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

Latest Posts

Best Online Resources For Alzheimer’s Disease Information

The Alzheimer World Day only took place a few days ago and we received many suggestions about creating a selection focusing on this important topic. Webicina’s new Alzheimer’s Disease and Web 2.0 collection features relevant and quality social media resources from blogs and podcasts to community sites and Twitter users focusing on Alzheimer’s disease.

Here is my top 10 social media selection for Alzheimer’s disease: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Social Media Footprint: How Concerned Should Medical Professionals Be?

Hey Docs out there! What if your patients found out about your most embarrassing moment from college? What if they saw a picture of it? I was watching and listening to one of my favorite technology shows over the weekend called “The Tech Guy” with tech journalist Leo Laporte.

In the brief video here, you’ll see the host take a call from an attending physician. The caller stated that back before medical school, he posed for PlayGirl magazine and now some of those pics are showing up on websites and the caller was trying to figure out how to have them taken down. It sounds like the pictures were taken in the pre-internet days. For the full exchange, click here and fast forward to the time 13:21hrs on the clock behind the host.

This call opened up the larger issue of Online Reputation which has been talked about in Health Care Social Media circles for a long time. But, it is interesting seeing what this non-medical tech journalist (and the caller) says about it: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Family Medicine Rocks Blog*

Does Your Doctor Look Up Information Online In Front Of You?

Nearly three-quarters of survey respondents said they look up information online in front of a patient sometimes or often, and another 11% said they do when absolutely needed. Only 13% deliberately avoid it.

ACP Internist polled its readers in relation to its story on computers in medicine, in which it focused on whether doctors should look up information in front of a patient. From this, 362 readers responded in August that: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Internet Addiction Is Real

Internet addiction is becoming a major problem, and it’s less and less surprising when reports focusing on this issue are being published. Lately, the New York Times came up with the analysis of a recent study:

Researchers at the University of Maryland who asked 200 students to give up all media for one full day found that after 24 hours many showed signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety along with an inability to function well without their media and social links.

Susan Moeller, the study’s project director and a journalism professor at the university, said many students wrote about how they hated losing their media connections, which some equated to going without friends and family.

I did some research and browsed the website of Microsoft’s Internet Addiction Recovery Program. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Does Your Family Have A “Technology Gap?”

Older Woman and LaptopDo you have a technology participation gap in your family? We do. In fact, most families do somewhere.

For us, we have a few older relatives who firmly believe that technology is for “the younger generation.” What’s interesting is that some of these people are not that old — at least not “old” as I define it.

One relative, for example, was a working woman in her younger days. Retired now, she never bought into any technology past the 1970s! Beyond the automobile, refrigerator, TV, radio, dishwasher, washer and drier, she has seen no need for anything else.

Although  she has grudgingly begun to use email and the Web, she has deemed herself  ”old” and refused to use a cell phone or any other “high-tech device.” Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Gwenn Is In*

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