Worth a glance #23

A well-to-do cancer patient is nearing the end of her treatments. During an office visit, she says to her doctor, “I can’t thank you enough for the care you provided.” Should the doctor simply accept the patient’s gratitude — or gently suggest a way for her to show it: “Perhaps you might consider making a donation?” “We committed our entire estate,” Mr. Hyer said. And Mr. Hyer made a training video for doctors to learn how to effectively ask for donations. NYT

Blendle Is Up To Something Big. This is from the Monday note, and is about micropayments. The thinking is that if adblockers destroy one sort of business model, and keeping subscriptions to high quality journalism for more than a handful of journals per person is too expensive, how can we get traction for micropayments. For medicine and OER, we might think we do not need them at all. On the other hand, the idea of micropayments for individual book chapters is worth pondering. Does a book add value beyond that provided by individual chapters? Sometimes, clearly yet. But on all occasions? iTunes revisited.

Caution: delusions of personalisation (as in personalised medicine). Nice 101 on sources of variation in treatments by Stephen Senn. Variance components for the common man await.

Online university offers refugees chance to study for free. Kiron University, named after the centaur Chiron, known in Greek mythology for nurturing others in times of need, was founded last year by a group of students in Berlin.