Salesforce and Philips Connect Doctors to Your Fitness Tracker

Apple has its HealthKit, Google its Google Fit; and now Salesforce and Philips are getting into the game as well with a cloud-based platform could help doctors track data from a multitude of devices.

The two companies want to extend the Salesforce1 platform so that developers can write new apps that take data from different sources — MRI scanners or heart monitors, for example — and integrate it in a secure way while complying with privacy laws. Philips has already used the new platform to build its first two apps, Jeroen Tas, head of Philips Healthcare Informatic Solutions group, said today in a press conference.

Link to full article

Originally Published in Wired

Agencies Use Social Media to Track Foodborne Illness

Most cases of foodborne illness are never reported to public health authorities. But that doesn’t mean those afflicted suffer in silence. Many people turn to social media to complain and even identify food purveyors they believe are responsible.

To tap into this rich source of information, city public health departments have begun mining the tweets and online reviews of those possibly sickened by food.

The City of Chicago Department of Public Health was the first to test the potential of social media in identifying foodborne outbreaks. The department partnered with civic-minded local technologists and the Smart Chicago Collaborative, a nonprofit organization that uses technology to improve the lives of Chicagoans, to develop an application to monitor Twitter for possible food poisoning references. A similar project is under way in New York, where the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is working with Columbia University technologists and the review website Yelp to comb restaurant patrons’ comments for signs of a budding outbreak.

Link to the full article

Originally published in The Journal of the American Medical Association 

I’d Never Admit That to My Doctor. But to a Computer? Sure

New research finds patients are more likely to respond honestly to personal questions when talking to a virtual human.

Admit it: The last time you sat down with a physician and revealed your medical history, did you fudge a bit? Were there certain incidents you were too embarrassed to admit? Did you gloss over certain behaviors that might make you look bad?

It’s a serious problem for health professionals and patients alike. With less-complete information to work with, doctors are more likely to misdiagnose an illness, or prescribe an inappropriate drug.

Recently published research offers a possible solution to this problem: Virtual humans. In the journal Computers in Human Behavior, a research team reports patients are more comfortable discussing private matters with these computer-created entities, and this ease prompts them to disclose more information.

Link to the full article

Originally published on the Pacific Standard

Health and fitness apps are growing 87% faster than any other apps

Either people are sticking to their New Year's resolutions, or interest in fitness has found new life through technology. Health and fitness app usage is up 62% in the past six months.

According to Flurry Insights, health and fitness tracking apps are growing 87% faster than any other app category.

While tech companies have been trying to impact the health industry for years, consumer interest has been reignited thanks to wearable fitness trackers like the Fitbit and Jawbone UP, as well as rumors that Apple is gearing up to launch a wearable (possibly called the iWatch), which will likely have a strong focus on health.

Link to the full article.

Originally published on Mashable

Working Within a Black Box: Transparency in the Collection and Production of Big Twitter Data

Twitter seems to provide a ready source of data for researchers interested in public opinion and popular communication. Indeed, tweets are routinely integrated into the visual presentation of news and scholarly publishing in the form of summary statistics, tables, and charts provided by commercial analytics software. Without a clear description of how the underlying data were collected, stored, cleaned, and analyzed, however, readers cannot assess their validity. To illustrate the critical importance of evaluating the production of Twitter data, we offer a systematic comparison of two common sources of tweets: the publicly accessible Streaming API and the “fire hose” provided by Gnip PowerTrack. This study represents an important step toward higher standards for the reporting of social media research.

Originally Published in the International Journal of Communication

Link to full article

U.S. FDA proposes social media guidelines for drug industry

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday issued proposed guidelines for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries for posting information on social media networks and correcting misinformation posted by others.

The long-awaited guidance would effectively limit the amount of product advertising a company can do on sites where character space is limited, such as Twitter.

The proposal would require companies to post both the benefits and the main risks associated with a product, potentially with a hyperlink taking the reader directly to a more detailed list of risks.

Link to the full article

Originally published on Reuters

Power to the Health Data Geeks

A computer programmer and a kid in a Batman suit walk into a pancake house ... It sounds like a joke, but it really happened, and now the programmer — Dave Vockell — has a new product to bring to market. It's an app to help seniors talk to their doctors about medical care.
Venture capitalists are pouring more money than ever into digital health startups — more than $2 billion so far this year alone, according to the venture capital firm Rock Health. These investors are betting that entrepreneurs can help doctors, hospitals and insurers become leaner — which the Affordable Care Act strongly encourages.

Link to full article here.

Via NPR Shots

WebMD Relaunches iPhone App as a Hub for Fitness Data

Health apps and fitness trackers can be a bit of a mess nowadays—and in that mess WebMD sees an opportunity. You might have a fitness band with a corresponding app, another app for tracking runs or bike rides, and yet another to track what you’re eating each day. On Monday, WebMD updated its iPhone app to be a catch-all for the data produced by different wearables, as well as a daily fitness tracker and health minder.

WebMD has added a new “Healthy Target” section to its flagship iPhone app (but not yet to the Android version). The app already has two other parts: “Health Tools,” providing explanations symptoms, illnesses and medical terms, as well as local listings for doctors, pharmacies and hospitals; and “Healthy Living,” a daily lifestyle magazine offering tips on exercise, beauty, food and relationships.

Link to full article here.

Via Wall Street Journal Tecnhology

Google Names Glass Partners for Medical, Advertising Apps

Google named four developer partners on Monday for Glass apps from the medical, media and sports industries.

The partners include APZ Labs, which makes Skylight, a business software app for Glass; AugMedix, which markets a service for doctors; CrowdOptic, which makes context-aware apps for the sports, entertainment and medical industries; and GuidiGo, which aims to make museums and cultural institutions "more accessible." Glass Certified Partners are authorized by Google's Glass at Work program for delivering enterprise solutions for Glass. The developers are also eligible for co-branding and listing on the Glass at Work website.

Link to full article here.


via Mashable

Schrödinger's Cigarette: Is Electronic Safer?

E-cigarettes, with their ads featuring sexy people puffing away on futuristic tubes tipped with blue light, seem distinctly modern. But the idea actually dates back to 1963, when a two-pack-a day smoker named Herbert A. Gilbert patented a “smokeless non-tobacco cigarette” that delivered flavored steam without combustion. Unfortunately, the smoke-hazy Mad Men world of the 1960’s wasn’t ready for Gilbert’s idea, and it received little attention. It took until 2003 for the e-cigarette to find a foothold in the public consciousness, when a Chinese pharmacist named Hon Lik, whose father had died of lung cancer, developed a device to vaporize liquid nicotine, which became the e-cigarette we know today.

Originally Published in The Atlantic

Link to full article

Genes in the Cloud: Google Steps Into Autism Research

Google Inc. and Autism Speaks, a major autism research foundation, plan to announce on Tuesday a deal in which the Internet giant will house the sequencing of 10,000 complete genomes and other clinical data of children with autism and their siblings and parents. The hope of those involved is to accelerate research on the developmental disorder.

Studying genes has been touted as a key to understanding Alzheimer's disease, cancer and autism. But huge DNA databases require computing and storage that many universities and research hospitals don't have.

The database will be part of the AUT10K, the Autism Speaks genome-mapping program. It is thought to be the largest collection of whole genomes and would be open to all qualified researchers. The tools needed to analyze the data would be available on the Google system.

Link to the full article

Originally published in The Wall Street Journal

Patient Survey Shows How Patients Use Online Information

A recent survey of cancer patients by Patient Power yielded amazingly powerful results.

Almost 1300 patients responded to the survey, 72% from the US and the rest from Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South America.

All were cancer patients. 1.8% had been just diagnosed, 8.7% diagnosed less than a year ago, 27.2% 1-3 years ago, 19.1% 3-5 years ago, 23.3% more than 5 years ago, and 19.6% more than 10 years ago, showing a wide breadth of  experience in dealing with the disease.

Most patients surveyed were somewhat confident in their knowledge about their health (63.2%). 28.0% were very confident and 7.7% were not very confident.

Originally published on HealthWorks Collective

Link to full article

Can Social Media Help Cure Physician Burnout?

Sermo is an online social community that was specifically developed for physicians. With broader reach and more meaningful engagement than other clinical communities, the site can help with everything from second opinions on complicated patient cases to asking for practice management or travel recommendations. iConsult, Sermo’s peer-to-peer collaboration resource, makes possible real-time, virtual consults at the point of care via the Web or mobile app. I’ve integrated iConsult into my practice when I’m faced with a complicated case. The ability to collaborate and effectively crowdsource medical insights has helped me, and other physicians, to more effectively diagnose disease, treat patients, and solve cases.

Originally Published in Wired

Link to full article

Health Care Harnesses Social Media

In the past decade, as the reach of Facebook and Twitter has grown, so, too, has the number of doctors, nurses and other medical workers who use those social networks. Already, 67 percent of physicians in 2011 reported using social media for “professional purposes,” a report by the Federation of State Medical Boards found, and by now that number “is almost certainly higher,” says Dr. Farris Timimi, medical director for the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media. “It’s changed our dynamic in a striking way: If you look at online activity, one of the most common activities is looking for health information,” he tells U.S. News. “I don’t think providers are in a position to ignore their obligation to provide content of value where they’re spending a majority of their time.”

Originally Published in US News & World Report

Link to full article

#trial: clinical research in the age of social media

Research programmes, data analysis, and conduct of clinical trials have traditionally been the preserve of clinicians and researchers. Now, however, social media and crowdsourcing are becoming ever present and widely used. For example,Crowdsourcing Cancer Research: The Role of Quantitative Challenges was a recent topic at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in San Diego on April 7, 2014. Indeed, social media is empowering patients in ways that are changing how clinical research is done, but are these changes beneficial or do they undermine integrity?

Link to the full article

Originally published in The Lancet Oncology. 

Apples Gets Into Fitness Tracking With Health App and HealthKit for iOS 8

Apple announced its foray into the fitness tracking space on Monday with a new Health app and a service called HealthKit coming to iOS 8.

During a keynote presentation at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference at the Moscone West center in San Francisco, the company introduced new features coming to the next-generation software for the iPhone and iPad.

While developers use HealthKit, consumers will see the Health app. The concept is similar to Apple's Passbook app, the iPhone's virtual pocket for things like airline boarding passes, movie tickets and coupons. It will be able to pull in data from other third-party apps such as Nike to keep all your health-related information in one hub.

Link to full article here.

Originally posted in Mashable.