Do Sports Drinks Really Work? Just in time for the Summer Olympics in London, a top science journal has issued a blistering indictment of the sports drink industry.
According to the series of reports from BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal), the makers of drinks like Gatorade and Powerade have spent millions in research and marketing in recent decades to persuade sports and medical professionals, not to mention the rest of us suckers, that a primal instinct—the sensation of thirst—is an unreliable guide for deciding when to drink.
Innovation In The Health Care Sector Marches Forward. Zuckerberg’s Dinners with Girlfriend Help Spur Life-Saving Facebook Tool. May 1, 2012 6:34am Conversations over the dinner table with his med-student girlfriend helped Mark Zuckerberg formulate his latest big idea — harnessing the power of Facebook to help eliminate the critical shortage of organs for patients desperately in need of life-saving transplants.
And it was his friendship with Apple founder Steve Jobs, whose life was extended by years following a liver transplant, in part, that spurred the 27-year-old Facebook founder and CEO to help put that idea into practice. How a Social Network Helps Families Coping With Autism. Autism Awareness Month may be coming to a close, but by using the social network MyAutismTeam, parents of children with autism spectrum disorder can spread awareness and find support throughout the year.
MyAutismTeam is a part of the MyHealthTeams network, online communities for people living with or caring for those with chronic health conditions. On the network, users share information about the members of their support teams — parents, specialists, businesses — with other users looking for the same. "One in two Americans suffers from a chronic condition or disease," says Eric Peacock, co-founder and CEO of MyHealthTeams.
"That includes everything from autism and ADHD to diabetes, Parkinson's and breast cancer. Social Power and the Coming Corporate Revolution. GE's $1 Billion Cancer Project: Raising the Bar on Social Business. GE’s healthymagination project is setting the pace for cancer care as well as defining what it means to be a social business.
Back in September GE announced it would spend $1billion on cancer-related R&D over the next five years. The $100 million healthymagination challenge is a part of that – essentially a crowdsourcing platform to generate new ideas from screening to diagnoses to treatment and care for breast cancer Earlier this week I got a chance to talk with Mike Barber, the GE VP who heads up healthymagination. The fascinating aspect of the project is that the output metrics, what GE gets back on its money, according to Mike, are all related to patients. The hope is for the $1 billion to deliver better care to 10 million patients by 2020, and healthymagination to positively impact 1 million women. The investment though is not just about delivering these noble social objectives. Medicine Must Allow for Customization: A Lesson for Policy-Makers.
Can social media help heal healthcare? How to get more for less?
It’s an age-old question and one that is playing out today in our healthcare system. With healthcare reform top of mind these days, everyone is asking how the medical industry can treat patients better for less money. For university researchers to do alone. A Low-Tech Business That Can Prevent Hospital Readmissions. Nimble Medicine Set to Reshape Healthcare. Could a Facebook for Doctors Improve Your Care? Your accountant can email a specialist for advice about a specific issue in your tax return.
Your doctor, however, doesn't necessarily have the same access to easy collaboration. There may, however, be a Facebook-like solution in the wings. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) prevents doctors from sharing patient information without "reasonable safeguards. " For the most part, this shuts down the instantaneous email exchanges through which other professionals collaborate. Physicians can consult with each other about a patient's condition via email, but they can't involve medical test results or a patient's medical records in the discussion. The Patient of the Future. Gym rat: In his quest to optimize his health, Larry Smarr recently underwent tests to measure his peak oxygen consumption, maximum heart rate, and other physiological indicators.
Back in 2000, when Larry Smarr left his job as head of a celebrated supercomputer center in Illinois to start a new institute at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of California, Irvine, he rarely paid attention to his bathroom scale. Facebook statuses can predict signs of depression. More People Are Now Sharing Their Cancer Diagnosis. With all of the social networking sites at our disposal, we’ve become somewhat robotic in how we share, and what we share.
Khan Academy Inspires Flip of Doctor-Patient Relationship Model. Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Dave Chase, the CEO of Avado.com, a patient portal & relationship management company that was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist.
Previously he was a management consultant for Accenture’s healthcare practice and founder of Microsoft’s Health platform business. You can follow him on Twitter @chasedave. Education and healthcare are typically held up as the industries least affected by the technology revolution, however this has begun to change. From Bill Gates to millions of students and parents, the Khan Academy has impressed many of us and inspired teachers to flip the classroom lecture/homework model on its head as described in the video below. Doctors are now recognizing similar value in videos for their patients.