Mayo Clinic Launches ‘Know Your Numbers’ October 20, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Hospital, Innovation, Medicine, Video, Web 2.0.2 comments
Yesterday, Mayo Clinic, the real rockstar health institution of social media launched another fantastic social campaign in which they aim at raising awareness of the importance of blood pressure, lipid levels and body mass index in preventing heart diseases. They started with a funny video and also created a website and a challenge for this. A perfect design, management and execution for a social campaign from a hospital (!).
The “Know Your Numbers” music video will help people around the world understand the importance of knowing their numbers for blood pressure, lipids and body mass index to help prevent heart disease.
As part of the campaign, viewers can use a free application on Mayo Clinic‟s Facebook page that will help them calculate their risk of a heart attack and learn how to prevent one. Visit the Facebook app here.
Video viewers also have the opportunity to enter a contest to earn points by helping spread the word about heart attack risk factors. Visit the site here.
An IV system with creativity September 22, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Healthcare, Innovation, Medicine.1 comment so far
I’ve recently come across this fantastic idea about an IV system designed for non-ICU patients by Andrew Kim. Check his blog for other ideas as well!
Redesigning Waiting Room in Healthcare August 3, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in eHealth, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Innovation, Medicine, Medicine 2.0.12 comments
I’ve recently come across fuelfor a company focusing on redesigning the common processes of healthcare. They just launched a project in which they aim at creating a new concept for waiting rooms:
Waiting is a common pain point in many health systems. As resources are increasingly overstretched, some degree of waiting is inevitable for most healthcare services. And yet hospital waiting rooms tend to be some of the most uncomfortable spaces to spend time, both physically and emotionally. Research shows that a well designed waiting experience has the potential to improve the overall perception of a health care service and to optimise care delivery processes. Gathering insights through site visits to several hospitals and clinics and discussions with care givers and patients, fuelfor has created a system of furniture, interior design, service and signage concepts that aim to make the experience of waiting in healthcare positive, effective and comfortable.
A few pictures below, and let me know if you want to know more about it.
The Future of Doctor-Patient Video Calls April 19, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Innovation, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Video, Web 2.0.add a comment
A Swedish company came out with an amazing innovation at a mobile company with which sales people can contact customers directly through a Minority Report-like solution. Is this the future of doctor-patient video calls as well? Check it out!
Samsung Galaxy Tab in Medicine January 10, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Innovation, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Technology.8 comments
I predicted a massive role of tablets in 2011 and also wrote about the pros and cons of using iPad in healthcare when it became a hit last year. So it’s time to talk about Samsung Galaxy Tab which actually has changed totally my online activities in the past 3-4 weeks.
Pros:
- Flash-based websites don’t mean any problems.
- Multi-tasking works nicely.
- Has a camera (both photo and video), plus videoconferencing is possible.
- Battery life seemed to be over 15 hours.
- Much smaller than iPad, really easy to hold for long time.
- Has barcode scanner app.
- Reading medical papers, e-book and PDFs is comfortable.
- The voice-controlled search app Vlingo is at least as good as Siri on iPhones.
Cons:
- If it’s connected through USB to laptops, battery won’t be charged.
- There are still more and better apps on iPhone, though the newly introduced medical category in the Android Marketplace improves nicely.
- Price is still high (although there will soon be a cheaper only Wi-fi version).
- Other cons are normal tablet problems (no mouse connection, cannot use it in gloves, etc.)
I use the Galaxy Tab instead of PC or laptop in several tasks:
- Fast search (Vlingo)
- Reading e-books and medical papers (Adobe Reader és Amazon Kindle)
- Organizing to-do lists (Task List)
- Radio (TuneIn Radio), music, video, camera
- Twitter, Skype, Facebook clients are really user-friendly on Galaxy Tab.
- Medical databases (Epocrates, Medscape)
- Drug databases (iPharmacy +), medical descriptions (iTriage)
- Document editing (ThinkFree Office)
- Being up-to-date (Speed Anatomy, Fluid & Electrolytes, Google Reader)
What is your experience?
2011 CES Innovation Honorees in Healthcare January 7, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Innovation, Invention, Medicine, Video.add a comment
Yesterday, the huge CES conference was launched in which there are plenty of Innovations Honorees in the healthcare category. It seems devices designed for hearing loss or damage rule this year’s health category. Here is the full list with details, and here is my summary:
- An In-Ear Assistive Listening Device that provides full time low level amplification with situational hearing solutions
- Hearing instrument system comprising an “industry first” proprietary digital wireless communication solution
- High-Fidelity Electronic BlastPLG Earplugs were developed to mitigate hearing damage and tinnitus sustained by deployed soldiers.
- Moneual Silver Care Robot
- Digital sports watch aimed at Nike runners.
- Pharos’ Cognit is designed for individuals living with brain injuries, mental disorders, and other cognitive challenges.
- MyTrek is a heart beat monitoring system that attaches to a forearm and pairs with your iPhone
- The patented ErgoMotionTM Keyboard provides comfortable and innovative typing experience.
- OtoLens™ is the first invisible-in-the-canal hearing aid.
- TabSafe is a medical management device that gives reminders for medications and activities.
- SmartBabyPhone, based on digital convergence, is a smart sensor communicating with any connected screen.
2011 Predictions in Medicine, Healthcare, Technology and Innovation January 4, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Healthcare, Innovation, List, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.19 comments
I hope everyone survived New Year’s Eve and the first days of work, so it’s just time to share my predictions for 2011 in medicine, healthcare, technology and innovation. I would love to get feedback about any of these points so please tell us what you think!
- This is going to be the year of tablets, and I’m not only talking about the iPad, but also Samsung Galaxy Tab (which I will write about in details soon) and others. New medical and media apps designed only for these tablets will appear.
- As the number of medical websites and the number of people searching for medical resources are both increasing, online medical content curation will become crucially important. See Webicina.com.
- Prezi will keep on developing into a collaborative brainstorm platform besides being the best presentation tool out there. Although there will be an increase in the no slides zone.
- The number of medical mobile apps will increase rapidly (with Android becoming the dominant platform).
- Social media policies about using SM as a medical professional, patient or pharma will be published by authorities and organizations (I’ll try to initiate this process a bit in the next couple of weeks).
- Voice will be a critical interface for mobile and tablet apps. See Siri and Vlingo.
- Second Life has no future as free virtual worlds will become apparent. See Visuland.com.
- Social media analytical services focusing on medicine and healthcare will rise. See Newistic.
- At least one medical school (my prediction is Stanford) will implement digital-only classes without real medical books or materials on paper. Everything (without an exception) will be shared on mobiles or tablets.
- Personalized medicine will almost be there with microlabors, at-home DTC tests, etc. DTC genomic companies such as Pathway Genomics, Navigenics or 23andMe will publish more papers focusing on results obtained from crowdsourcing.
- Force feedback will appear in virtual worlds and telemedical solutions. Imagine apps describing skin conditions which you can touch and feel through the surface of the tool with force feedback. See examples from the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference.
- Empowered patients will keep on developing their own applications and tools for better health management. As it strikes me they don’t want to wait any more for healthcare developers to create useful and relevant apps for them so they will do it themselves. Believe me, a diabetic e-patient can design better apps for diabetes management than any endocrinologists.
- Impact factor will keep on losing its power and importance compared to article level metrics although that is not the solution for measuring scientific value of a particular paper (citation number excluding self-citations should be enough, IMHO).
- All pharma companies will have proper social media presence by the end of 2011 not because it’s good for anyone but because they will think they have to.
- By the end of the year 2011, we will all realize that improving technology and providing the stakeholders of healthcare with proper technology won’t be enough as there must be a balance between the number/complexity of technological solutions we use and the benefits they provide (e.g. having an iPhone itself in a medical practice doesn’t mean it will lead to any kind of benefits).
Like this:
Newistic: Mining Social Media December 21, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Data, Health 2.0, Innovation, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.2 comments
I’ve recently come across Newistic as I was about to meet the co-founder, Horatiu Mocian, but we couldn’t make it. The service sounds intereting and timely to me.
Newistic offers a customizable web dashboard used for monitoring and analyzing social media for the pharma and healthcare industries. It enables persons or companies interested in the healthcare vertical to get a social media overview for any drug, disease, pharma company, or any other keyword. The features that set Newistic apart from other social media monitoring systems are:
- Monitoring patient communities
- Discovering diseases and symptoms that are associated with any search
- The possibility of searching all or some of the brand names of a generic drug
To demonstrate its real power, here is a recent analysis they performed following a double blow that Roche’s Avastin cancer drug suffered, in the European and US markets, regarding its use for breast cancer. For example, here are the top symptoms and diseases related to Avastin in social media after news hit the media:
If you want to hear more details about the service, let me know and I will schedule an interview with the founders.
Augmented Reality For Color Blindness December 20, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Innovation, Medicine, Mobile, Technology.6 comments
Dan Kaminsky, an internet security researcher, had a hobbi project which turned out to be a huge success. He created a 3$ iPhone (+ Android) application which is based on augmented reality and was designed to help people with colour blindness.
There’s actually a lot of color blind people — about 10% of the population. And they aren’t all guys, either — about 20% of the color blind are female (it totally runs in families too, as I discovered during testing). But most color blind people are neither monochromats (seeing everything in black and white) or dichromats (seeing only the difference between orange and blue). No, the vast majority of color blind people are in fact what are known as anomalous trichromats. They still have three photoreceptors, but the ‘green’ receptor is shifted a bit towards red. The effect is subtle: Certain reds might look like they were green, and certain greens might look like they were red.
Thus the question: Was it possible to convert all reds to a one true red, and all greens to a one true green?
The answer: Yes, given an appropriate colorspace.
To describe it even more clearly, here is the Ishihara colour test. If you don’t have this condition, you will spot numbers in the big circles on the left. If you can’t spot those numbers, on the right, you’ll certainly spot them as here are the same pictures but through the application of Dan.
Like this:
What is TeleBaby? December 9, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Innovation, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Telemedicine, Video, Web 2.0.4 comments
There are more and more premature children and their situation for their parents is dramatic. They would love to be with the newborn 24 hours a day, but in most cases they obviously cannot. At the Dutch UMC Ultrecht, they launched a project under the name Telebaby, in which cameras were installed at the incubators and parents can watch their child live 24 hours a day through even a mobile device.
Of course, the system is password protected, so only the affected parents can access the specific video channels. Isn’t it great? A very human, but not that expensive idea, a really Dutch approach.
