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Twitter and Fax Connection - Celery Service That Uses a Fax Machine For Tweets and Email For those who prefer old technology and can't get with the current day programs, here's an answer for you. You can hug and hang on to that old fax imagemachine and enter the 21st century through the back door, but it's not free and you need to subscribe for a monthly fee. This is a nice service but as you can see, if you don't read up and learn, there's a cost for living in the past. I'll bet some members of Congress might even get excited over this since so many are not familiar with dealing with new technology so perhaps this is a way to baby step into the high speed world we live in today. You do not even need an internet connection for this service, just a phone line so here we go back to dial up speeds but with a fax transmission, that's what you get anyway. They do offer a 30 day trial. - MedicalQuack

PAL Browser - Move the Mouse With Your Head Web Browser for Handicapped and Touch Screen Computers (watch the video) Pal is Compatible with Windows 7 - Vista - XP - 2000 - ME - 98. I tried it out and have it loaded on my computers. When you download the PAL imagebrowser it comes with partner software you can opt in or opt out with including the web cam software and the keyboard. This is very interesting when you use the web cam and begin controlling your mouse with your head. You will need to use the mouse to set it up initially, but this is wild. When you hover over a link for a short amount of time, it opens, just like a click. It works remarkable well and is all free to download. - MedicalQuack

Doctor Falls for Phishing Scam - Opened Up Access to 600 Patient Records Be aware of these, I watch for them all the time as they seem to get cagier all the time. Watch especially for those windows that tell you that you have a virus, a warning that comes from a web page, not your anti virus software, big targets there that usually load up a Trojan Horse. - MedicalQuack

Have You Been Suckered In on FaceBook to Play Games To Support Employer and Insurance Company Reform Initiatives? The games involve virtual money not real money, so perhaps not illegal, but maybe more like unethical. For your support you earn virtual money that can be cashed in somewhere along the line. I learned a new word today, "Astroturfing" likening the grass roots campaign to be fake.image It sounds like you play games and they get money for the insurer/employer angle of healthcare reform. Look at all the 3rd party participants too that are rolled in here, and perhaps some are here just trying to make a buck and perhaps not fully aware of what is going on here. The game you play today may be adding revenue in some sort to the insurers efforts it appears. - MedicalQuack

Boy Loses Sight Due to Cancerous Tumors in His Eyes - USC Trojan Football Players Honored His Last Wish To Practice and Work Out With the Team and More... This is a heart breaker and nice he was able to make his last wish before being blind come true. He had tumors behind his eyes and at a young age lost one eye and after fighting cancer many times with the other eye, the last effort failed and he had to have the surgery to remove the cancer which leaves him blind. - MedicalQuack

Healthcare Marketing - History from the Past "Incubator Babies" Exhibited at the World Fair in New York and Chicago as Side Shows We talk a lot today about hospital and healthcare devices and marketing. PBS ran a series going back in time about the birth of the incubator for babies. When you look at some of the links here, of course a marketing practice like this would not stand today, but babies were taken from their parents who needed care and were put in incubators, and were on display at the World's Fair, in other words the babies were getting care, but also were participants in a side show of sorts. - MedicalQuack

Partnering for Cures - Mike Milken and Jeff Kindler (Pfizer) Talk.... Collaboration is the name of the game says Jeff Kindler in this discussion with Mike Milken at the Partners for Cures Convention. If you have around imagean hour listen up. It is interesting how Mr. Kindler discusses the "old" Pfizer and how they are doing business today, collaborating with other drug companies to combine resources as neither company, a an example HIV, could have not been done with a single effort by either company on their own. It is interesting to actually hear Mr. Kindler actually admit to pharmaceutical companies for the last few years being totally focused on marketing and sales. - MedicalQuack

Patient Privacy Rights Prepares Report Card on PHRs (Personal Health Records) This report card was based on what was determined to be privacy protection. Below I have listed the comments about using an employer or insurer PHR as stated on the report card you may be giving up some privacy with others having access with waivers or surveys that come with using the program. According to the study, No More Clipboard seems to be the only one receiving an "A", with Microsoft HealthVault coming in second and the rest you can see from the image below. You can visit the links for each PHR and see the individual grading areas. - MedicalQuack

CSI Miami - David Caruso Tells Suspect Business Owner "Get a Better Health Insurance Plan For Your Employees" Healthcare reform is all over the place and even seen on television these days. When did you expect to hear David Caruso to talk about health plans imageon a show like CSI-Miami. You can watch a clip from the show below. Actually they talk about a lot more topics, many I have posted here, like "Dead Peasant Life Insurance Policies". - MedicalQuack

Innovation and Learning at Kaiser Permanente - Interview With Chris McCarthy clip_image002This week I had the chance to speak with Chris McCarthy, Innovation Learning Network Director and Innovation Specialist at Kaiser Permanente's Innovation Consultancy. I really enjoyed the conversation and learned quite a bit about what is happening today with bringing the ever changing world of innovation into today's healthcare. - MedicalQuack

Depressed Woman Loses Health Benefits - Insurer Looked at Facebook I knew it wouldn't be too long before we started seeing stories like this on the web. I have said this many, many times, what goes on the web, stays on the web, so think twice as one cache does it all. In this case in Canada they found "happy pictures" of her at the beach, this during the time where she was off work due to depression. Obviously she couldn't say this was part of her required therapy, or would they believe it, probably not. - MedicalQuack

Interactive Graphic - Your Labs and How To Read and Understand the Report

I thought this was very cool to see in the New York Times and you can click on the image to visit the site. How many of us really know what all the information on a lab report is? 

This is almost one of those web sites worth bookmarking to find it again later if needed. You can click on any portion of the image and the description and other information for help appears in the left hand side - MedicalQuack

FedEx Introduces SenseAware - Focus on Healthcare and Life Sciences for Tracking Shipments In Real Time image In a former life I worked for a logistics company which is now owned by FedEx and this brings back some memories and is also very a very interesting innovation for those involved in transporting Life Sciences cargo, which can vary in content from being lab samples to supplies, etc - MedicalQuack

Regenerative Medicine: Clinical Trial To Begin with Women in Australia Using Stem Cells To ReGrow Breasts - Has Been Successful with Pigs Yesterday we have the male rabbits and the stem cell created penis that was a success and today this story is for the women. This is actually a very good trial from what I read as women may now have an alternative solution for women needing reconstruction with growing stem cells. - MedicalQuack

Best Buy Announces Personal Health Solutions - Devices that Connect to HealthVault and More This looks to be a solution to helping the consumer get connected, selecting the devices they feel are beneficial or perhaps recommended by their imagephysicians or wellness coach programs. As mentioned in many posts on the blog here, blue tooth is rapidly changing the way we interact with medical devices that report data. I have a section devoted to personal health records here on the blog with over 200 posts that explain many of the features and "how to's" with devices and their software. - MedicalQuack

Regenerative Medicine News - Fully Functional Rabbit Penis Created That Works Well this process obviously is a success as it took only one minute for the males to begin the reproduction process after being introduced to female imagerabbits. In the past only scaffolding had been used and that portion alone was not a success. Earlier this year, Dr. Oz did a show going through the Wake Forest Center where all this is taking place. The link below has more information on regenerative medicine and the miracles that are taking place. There are 9 women walking around Boston with bladders that were "grown" and are fully functional, stem cell use. - MedicalQuack

0 The Health Internet - Government Looking to Expand The National Health Information Network For Public Use The National Health Information Network already exists and to date has never been tested for the public to use, but the move to shift all of healthcare to it's own network is a big one, so imageI would guess you could think of a separate entire entity here, used for healthcare information only. The government has had several Code-A_Thons" for developers to write code and create new algorithms. I wrote about this a short while back. Doctors from the military currently use the network as well as Social Security to exchange medical record information. - MedicalQuack

Companies Making Big Dollars Without People - Healthcare Can't Do That As We are the Product This was in the LA Times and makes some very good points about economic times. How are the companies making big dollars and yet unemployment is not getting any better? Businesses today with technology are finding ways to increase profits without the rank and file workers, even companies who are doing well are continuing to lay off as technology moves in and takes over functions that people used to do. We have talked about this for years but today it's a reality. - MedicalQuack

World Medical Tourism Conference 2009 - A Learning Awareness Last week I posted an interview talking about HeatlhVault and the new International connection with Bumrungrad Hospital in Thailand. Healthcare definitely has some global growing pains. Interview with Curtis Schroeder, CEO Bumrungrad International Hospital and Nate McLemore, Health Solutions at Microsoft - International Personal Health Records with HealthVault After the interview I took some time to walk around the exhibit floor to see what else I might learn about what is evolving in this area. There were quite a few booths and I spoke to some very interesting people who attended, from both here in the US and those from other countries. Cedar Sinai Medical Center was well represented and spent a few moments with Dr. Koerner, Medical Director for the Center for International Health and Telemedicine. Also UCLA was represented by their Department of Health Services and I learned quite a bit about what both do. Below is a video... - MedicalQuack

Hospitals And Doctors Battle Over Patients and Their Medical Records in Boston - No PHRs Yet to Share This is probably not the first time this has happened and won't be the last with competition between hospitals and doctors who leave one to go to another. This is apparently what this entire battle is over, the patient records! Caritas has had some tough financial times and apparently Mount Auburn is presenting a better opportunity for them. In 2008 the MDs were told they would not be seeing any increases in income - MedicalQuack

I posted this as I thought there could be some use as I actually interviewed the CEO and creator and had a walk through myself and it looked to be a huge time saver, although the new FDA calculator process I have not had time to try. - MedicalQuack

The VenaHub Medical Device Hub Wirelessly Reports Health Data Compliance and the Blue Tooth Inhaler A new product from Cambridge Consultants in wireless data reporting technology is on the horizon. Cambridge creates devices for companies for use in many different areas of technology. Below are a couple examples, wireless glucose monitor and an inhaler. The full press release is included below. - MedicalQuack

Epic Medical and Apple Working on Mobile EHR Project with iPhones - Stanford Medical Stanford Hospital and Clinics started a trial program recently with Apple, as they also use Epic. Why does this not surprise me? Epic has to be the most popular large hospital software around today and the iPhone the same for cell phones. I did an interview earlier this year with Long Beach Memorial on their transition to Epic which describes the massive training efforts and attention to detail at their conversion. - MedicalQuack

United Healthcare Profits Rise 13% for 3rd Quarter Employer enrollment was down, so fewer companies being able to afford or perhaps have the ability to offer employer health insurance. Federal subsidies on Cobra also helped the profit picture with the government kicking in to help those unemployed keep coverage. As I have posted before, the company is making more money from the technology side of their business rather than policies. They run the algorithms that make profit, just like Wall Street does. I still believe we need a "Department of Algorithms" to keep people honest and not use technology to feed on the ignorant. - MedicalQuack

Need to Administer CPR - Chest Compressions That Are Saving More Lives Than Mouth to Mouth This was an eye opener for me. This 22 year old was not breathing and was brought back from the dead. Mouth to mouth was not the answer, imagecompressions on the chest was the lifesaver. The family called 911 who instructed him on how to use CPR. The trick is to get to as many compressions in as possible - chest compressions 100 times a minute. - MedicalQuack

What Type of Healthcare Insurance Benefits Does Congress Have - Concierge and More CBS News take a look at what perks our representatives get, first of all a choice of 5 different plans, most of us get one today 74% of us,if the company offers insurance. Members of Congress earn $174,000 a year while the median household today is $56,000 but premiums are about the same. For 42.00 a month they can use the Attending Physician's office. There's a prior post about those benefits at the link below. - MedicalQuack

Microsoft H1N1 Flu (Flu) Response Center - Online Tool To See if You or Someone You Know May Have It Earlier today Microsoft announced their online tool to determine if you or somebody you know might have the H1N1 virus. This is an online evaluation to where you are presented with a number of questions for response. I did a fictional analysis just to check it out and see how it worked.image As you can see in the image below, I received a red box saying this person could have the H1N1 virus. I also went to the next step and added this to my HealthVault Account just to go through the motions as I really didn't need the evaluation right not but wanted to see how the rest of the process takes place. - MedicalQuack

http://www.fitbit.com This is a small device you carry with you. It keeps track of your activity during the day. The website asks you to keep track of other things like what you are eating. It shows you how you are doing every day. Oh, and you can share this too. I'm really wondering whether I should. On one side the peer pressure would help me get into exercising. On the other side I really don't want my lack of exercise to be part of the public discourse. :-) - Robert Scoble

My fitbit showed up in the mail on Sat. -- I placed my order on 9/12/2008. - Rick Chlopan

HIT -KP HealthConnect from Kaiser Permanente Utilized to Identify and Cut Stroke/Heart Attacks A Kaiser Permanente study proves the use of electronic health records and predictive modeling technology can improve patient health and reduce imagemedical crises. The pharma records were not adequate as many patients were taking aspirin, not a prescription drug, but an important part of the program to analyze the combination with the prescription drugs. At the link below from 2007 is the original announcement of the study. - MedicalQuack

Microsoft Security Essentials - Free Anti Virus Protection Available for Download Now there is absolutely no good reason not to have good fee anti virus protection for your computer, price is right! In addition to the download page there's a Malware Guide section for reference as well. I have not installed yet, but will shortly. If you have worked with any other anti virus program for scanning, etc. you will not have a problem with the program screens as they are probably very similar to a program you may be using now. - MedicalQuack