Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

What’s The Future Of Social Health Media?

So you’re probably wondering what I’m doing blogging about social networking when this is a blog about health and medicine and medical writing. Well, just consider:

  • Thousands of tweets are sent every hour about health/medical issues. Want a cool way to follow them? Check out Health Tweeder.
  • Thousands of health care professionals, medical organizations and healthcare facilities have Facebook pages.

And I’m sure that’s only the beginning. Those, together with Linked In, are the only social networking sites I currently use so that’s all you get for now. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at A Medical Writer's Musings on Medicine, Health Care, and the Writing Life*

Conversation Is Not A Business Strategy

I don’t agree with the first thesis of the Cluetrain Manifesto which asserts: Markets are conversations. There’s a measure of truth to it, but it’s an assertion that can lead marketers down a narrow path that obstructs a larger view of the possibilities of media. If markets were indeed conversations, then we all could get rich just by conversing. No, leading an audience is what gets things done – conversation is simply a bonus feature of a two-way Web.

I need to make my point in the flesh. So here I am, presenting an elucidation of my thesis: Audiences are strategic imperatives [link to video if you can’t see the embed is here]: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*

How To Organize People In Real Time: Groundcrew

Jay Parkinson has recently found a nice service that is in beta version now. It’s called Groundcrew and lets you organize people in real time by combining the power of Google Maps with your online communities and friends such as Twitter of Facebook. For example, I would like to organize free lectures about DNA in order to educate people living in my neighborhood about genomics and health. It’s not that easy to find people around my home but this tool lets me spread the word easily and manage all the people who join the live feed of the event.

Give it a try and see how the demo works.

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Social Media And The Future Of Hospital Communications

I took care of a young lady the other day whom I admitted for  diabetic ketoacidosis.  She asked me what her bicarbonate level was.  I was a bit surprised since most of the time my DKA patients’ don’t care what their bicarb levels are.  I told her it was eight.  For the non medical types out there, that’s low.  That’s critically low.
I asked her why she wanted to know.  And before she could even get the words out, she had posted a Tweet onto her Twitter acount to update all her friends and family of her impending hospital admission.  I found that fascinating. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Happy Hospitalist*

Med Students Better At Finding Information On Facebook Than In EHRs

Generation Y medical students are supposed to be the tech-savvy ones. As it turns out, they may be more familiar with Facebook than with the electronic health records they’ll likely use in their medical practice. (Modern Physician, free-registration required)

Educators at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine assessed nearly 190 fourth-year medical students on their use of EHRs during a mock encounter simulating a cancer patient hospitalized with complications from chemotherapy.

Students were scored on their ability to find information crucial to the patient’s case within the EHR and their ability to analyze the EHR without alienating the patient. While most couldn’t access the information, they did interact with the patients face-to-face and even explained when they looked away to the computer.

Following more research, the school may incorporate class work on using EHRs.

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

Read more »

How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

Read more »

The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

Read more »

Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles