member profile
On the Personal Side 1. Describe yourself in one word. Driven. 2. What is your favorite food, and favorite restaurant in the Valley? Pizza. Pomo Pizzeria Napoletana. Authentic certified Neapolitan pizza, great neighborhood restaurant in Scottsdale. 3. What career would you be doing if you weren’t a physician? University professor teaching History of Western Civilization. 4. What’s a hidden talent you have that most wouldn’t know about? My hobby has always been creative writing. I published short stories when I was younger and I actually wrote three novels. Unfortunately, only one of them came close to being printed by a major publisher and it didn't work out in the end. Then I started private practice and had kids, and that was the end of that. 5. Best movie you’ve seen in the last 10 years? I'm a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, so the Lord of the Rings trilogy is number one, hands down. 6. Favorite Arizona sports team (college or pro)? Since I went to LSU I'm not allowed to root for any other college teams, so I'll have to say in pro football: the Cardinals are my favorite. 7. Do you participate in any sporting activities? Cycling is a great sport. You can be as competitive or as social as you like. Several partners in our group formed the Arizona Digestive Health Cycling Team, and we'll do rides or races together. Staying healthy through sports like cycling sets a good example for our patients.
20 • Round-up • February 2015 • A monthly publication of the MCMS
communicate seamlessly,” he said. “Nationally, the most popular reference app for doctors is Epocrates, which is very useful for drug reference. PubMed4Hh is a free app from the National Library of Medicine useful for article lookup.”
With the innovation of so many different communication and tracking technologies, much has been said and written concerning patient engagement. Specifically, how the use of Mobile Health can help reduce patient readmissions.
When asked for his take on improved patient engagement through technology, Berggreen agreed that medical and tech literature are brimming with studies that confirm mHealth’s role in improving compliance and communication.
“In medical school… we were taught that patients forget 80% of what they are told in a visit within 24 hours,” he explained. “More recent data confirms that this number has not changed in 30 years, and the reason is that we are using the same tools — verbal communication and paper documents.” “We have to adopt better tools if we want better results, and the most significant tool to be developed in the past decade is the smartphone,” he said. “That’s what we are calling patient engagement, but it really just means better communication.”
According to the Nielsen research group, 71% of U.S. adults use a smartphone. Considering this, and the likelihood that number will only continue to grow, Berggreen believes the medical profession needs to fully embrace the use of smartphones to provide the best benefit to their patients.