Laurie Edwards

MGH moves towards personalized medicine in cancer care

Massachusetts General Hospital plans to start using gene testing to read the genetic fingerprints of tumors within a year, a move that could mean more targeted treatment for cancer patients.According to today’s Boston Globe, MGH is the...

Calories, not diets, matter

Could the simple logic that a calorie is a calorie be the key towards maintaining weight loss?Well, not exactly. But new research published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that in the end, patients who followed four...

Primary care and the role of the nurse practitioner

The health headlines are hard to escape this week. Consider the projected $8K patients are projected to spend on health care costs this year, or the discussion of health and wellness at yesterday’s Fiscal Responsibility Summit. Yet another...

Young adults, cancer and employment

I just finished reading Kairol Rosenthal’s great new book, Everything Changes: The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20’s and 30’s. Using the author’s experiences with thyroid cancer and...

Extra vitamins worth it?

From commercials on television to headlines across health pages, taking vitamin supplements is a widely encouraged practice. Many people looking to prevent chronic disease now consider taking megadoses of vitamins a daily habit—and they spend $23 billion a...

How to be better patients

There are plenty of essays and columns out there about the doctor-patient relationship. I’ve spent the week visiting someone else in the hospital and watching people come and go reminded me of how important it is for...

New test could indicate future heart attack risk

Between heart-healthy Valentine’s treats, Go Red for Women Day and signs in hospitals and public places informing people of the signs of heart attacks, matters of the heart dominate conversations these days.And with good reason&mdash...

A sweet Valentine's Day for patients with celiac disease

Valentine’s Day is still a week and a half away, but with speculation that Steve Jobs could have celiac disease still fresh in my mind, when I saw a note about gluten-free Valentine’s Day options...

More mail-order medications?

Obviously saving money and making health care more accessible are huge components in health care reform right now. Managing chronic disease, which accounts for a staggering 75 percent of our health care costs, is key. After all, these patients&rsquo...

Can we fix health care in America?

Today marks the launch of a series of “Summit Conversations,” sponsored by the America’s Agenda Health Care Education Fund, and the message of the consensus-building talks is two-fold:Yes we can fix health care...

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