By Bianca Grogan Cliquez pour la vidéo en français Panelists include Sermo CEO Daniel Palestrant, Miguel Cabrer from Medting, Tim Ringrose from Doctors.net.uk, David Payne from the British Medical Journal, doc2doc, Thomas Skoglund from Neurosurgic, and Pierre-Emmanuel Aubert from Santé… Read more

Rates of rectal cancer in those younger than 40 have been increasing, the LA Times reported recently. Researchers studied data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Registry and looked at the change in rectal and colon cancer incidence in those under 40 from 1973 to 2005. Overall rates were low, but while colon cancer incidence remained constant, rectal cancer incidence increased by an average of 3.8 percent annually, the authors reported in the journal Cancer. The Read more

It was a real treat to attend Science Online London 2010 yesterday, and I would like to thank the organizers, and particularly Martin Fenner, for having invited me to participate. I was honoured to be supported by Graham Steel, Justin Kerr-Stevens and Erik van der Zijden in chairing a highly interactive, standing-room-only panel session entitled ‘The health conversation on the social web: laboratory or echo chamber?’. The conversation was fast-moving and ranged widely across a Read more

The Public Health Agency of Canada has issued a “travel health notice” to its citizens who plan to travel to California. Childhood vaccination against whooping cough (pertussis) has dropped low enough to result in a 7-fold increase in the number of infections over the past year alone. An increasing number of parents are opting out of vaccines, a trend that could threaten to reverse the preventive health gains we’ve made against certain infectious diseases this past century. Read more

Healthcare employment grew by 28,000 jobs in August, according to today’s report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The great news is that hospital jobs were up for the month (+9,000) as well as ambulatory care which gained 17,000 jobs. According to the report, healthcare has added on average about 20,000 jobs per month this year, which is comparable to the 2009 average monthly job growth in healthcare. … Read Full Post Read more

By Kester Freeman Former CEO, Palmetto Health The world of healthcare is quickly becoming more high-tech with help from patient cell phones.  A new generation of doctors, nurses and other staff seem to be embracing these changes as they test out whether mobile devices can in fact be an asset when it comes to treating and diagnosing [...] Read more

Not sure what the tune is to go with this, but it’s sort’a semi-RAP with lots of attitude. I wanna be an e-Patient To be a patient like Dave Give me my damn data! ‘Cause it’s my life to save I want to be an e-patient, Under Meaningful Use you can have my consent to share without abuse REFRAIN Send me my damn data, in a Patient Summary You can use a CCR But I’d prefer a CCD! REFRAIN I got my healthcare Inbox You can send it DIRECT To my HIE XDS with Read more

OnCall 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 Read more

Diana Cole told me, “The internet saved my life,” and recounted a story about using the internet to identify a bat bite and learn about rabies in bats, leading to an emergency room trip. She later introduced me to her sister, Carolyn Kingston, who attributed her successful outcome from hip replacement surgery to her use of the internet. I asked Carolyn about her general use of the internet for health, her specific use for her surgery, and the blog she started to record her surgery and Read more

By DAVID C. KIBBE & BRIAN KLEPPER Finally, we have a Final Rule on the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs. The rules and criteria are simpler and more flexible, and the measures easier to compute. But they are still… Read more