Erik's Multiple Sclerosis & Lyme Blog

By Jocelyn Salada
Guest Contributor

Research into areas of science like chemistry, physics, biology, and robotics continuously produces new and exciting knowledge every year. How we apply that knowledge, of course, is up to the fancies of a completely different subset of disciplines. Applied science takes theoretical knowledge and hews it into something usable in real world situations. In our quotidian lives, few applied sciences factor more into our well being and life expectancy than health science: loosely defined as the application of research-oriented sciences, such as in the aforementioned disciplines, into the health and care of humanity.

Modern Health Science

Armed with the technologies of the day – smartphones, high speed Internet access, the Internet itself – a physician has access to a vast repository of information. With these tools in hand, an average family healthcare provider is better equipped to deal with rare and previously unseen diagnoses: before, in such a situation, a family doctor had only his own expertise and experience to rely on. Putting the most current information into the hands of primary care physicians is tantamount to effective healthcare delivery, especially in developing nations.

Advances in health science are most resoundingly felt in the third world: according to research published by Duke medicine in 2009, this population of nearly five billion people living in sub-par conditions is in a prime position to benefit from health science research because “…environmental factors an inadequacies in hygiene, economic development, and health-care access are the main causes of shortened life expectancies”, according to an article titled The role of academic health science systems in the transformation of medicine. People living in global poverty are at the mercy of the care available to them: the better we train and education the physicians responsible for their care, the more likely these people are to survive and thrive.

Advances in Health Science

From the perspective of a primary care physician, the best received research findings relate to everyday problems. Research into flu diagnosis and treatment, for example, is always welcomed in the front lines of medicine. To illustrate, research by Dr. Brouqui et al published in 2009 found that the absence of cough rejects the diagnosis of A/H1N1 infection in 100% of cases. Research like this helps inform physicians of rapid medical advancements in areas that matter immediately to them, and the aggregation of such knowledge doesn’t necessarily require expensive equipment or testing. The passage of this information, and indeed, its connection to other areas of health, is at the core of health science research.

The greatest application of health science is when a physician, no matter where he or she is located, can look their patient in the eye and say “You’re going to be OK.” – health science and the accompanying research gives this statement weight, and allows the physician to be confident in their ability to diagnose and treat whatever they may come across with informed and well-paced decision making.