What’s on the Web: Telemedicine, Twitter and Wii-hab October 23, 2009

• HIPAA’s Broken Promise (e-Patients.net)

• Self-Tracking Wins at the Mayo Clinic (The Quantified Self)

• Physicians Using Twitter (iCons in Medicine)

• The latest Parkinson’s treatment: Wii-hab (Times Online)

Could a real hope of improving the lives of people with Parkinson’s disease — here, now, in their own homes — lie in a computer game? With major drug breakthroughs still tantalisingly out of reach, many health professionals and people with Parkinson’s are suddenly excited by the dramatic improvements in function and wellbeing being brought by simply playing the Nintendo Wii — a games system available on every high street that simulates sports and other activities by transferring your movements to the computer screen.

• Digital tools let doctors see patients via Internet (The Baltimore Sun)

But Broomell, 35, of Rising Sun, never set foot in the specialist’s Baltimore office. Instead, she met him several times by videoconference while she was at an Elkton hospital, saving her the trip down Interstate 95.