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Why healthcare cannot—and should not—become data-driven, despite the many promises of intensified data sourcing.In contemporary healthcare, everybody seems to want more data, of higher quality, on more people, and to use this data for a wider range of purposes. In theory, such pervasive data collection should lead to a healthcare system in which data can quickly, efficiently, and unambiguously be interpreted and provide better care for patients, more efficient administration, enhanced options for research, and accelerated economic growth. In practice, however, data are difficult to interpret and the many purposes often undermine one another. In this book, anthropologist and STS scholar Klaus Hoeyer offers an in-depth look at the paradoxes surrounding healthcare data.Focusing on Denmark, a world leader in healthcare data infrastructures, Hoeyer shares the perspectives of different stakeholders, from epidemiologists to hospital managers, from patients to physicians, analyzing the social dynamics set in motion by data intensification and calling special attention to that which cannot be easily coded in a database. HHe illustrates how data can be at once helpful, overwhelming, and sometimes disastrous through concrete examples. The COVID-19 pandemic serves as a special closing case study that shows how these data paradoxes carry weighty political implications. By revealing the diverse and sometimes contradictory practices spawned by intensified data sourcing, Data Paradoxes raises vital questions about how we might better use healthcare data.

Das Werk untersucht, welchen gesundheitlichen Nutzen Patienten aus der Hausarztzentrierten Versorgung ziehen und stellt die Ergebnisse der konventionellen Regelversorgung gegenüber. Die Untersuchung fokussiert dabei auf den Patienten als Nutzenempfänger und bildet seine ambulante Versorgung in einem Modell ab. Zur Operationalisierung des Modells werden ausschließlich Indikatoren herangezogen, deren Bedeutung für den Patientennutzen medizinisch gut belegt ist.Die empirische Analyse erfolgt unter Verwendung von Routinedaten der Gesetzlichen Krankenkasse. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die HzV vor allem für Typ-2-Diabetiker und Patienten ab 70 Jahren Vorteile bietet. In beiden Patientengruppen ist die Hospitalisationsrate durch die Teilnahme an der HzV zum Teil deutlich geringer als in der Regelversorgung.Die Erkenntnisse begründen Empfehlungen für den Patienten zur Teilnahme an der HzV und unterstützen die Forderung nach dem Ausbau des Angebots an alternativen Versorgungsmodellen.

In The Big Fat Surprise, investigative journalist Nina Teicholz reveals the unthinkable: everything we thought we knew about dietary fat is wrong. For the past 60 years, we have been told that the best possible diet involves cutting back on fat, especially saturated fat. But what if the low-fat diet is itself the problem? What if the very foods we've been denying ourselves — the creamy cheeses, the sizzling steaks — are the key to reversing the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease? In this captivating, vibrant, and convincing narrative, based on a nine-year-long investigation, Teicholz shows how the misinformation about saturated fats took hold in the scientific community and the public imagination, and how recent findings have overturned these beliefs. She explains why the Mediterranean diet is not the healthiest, and how we might be replacing trans fats with something even worse. With eye-opening scientific rigour, The Big Fat Surprise makes the ground-breaking claim that more, not less, dietary fat — including saturated fat — is what leads to better health and wellness. Science shows that we have been needlessly avoiding meat, cheese, whole milk, and eggs for decades, and that we can now, guilt-free, welcome these delicious foods back into our lives.

Despite a policy focus on involving patients in health care and increasing patient autonomy, much covert coercion of patients takes place in everyday healthcare. This book, by a leading patient activist, examines for the first time how the patient movement, which works to improve the quality of healthcare, can actually be considered an emancipation movement when led by its radical elements. In this highly original book the author argues that radical patient groups and individual activists who repeatedly challenge or oppose some standards in healthcare, can be seen as working in the direction of freeing patients from coercion and from its associated injustice and inequality. Combining new academic theory with rich empirical evidence, the book explains how looking at healthcare from an emancipatory perspective could improve its quality as patients experience it. It will appeal to health professionals, managers, patient activists, policy makers and others concerned with the quality of healthcare.