This year, the Better Health team will be offering live coverage of healthcare’s largest tech conference: HIMSS in Atlanta, March 1-4. Three medical bloggers, Dr. Val Jones, Dr. Mike Sevilla, and Dr. Nick Genes will interview over 40 different exhibitors and stream their interviews live via UStream. You can ask questions of the interviewees by submitting questions to @drval during the event. Dr. Val Jones will report to ABC News, DC via Skype from the convention floor on Wednesday, March 3rd at 10:50am. Here’s a sneak preview of HIMSS:
January is thyroid disease awareness month, and I was invited to educate the good people at Let’s Talk Live about this often-forgotten little gland. For this segment, I used Twitter to poll my friends about interesting thyroid factoids. Thanks to Nick Genes@blogborygmi who reminded me of the connection between carpal tunnel syndrome and hypothyroidism and to Meredith Gould@meredithgould who mentioned that depression sometimes has a thyroid-related cause.
Some researchers say that America has “sitting disease” because (on average) we spend 56 hours a week in a seated position. I had the chance to talk to the ABC news team in Washington, DC, about the importance of daily activity to keep our bodies from losing muscle mass. I encouraged us to think of activity not just as going to the gym, but as the daily commitment to NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis, described by Dr. James Levine at the Mayo Clinic). And yes, I confessed to having sitting disease myself… and have made a clear New Year’s resolution to address this problem!
I kick off this segment with a surprising twist: I describe a hospital error that I experienced as a patient in the ER of a famous academic medical center. Â And yes, I give a shout out to Paul Levy at minute 5 for his courageous efforts to reduce infection rates at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
The Internet has revolutionized how we receive information - and it’s also changing how we learn about and manage our health. A new “ePatient” movement promises to empower patients with online and mobile tools - making it easier than ever to contact a physician, track health variables, and join a support group.
Four minutes isn’t much time to summarize an entire movement, and I think I got a little off topic while suggesting a new use case for David Hale’s NIH PillBox (a pill identifier tool). I said it could be used to identify pills even after your pet licked part of the label off them!
For more information about ePatients, check out my earlier blog post.
