Health Care Trends With a Social Media Twist

April 2010 Blog Posts (10)

Remote Surgeons

Would you trust a machine with your life? Millions of people around the world do when the drive their car or take a plane, but what if it was for surgery?

It’s been announced today that a remote controlled robot arm has been used to successfully treat a heart patient. In a medical first, the physicians sat in a separate room and guided a catheter through the patient’s arteries to burn off rogue tissue.

The new remote technique has several benefits. This procedure uses X-rays.… Continue

Added by Roberta Main-Millar on April 30, 2010 at 10:35am — No Comments

Touching Story of Sharing Experiences with Terminal Illness

CNN has run a article about an inspiring young woman, Eva Markvoort, who shared her experiences with cystic fibrosis on her blog. The article examines how sharing these experiences helps the patient and others touched by the similar circumstances (other patients, friends, family) cope with the harsh reality of a terminal illness. You can view the article at… Continue

Added by Cheri Keith on April 29, 2010 at 2:26pm — No Comments

How bad is it to post a fake Facebook profile?

Image via Wikipedia

One issue up for discussion in this evening's free-form health care social media tweetchat was the fake Facebook… Continue

Added by David Harlow on April 25, 2010 at 11:23pm — No Comments

Nightly Flight Noise

Image courtesy of Wing-Chi Poon

It’s ironic to issue research that looks at the effects of flight noise during the night, while many planes are still grounded across… Continue

Added by Anna Gueldenhaupt on April 21, 2010 at 7:00am — No Comments

Who gives a Tweet?

It was with some astonishment, when looking through Pubmed last week, that I stumbled upon a peer reviewed article that drew its content from a rather unexpected source – Twitter of all things.

In their article in The American Journal of Infection Control, Scanfeld and colleagues used Twitter status updates mentioning antibiotics to explore evidence of misunderstanding or misuse of antibiotics. 1,000 Twitter… Continue

Added by John Mc Intyre on April 19, 2010 at 7:03am — No Comments

Social media – are guidelines enough?

I previously blogged about Pfizer’s call for regulation, rather than guidelines on social media use from the FDA. In a new development, last week Pfizer was joined by the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) in filing a brief with the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, which is expected… Continue

Added by Lucie Smith on April 14, 2010 at 10:36am — No Comments

Scientific American: The Future of Your Medical Data

Scientific American discusses some of the ways newly passed health care reform will "digitize" the health care system, noting this change may help physicians to manage the influx of patients that will flood the market as "residents are expected to become more regular users of the U.S. health care system." Here are a few of the ways (not at all comprehensive) I envision the digital revolution sweeping through… Continue

Added by Brittany McLaughlin on April 13, 2010 at 1:35pm — No Comments

Based on feedback, Google helps those in need

Based on feedback from a parent, Google is changing the way it provides results for specific queries that relate to suicide and Poison Control. For example, if you looked up "committing suicide" on Google, they used to provide you with a Wikipedia entry on suicide methods-- now, before that Wikipedia entry, they provide you with the National Suicide Prevention hotline.

This is still a limited project, but I would anticipate that other groups/prevention hotlines would lobby for Google… Continue

Added by Cheri Keith on April 7, 2010 at 3:20pm — No Comments

The Limits of Manufacturer Accountability in Social Media

In its call for public comments on the promotion of regulated medical products using the internet and social media, the FDA sparked renewed interest in the role the agency's guidelines might play in pharma's embrace or avoidance of social media. While many manufacturers have moved forward with innovative programs (See the… Continue

Added by Joel Selzer on April 1, 2010 at 11:58am — No Comments

GPs Happy to Encourage Patients Online

Research by Kantar Health has found that out of all general practitioners (GPs) in Europe, those in the UK are most likely to refer patients to specific medical websites. In the UK at total of 74 per cent of 200 GPs will tell patients to go online, compared with 50 per cent in Italy, 47 per cent in Germany and 43 per cent in Spain.

These statistics substantiate how powerful and influential social media is…

Continue

Added by Anna Gueldenhaupt on April 1, 2010 at 5:59am — No Comments