Comments on: Patient paranoia: Odds are new site makes it worse

By: Theda Trainham

Theda Trainham — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:32:26 +0000

Finally, got what I was looking for! I am positively having fun with reading every little bit of it. Happy I stumbled onto this article: HealthExecNews.com » Blog Archive » Patient paranoia: Odds are new site makes it worse . g4p is a very good supplier to buy wow gold .and I have your blog bookmarked to read the latest stuff you write. Thanks for your great articles!

By: Carol Katarsky

Carol Katarsky — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:21:51 +0000

@Benjamin: I have no doubt the site is accurate and will do far more good than harm — more information is always better. I was referring to the small minority of people who will inevitably take some of that data and immediately go to the worst case scenario in their heads.

Of course that doesn’t mean the site isn’t useful — but people have to use it properly, too.

By: Benjamin Kriss

Benjamin Kriss — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:20:36 +0000

Thanks for the post about Book of Odds!

Book of Odds is not intended to be a replacement for expert medical advice but rather a site dedicated to trying to increase the understanding and tolerance of risk.

Relating to your point about “scaring patients silly,” I would like to clarify a few things:

First is that Book of Odds takes its research very seriously. We intend to be 100% transparent and every Odds Statement page provides information on exactly where we get the data, as well as how confident we are in the data. While some of the statistics might be scary, they are always as accurate as the data allows. We want to be a resource health care providers can direct their patients to and be confident that the information is reliable.

In addition, we hope to provide a context that is not generally provided with most health care statistics. By organizing our information in a uniform and easily accessible manner, people have the ability to relate all of our statistics to one another. This will allow people to relate unfamiliar things like cancer risk to things they experience everyday such as eating breakfast. We hope this will allow patients and doctors to put risk into perspective and make more informed decisions.

We have had a lot of positive feedback from both doctors and patients to date and we welcome more comments and discussion.

Thanks again for the post!