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

Latest Posts

Nurses And Policemen, Rapid Response Teams, Useful Apps, And Photography

So who hasn’t heard about The Policeman vs. Nurse? A nurse was pulled over for speeding, told the policeman that she hoped he would never end up as her patient, and was subsequently fired when the policeman complained to the hospital she worked at.

Really? I have the utmost respect for the police of course, but put on some big boy undies and get over it. Should the nurse have made that comment? No. Not in front of him, at least. That was pretty dumb. But being fired for saying it is ridiculous in my opinion. Does that cop go complain to the pimp when the hooker he’s arresting makes a sassy comment? Nurse and Lawyer had a pretty good discussion about the whole situation.

Next up: Rapid Response Teams Sign of Poor Bed Management. Really? I think GruntDoc summed it up best in his tweet about it. The article states that rapid response teams (RRTs) are utilized due to overcrowding because sometimes patients aren’t placed in a unit that is appropriate for their needs. Therefore, their condition worsens and they need help. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at code blog - tales of a nurse*

Real-Time Drug Safety Reports

sewyh7a8.jpgResearchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed an iPhone application that keeps you up-to-date with drug safety reports and allows you to submit any side effects directly to the FDA.

The app, called MedWatcher can keep a list of medications for which you receive both official FDA alerts and news from other channels. Users can report side effects straight from the app and view other submitted reports. The researchers hope to lower the barrier to reporting side effects, increasing the participation in safety surveillance.

Reports of serious adverse events are reviewed by members of the Children’s Computational Epidemiology Group and then submitted to the FDA. The app was developed using technology from the Outbreaks Near Me app, which we covered one year ago. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

A Report From The BlackBerry Clinical Collaboration Summit

Last week, Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry smartphones, held a clinical collaboration summit in Boston to discuss their vision of the future of mobile device integration into healthcare IT. Several vendors and app makers attended and shared how they are implementing mobile devices into workflows with RIM claiming their superiority in security and data protection through data wiping, access control, and audit trail.

One claim that several speakers made was that hours per week could be saved by making clinical and logistical data available on smartphones and that studies have shown clinical information presented on a small screen can be used for mobile situation diagnostic ability, notably for ECG and OB data through companies like AirStrip. A few studies have backed parts of this claim, [including] a recent paper in the Journal of Hospital Medicine by Wu. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

A Medical Alert Bracelet Inside Your iPhone

mzl.ahygqfzq.320x480-75.jpgOnCall Defender Medical Alert (available via iTunes) is an iPhone app that features 3G connection to a 24-hour security monitoring service. Via a subscription service, you can use your iPhone to send an emergency notification to the service after which local law enforcement or EMT services, depending on the type of alarm, will be dispatched.

The advantage over using 911 is that the monitoring service automatically receives GPS localization of your whereabouts and that you can cancel the emergency call within 15 seconds. The service costs $16.99 a month or $9.99 with a one-year subscription. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

FDA Actively Monitoring Medical And Healthcare Apps

Bradley Merrill Thompson, an attorney with expertise in the FDA approval process for medical devices, is stating that the FDA is actively monitoring app stores on various platforms. Regulating medical devices and health care-related applications falls under the FDA’s jurisdiction.

James Kendrick from JkOnTheRun spoke with Thompson, where he stated the following:

The FDA is actively engaged in surveillance of various app stores to see if apps should trigger their involvement. Applications where a smartphone is connected in any way to imaging are under scrutiny, in particular. Any app that is used to transmit images to a medical facility requires FDA approval.

By “various app stores,” Thompson is likely referring to the App store [Apple], Palm App Catalog [Web OS], App World [BlackBerry], and the Android Marketplace [Android OS]. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

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