It’s up over at Managed Care Matters. In compiling this edition, Joe Paduda wrote, "This is perhaps the most serious, thought-provoking edition of
HWR I’ve had the honor of hosting. There’s a lot of meat here, so don’t
expect to multi-task your way through.
Above the Fold
Getting smarter and greener with electronic medical resources
By John Halamka
I’ve described the iPod Touch as the next great technology for medical education, but the Kindle is also a device with great potential.
We’ve recently implemented Kindle support for all our 20,000 educational resources at HMS.
Our integration on the Mycourses educational website enables any Word or PDF document to be delivered to the Kindle wirelessly. There is a cost which is clearly explained to the user (10 cents per document to Amazon). Those that don’t want to pay the 10 cents can download documents to their PC and transfer the documents via USB cable.Continue reading…
Health Care Reform: The Public Speaks (With Forked Tongue)
Who says Congress doesn’t accurately reflect the will of the American people? The public has spoken about health care reform, and the message is clear: “Whatever.”
If you’re a politician who believes that soaring promises soothe voters, while the painful tradeoffs involved in voting for an actual proposal can only bring trouble, the latest figures from the11th annual Health Confidence Survey of the respected Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) have got to be good news.
The public is practically demanding inaction! Asked what they would do to fix health care, an overwhelming 87 percent favored health tax credits, similar to the health plan of Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, CQ Health Beat reports. On the other hand, a nearly-equally-overwhelming 83 percent favored letting people buy into the same health care system government employees get, the option trumpeted by Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama.
Indeed, one might say the public and the politicians are in sync about the urgent need to pay lip service to the notion of health care reform. So, while a whopping 71 percent of respondents endorsed "major change" or “a complete overhaul “of the health care system, it finished a distant third to the economy and energy costs as a priority. Only about half as many people think health care is as important a crisis as the cost of gasoline (13 percent vs. 24 percent). And should the war in Iraq or some other issue heat up, one can expect health care to continue to finish well back in the pack.
Finally, there was the fine print: About half the respondents said they are “very” or “extremely” satisfied with quality of care. And while hardly anyone had a good opinion about health care costs, the key figure to look at is the personal saliency of their concern. The percentage of Americans reporting an actual increase in their personal health care costs dropped to 55 percent from 63 percent.
Microsoft Healthvault: Coke, Pepsi or Intel Inside
This post appeared originally on DiabetesMine.
When Microsoft launched its HealthVault application last year — the first major commercial Personal Health Record (PHR) system on the open web — the Wall Street Journal reported that
“Consumers are just not that excited about these services.” A year
later, I’m wondering: have they given us reason to be more excited
now? Last week, I grilled HealthVault’s rival Google Health
about the progress they are making. 
Are these big players trying too
hard to be all things to all people? Or, with their rather generic
“personal health platforms,” do they end up offering nothing much of
value, especially to people living with chronic illness?
This week, DiabetesMine caught up with Keith Toussaint, Senior Program Manager with Microsoft HealthVault, for a perspective from inside the Microsoft dynasty.
Around the Web in 60 Seconds (Or Less)
The consumer genetics company Navigenics has partnered
with Scripps, Microsoft and Affymetrix in a landmark clinical study to
assess the behavioral impact of personal genetic testing on people
who choose to receive such screenings to identify their potential risk
for developing certain diseases.
Nonprofit hospitals feel the inner-city for affluent suburbs. No margin no mission, but what happens when the mission disappears? No tax breaks?
The credit crunch is squeezing hospitals, and forcing them to delay building improvements, the NY Times reports.
The BBC reports that researchers have identified the 9,000-year-old remains of a mother and her baby discovered off
the coast of Israel as the earliest concrete evidence of human TB,.
The WSJ Health Blog reports that nearly 1 in 6 online health insurance shoppers are ‘uninsurable.’
7-day countdown to Health 2.0
The Health 2.0 conference is just a week away and with that comes the viewing of David Kibbe’s documentary, "The Great American Motorcycle Tour for Health 2.0." Go check out his blog to get a taste of what’s to come.
Sick neighborhoods raise sick people
I live and study public health in Baltimore, a city in which one-third of its children live in poverty, another two-thirds live in single-parent families, and more than a third of students drop out of high school.
Not coincidentally, Baltimore has an infant mortality rate nearly twice that of the nation, its teen birth rate is higher than the national average, and people here live shorter lives, especially minorities and low-income residents, than their counterparts just a few miles away in the suburbs.
This is a sick city. Literally blocks of houses are boarded up – dead and rotting with crime, hopelessness and fear. If you think I’m being melodramatic, watch the HBO drama The Wire. It’s a pretty accurate portrayal.
<a href="http://www.buzzdash.com/index.php?page=buzzbite&BB_id=122624">Are health connections to poverty & education adequately recognized?</a> | <a href="http://www.buzzdash.com">BuzzDash polls</a>
Judging States By the Health of Their Children
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Commission to Build a Healthier America has just released a report that reveals the degree to which a child’s health is determined by the hand he draws when he is born.
The report, which is titled “America’s Health Starts With Healthy Children: How Do States Compare?” confirms what we have written in other Health Beat posts.
While having or not having health insurance is important, poverty will have an even greater influence on an individual’s health. As Commission Co-Chair and former Congressional Budget Office director Alice M. Rivlin puts it, “This report shows us just how much a child’s health is shaped by the environment in which he or she lives.”
Moreover, the report reveals that it is not only the poor who are molded by their environment. “In nearly every state, children in middle-income families also experience shortfalls in health when compared with those in higher income families. And these differences in children’s health by income can be seen across racial or ethnic groups” says the report, which is based on research done at the University of California at San Francisco’s Center on Social Disparities in Health. Ultimately, this study highlights “the unrealized health potential possible if all children had the same opportunities for health as those in the best-off families.”Continue reading…
We knew the Swedes hated the Bush Adminstration, but…
…we never suspected that they hated it to this extent.
After giving Al Gore the Peace Prize a couple of years back, today Paul Krugman wins the Nobel Prize for Economics.
They say the prize is for his work on international trade, but it must be partially for his columns in the New York Times since 1999 skewering the Bush Adminsitration on economics, war, healthcare, and just about everything! Congrats, Paul.
Let’s get real about the economy and health care
By 
I just got a call from a reporter at one of the major news organizations to talk about the chances for health care reform.
We both commented on the almost surreal environment we are all in. I’m not sure if my friends and neighbors are in denial or just numbed by the recent cascade of events in the financial world. Up on the Hill and in the presidential campaigns it’s business as usual when it comes to extending the Bush tax cuts, spending on alternative energy, or the imperative to do health care reform.
The reality is we are now headed down an unavoidable slope into a recession. The only question is how bad. Today, Dr. Phil told his audience to stop spending money, get their credit card debt paid off, and hold cash–"Cash is king." They are and they will.
