera (@ewidera)

The ePrognosis Cancer Screening app
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