Do you remember the story of Jack Andraka? It seems this is going to be a trend now. A 14-year-old teenager in the US discovered that the magnets inside an iPad could shut off implanted defibrillators if the device is left on the chest for some time.
Chien’s study found that 30 percent of patients with defibrillators who put iPads on their chest were affected by the device. Most defibrillators will turn back on once the magnet is removed, but some must be reactivated manually causing a potentially life-threatening situation.
The Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media exists to improve health globally by accelerating effective application of social media tools throughout Mayo Clinic and spurring broader and deeper engagement in social media by hospitals, medical professionals and patients.
There is a very interesting story of a Chinese man who has been keeping himself alive for 13 years with a homemade dialysis machine because the hospital is too far away and too crowded. Well, should we complain about the care we receive?
He was a college student when he was diagnosed in 1993 with kidney disease, which means waste products cannot be removed from his blood.
He underwent dialysis treatment in hospital but ran out of savings after six years. His solution was to create his own machine to slash his costs.
There is a brutal story in Scientific American about a US woman who could not open her right eye as bone grew in her eye socket following a stem cell cosmetic treatment.
In this case the doctors extracted mesenchymal stem cells—which can turn into bone, cartilage or fat, among other tissues—and injected those cells back into her face, especially around her eyes.
During the face-lift her clinicians had also injected some dermal filler, which plastic surgeons have safely used for more than 20 years to reduce the appearance of wrinkles. The principal component of such fillers is calcium hydroxylapatite, a mineral with which cell biologists encourage mesenchymal stem cells to turn into bone—a fact that escaped the woman’s clinicians.
He successfully removed the pieces of bone from her eyelid in 2009 and says she is doing well today, but some living stem cells may linger in her face. These cells could turn into bone or other out-of-place tissues once again.
Just like last year, I again collect the most important and interesting news about the relationship between medicine/healthcare and social media, so here are my favorite stories from 2012 selected and featured month by month.
My Life Walkthough is a platform adventure game version of the popular lifebook format used in reminiscence therapies for older adults with dementia. Reminiscence therapy is a format which acknowledges that older adults with dementia may not remember the recent past, but their retention for early life is good. Building upon recall of early events has been shown to improve communication and mood among older adults with dementia, and can even improve their memory of later life events.
A few words about Game Arthritis:
In 2011, IOCOSE and Matteo Bittanti worked together to create Game Arthritis, a staged photographic documentation of deformities induced by video gaming. What are the real effects of digital gaming on our fingers, hands and bodies? Game Arthritis is an ongoing project that imagines a future where the conformity of interfaces on everyday devices is beginning to produce real physical consequences for the users.
Have you seen the latest innovation of Microsoft? To be honest, I’ve been using Microsoft OS since the first time I used a computer so I watch their developments closely. Now they came up with a solution for improving clinical workflow. I haven’t given Windows 8 a try yet, but it seems it’s going to happen soon.
To help you understand the tools being used by the most progressive healthcare organizations today, we’ve prepared a short video. I think it effectively demonstrates why there’s more to contemporary clinical workflow and patient care than having an electronic medical record at your fingertips. Take a look at the video and then continue reading.
Home health nurses are using it to check on clients remotely and lessen the frequency of travel.
Here is an animated infographic about how they tried to measure health literacy and identify potential problems in 8 European countries. To be honest, the results are quite negative. I’ve been talking about the importance of digital literacy and how we should include it in the medical curriculum, while patients sometimes struggle understanding the information their doctor provides them with.
This animated infographic shows the main outcome of the European Health Literacy Survey (HLS-EU), which formed part of the European Health Literacy Project from 2009-2012.
The project reached its objectives of measuring health literacy in Europe, establishing a European Network (Health Literacy Europe) and of creating advisory bodies on health literacy in eight European countries to manifest health literacy as a topic on the European health agenda.
It’s a great honor for me to be a member of the external advisory board of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media and when I had a chance to contribute to a book they started to work on, of course, I was in!
The book was just published and it contains great essays about how social media can help bring revolution to healthcare.
That’s the title of our new book, published by the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, and developed in collaboration with members of our External Advisory Board and members of our Social Media Health Network.
We announced the book’s launch this morning during the opening keynote of the 4th Annual Social Media Summit, which we are hosting in collaboration with Ragan Communications.
