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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...

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Better Health Today - very interesting stores from Health Infoway

Canada Health Infoway (or Infoway)  does a lot of interesting things, while sometimes managing to stay in the background. Their sponsored website "Better Health Together" is digital storying telling about the benefits of health information technology. Although this appears to be just fluffy anecdotal advertising for the benefits of digital health, I suppose there is a need to educate the public. Try taking their Quizz to see if digital health is working for you. Now, this is where we really need to think about doing research on the effectiveness of ehealth systems, and not just collect anecdotes. Nevertheless, I was skeptical that I would see any benefits accruing to myself from the Quizz but was surprised to realize, having had recent encounters with the Family Health Team, that the Electronic Medical Record has been working for my benefit.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Twitter feeds about eHealth - Dr. C. Michael Gibson & WikiDoc

I have a twitter feed, ( I like to call it a feed because I still think of Twitter as just a more streamlined sort of RSS reader ) mostly about eHealth , but I do have a life and I am not always following eHealth or posting about it. I currently have 7 people following me (which is not like an RSS newsfeed ). I was flattered to discover not long ago that Dr. C. Michael Gibson, an eminent Harvard cardiologist had followed me from his Twitter. But when I went to his Twitter page, I find out I am only one of 97,400 Twitter feeds he follows. He has made 14,000 tweets and has 120,000 followers! I might be one of those followers who might soon stop following, because while there is information about eHealth, there is also a lot about cardiology and clinical trials. In fact, there is just a ton of information streaming from there and I can't follow it all. I also "subscribed" if that is the word, to the New York Times Health Twitter, which is an incredible fountain of information ( again, too much in fact). But if you want to follow the current Ebola crisis in timely updates, Dr. Gibson's twitter feed seems to be the place to be.

What is also very interesting about Dr. Gibson, is that he must be one of the great eHealth pioneers of his generation, because he was the founder of WikiDoc - the living textbook of medicine -  to which he has contributed thousands of articles. I always did wonder who was writing those articles about medicine on Wikipedia, but it turns out, Wikipedia might not be the best place to get your best information about medicine.