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Medical School To Require Incoming Students To Purchase iPads

In a little seen nugget published in an article of the Chronicle, the Ivy League medical school, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, will be requiring their incoming medical students to use the Inkling e-book app for key medical textbooks in their first year of medical school.

They will be requiring their incoming first year class to purchase iPads as well.

We have been the first to report how and why Inkling is a game changer in the arena of medical e-books when we reviewed Ganong’s Review of Medical Physiology:

Ganong’s Review of Medical Physiology for the iPad allows you to highlight, write notes, view innovative multimedia modules, and easily search for content — taking what you can do on a paper based textbook to a higher level — and taking e-learning to a completely different stratosphere.

The three key Inkling textbooks that will be required by Brown University’s medical school: Essential Clinical Anatomy, Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy, and Bates’ Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking.

The medical school’s director of preclinical curriculum, Luba Demenco, had the following thoughts to share with the Chronicle on the iPad implementation into the curriculum: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

Why Don’t More People Use Health Apps For iPhones And Droids?

Jessie GrumanI have been musing about why, despite our fascination with gadgets and timesaving devices, so few of us use the apps and tools that have been developed to help us take care of ourselves.

The range of options is staggering – my iPhone coughed up 52 applications for medication reminders just now – but most of us don’t make use of the (often free) high-tech help available to us.  There are hundreds of websites and portals to help us monitor our diets, physical activity and blood sugar, talk to our doctors by e-mail and understand our test results.  Apps can help us watch for drug interactions, unravel our test results, adjust our hearing aids and track our symptoms.  Devices can monitor whether our mom is moving around her house this morning or continuously monitor our vital signs.

Interesting ideas.  Modest pickup.

DSCF6172In an essay published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine supplement “Cyberinfrastructure for Consumer Health,” I make some observations about why this may be so, Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*

FluPhone Tracks “Super Spreaders” Of Disease

“Are you a super-spreader?” That’s the catchphrase for a new study out of the University of Cambridge. However, if you answered “yes”, you may want to stay home and cover your mouth, because the study was designed to track the spread of influenza using cellular phone technology.

The study (and accompanying app) is called FluPhone, and it uses cell phones to collect information on social encounters within the study sample of participants in Cambridge. A phone’s Bluetooth antenna detects encounters with other participants and also records the proximity to each other. The built-in GPS chip tracks each user’s location, but this feature was disabled due to recent ethical concerns. Finally, the phone’s 3G/GPRS antenna sends all the proximity data automatically back to researchers for analysis. Other features include the ability to program a specific disease model by introducing a virtual “pathogen” which can be transmitted via Bluetooth when at least two users are near each other.

In addition to revealing useful data about the spread of disease and how to minimize its effects, the study could also be helpful for creating more effective public health messages.

More from the University of Cambridge: FluPhone: disease tracking by app…

Research project page…

FluPhone participant website…

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Navigating The New York Publishing World To Help Patients

The book publishing world, largely based in New York City, is in trouble. The fragmentation of the market by electronics large and small has chopped former readers into so many pieces. How can a publisher make a blockbuster buck anymore? The answer may come in translations of Swedish fiction from a newly-found novelist, now dead, to non-fiction ghostwritten for a face everyone knows from the evening news.

In a whirlwind face-to-face series of meeting with publishers on a very recent sunny Tuesday in Manhattan, I got a glimpse of their angst and did my best to convince them that a book – yes, even all sorts of electronic versions and in-the-palm-of-your-hand “apps” – could make them boatloads of money and do the right thing for America’s healthcare consumer (just maybe such a work could be translated into Swedish and do good there in a return of the favor literary effort). Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*

Why The iPad Is Not Ready For Prime Time in Healthcare

First off, I need to address those who think they’re being brilliantly funny comparing Apple’s new product name to a feminine hygiene product – making comments like “Does it come with wings?” and “It’s light and easy to use, but can you swim with it?” (these are the cleaner comments I’ve seen), or calling for the next generation ITampon.

Since when did the word “Pad” become unusable in public discourse? And where were these folks when IBM came out with their Think Pad? It’s stupid, 12-year old funny and just plain dumb. Grow up, ladies and gents.

Now, on to more serious matters.

Is the IPad, as some are suggesting, the next big thing in Medicine? Dana Blakenhorn at ZDNet thinks so, calling medicine the IPad’s “Sweet Spot”- Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Blog that Ate Manhattan*

Latest Interviews

The Surprising Economic Burden Of ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)

If you can read this you need to download a more recent browser It is estimated that as many as million U.S. adults have ADHD Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder A recent research study publication-pending suggests that the economic burden of ADHD on America could be as high as billion annually. I…

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Is The Adderall Shortage A Harbinger Of Future Drug Supply Problems?

If you can read this you need to download a more recent browser Today most- if not all- Doctor’s offices are strained by the shortage of some prescription medication or vaccine. A month ago President Obama signed his executive order directing the FDA to take steps to reduce drug shortages…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: The First Step To Improve Health Care Is A Close Examination Of How It’s Delivered

My friend and former Chair of the CFAH Board of Trustees Doug Kamerow has written a book that I think you will like. Besides being a mensch and witty as heck Doug is a family doctor and a preventive medicine specialist. In his new book Dissecting American Health Care Commentaries…

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“Your Medical Mind” Explores Factors That Influence A Patient’s Medical Decisions

Recently I had a conversation with Shannon Brownlee the widely respected science journalist and acting director of the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation about whether men should continue to have access to the PSA test for prostate cancer screening despite the overwhelming evidence that it extends few…

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Book Review: Food Truths, Food Lies

Food Truths Food Lies written by family physician Eric Marcotte M.D. may be the most refreshingly evidence-based diet book of the decade. You will not find a single mention of super-foods magical berries or supplement must-haves in the entire book. What you will find is the cold hard truth about…

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