Seven days ago, at a mission in the north of Haiti, I watched a nurse remove oxygen from a premature baby boy in order to give it to a woman in labor. The heartbeat of the baby who was about to be delivered had dropped dangerously low and there was only one working oxygen machine.
Perhaps the cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck or there was some other problem. A Caesarian section — which can quickly and safely deliver a baby who is in trouble — was not an option. The public hospital was at least an hour’s drive away over bumpy roads.
These kinds of cruel triage decisions are commonplace in Haiti and existed long before the earthquake struck on January 12th. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere has never had an effective public health system. Thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — by some counts more than 10,000 — are trying to plug holes in the ship. What’s really needed is a new ship. Read more »
I recently come across BodyTrace, a nice way to combine a bathroom scale that wirelessly uploads and displays your weight and BMI and a website where you can track all the changes with visualized solutions. An excerpt from the description:
We are using the GSM network to transmit your weight to our website. We use these measurements to create weight and BMI charts and by combining this information with additional data that we collect (from food tracker, for example) we can better evaluate your progress and give you feedback on how to reach your goals.
They also have a collaboration with DailyBurn. You can read the whole story from the first idea on the blog.
See more examples of howWeb 2.0 or social media can be used in fitnesshere.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
I came across a TED video of Michael Specter’s talk about the dangers confronting us as the war against science progresses. Here’s TED’s description of the video:
Vaccine-autism claims, “frankenfood” bans, the herbal cure craze — they all point to the public’s growing fear (and, often, outright denial) of science and reason, says Michael Specter. He warns the trend spells disaster for human progress.
Unbound Medicine has teamed up with the American Public Health Association (APHA) to release a mobile and web version of Control of Communicable Diseases Manual (CCDM).
Like other Unbound titles, CCDM is available on most popular mobile phone platforms and is optimized for the unique nature of each device type.
Control of Communicable Diseases Manual for Mobile + Web includes Medline Journals, which allow users to view citations and abstracts from the latest issues in selected journals such as the American Journal of Public Health, the Journal of Tropical Medicine, and the Bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO), then link to full-text articles.
CCDM for Mobile + Web also includes RSS news feeds from relevant sites such as APHA, WHO, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
For a number of reasons, well-argued many times here on SBM, it would be beneficial to American citizens if the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) were abolished. This does not seem to be in the cards anytime soon.
Here, then, are my suggestions for making the Center less dangerous and less of a marketing tool for pseudomedicine than it has been since its inception. Some suggestions might even make the Center somewhat useful. They are listed in order of priority. Read more »
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Unbound Medicine has teamed up with the American Public Health Association (APHA) to release a mobile and web version of Control of Communicable Diseases Manual (CCDM).
