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Hacking Health in Hamilton Ontario - Let's hear that pitch!

What compelled me to register for a weekend Health Hackathon? Anyway, I could soon be up to my ears in it. A pubmed search on Health Hack...

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Tri-corder XPrize News from Canada

Recently there were some CBC news stories about a local company that has entered the Tricorder XPrize.  I have been blogging about this XPrize many times, and here is a link to the collected news stories from this blog <here>. I heard an interview on radio and picked-up the story on one of my voluminous RSS newsfeeds. I heard a joke the other day that Youtube, Twitter and Facebook will merge together as one company some day and it will be called YouTwitFace.

So, there actually is a website called YouTwitFace.com, and they had a story with eHealth relevance, called "Will Your Doctor Friend You Back on Facebook?

Here is the link to the  CBC news story about Biosign's entry into the XPrize:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/tricorder-x-prize-eyed-by-toronto-based-biosign-1.2649258

Biosign is an interesting company and I once did a lot of research on it. They were developing a "pin-prickless" blood sugar reading device for diabetes. This is one of the holy grails of biomedical device research. Unfortunately, their "cuff" did not fully measure blood sugar levels accurately and never obtained FDA clearance, as far as I know. I still don't think there are any devices developed yet that are "pin-prickless", but it is a fascinating science, and well worth the time to look into the controversial developments, frustrations, and failures in this area.


Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Tapestry: Enabling eHealth for the Elderly Through Community Volunteers

I have signed up as a volunteer with a McMaster Family Medicine program called Tapestry. The purpose of this clinical trial is exactly what I have been advocating for - enabling those who might benefit from using eHealth technology. The novel approach in this research is using community volunteers to do the leg work of bringing the personal health records to the elderly participants via health surveys on iPads which are linked to the patient's EMR.

I have my police check and am just waiting for the first meeting of volunteers for training. Will be paired with a partner. This is also a good opportunity for health science students to become engaged with community health and ehealth, as this article testifies < here >.

I am sure many elderly are savvy about technology, but it is towards the digital natives of the future that this evidence-based research will really provide important data. Looking forward.