Patient

Last week, the ongoing twitter conversation under the hashtag #BCSM officially expanded online in support of the global breast cancer community.

The new website is here: http://www.bcsmcommunity.org – and there’s a companion YouTube Channel here.

The hashtag itself stands for Breast Cancer Social Media – and the first online community “chat” using the #BCSM hashtag was on July 4th, 2011. Websites aren’t normally all that newsworthy anymore, but the evolution here most definitely is.

The more traditional trajectory, of course, is to start with a website and then add a “twitter handle” as a way to expand an audience or community reach. Among the many amazing powers of twitter, it seems, is the ability to reverse that model. At least that’s been the trajectory for #BCSM.

Your parents may have tried to kick you off your Super Nintendo just about every time you sat down in front of it because they were concerned about how it might affect your long-term health. Plenty of studies have shown that games that don't require a lot of physical movement can have an adverse effect on children as they grow older. But perhaps counter-intuitively, there have also been several studies touting the health benefits of gaming.

 

1. Video games are therapeutic for children with chronic illnesses
The University of Utah released a study last year that examined the effects of regular gaming on children diagnosed with illnesses like autism, depression, and Parkinson's disease. Kids who played certain games, including one designed just for the study, showed signs of improvement in "resilience, empowerment, and a 'fighting spirit.'" Researchers believe the games' ability to act on "neuronal mechanisms that activate positive emotions and the reward system" helped improve kids' demeanors as they faced the daily challenges of their illnesses.

 

2. Video games improve preschoolers' motor skills
Letting a 4-year-old sit in front of a TV with a game controller might not seem like the most productive use of her time. But researchers from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, would disagree. Their study examined the development of 53 preschool-aged children, and found that those who played "interactive games" had better "object control motor skills" than those who didn't. It's not clear, though, whether children with better-than-average motor skills tend to gravitate toward video games in the first place.

 

3. Video games reduce stress and depression
2009's Annual Review of Cybertherapy and Telemedicine included a study that found that gamers who suffered from mental health issues such as stress and depression were able to vent their frustration and aggression by playing video games — and showed a noted improvement. The study hypothesized that games gave certain "Type A" personalities time to relax in "a state of relative mindlessness" that allowed them to avoid reaching "a certain level of stressful arousal" as they tried to relax.

 

4. Video games can provide pain relief
Video games don't just provide relief from emotional pain. They can also help those who are suffering from physical pain. Psychologists at the University of Washington developed a gamethat helps hospital patients suffering from immense physical pain by using an age-old mental trick: distraction. The virtual reality game "Snow World" put patients in an arctic wonderland in which they throw an endless arsenal of snowballs at a series of targets, such as penguins and snowmen. Military hospitals found the experience helped soldiers recovering from their battlefield wounds. The soldiers who played "Snow World" required less pain medicine during their recuperation. 

 

5. Video games can improve your vision
Mom may have warned you that sitting in front of the TV wasn't good for your eyes. But one developmental psychologist found it could actually be beneficial to your vision. Dr. Daphen Maurer of the Visual Development Lab of Ontario's McMaster University made a surprising discovery: People suffering from cataracts can improve their vision by playing first-person shooter games like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty. She believes these games are so fast-paced that they require an extreme amount of attention, training the visually impaired to view things more sharply. They can also produce higher levels of dopamine and adrenaline that "potentially may make the brain more plastic," she said. 

 

6. Video games can improve your decision-making skills
Most video games require fast reactions and split-second decisions that can mean the difference between virtual life and virtual death. Cognitive neuroscientists at the University of Rochester in New York found these games give players' brains plenty of practice for making decisions in the real world. Researchers suggest that action-oriented games act as a simulator for the decision-making process by giving players several chances to infer information from their surroundings and forcing them to react accordingly.

 

7. Video games can keep you happy in old age
Researchers from North Carolina State University looked closely at our aging population to see if there was a link between playing video games and mental well-being — i.e. "happiness." They found that senior citizens who said they played video games — even occasionally — reported "higher levels of happiness, or well-being," says Rick Nauert at PsychCentral. "Those who did not play video games reported more negative emotions" and were more likely to be depressed. It's unclear what exactly is behind this link — or if the relationship is even causal.

About eight in 10 psoriasis patients who use health care social networks say they do so primarily to learn how others manage their disease, and get practical tips and advice they couldn’t find elsewhere, according to a survey conducted by the National Psoriasis Foundation, Manhattan Research and Inspire, a company that builds and manages online patient communities.

The millions of people with psoriasis, including the one million visitors toTalkPsoriasis in 2012, are not alone in their use of social media for health. A 2011 Pew Research Center study found that one in four Internet users living with a chronic ailment have gone online to find others with similar health concerns.

 

Psoriasis is a chronic, genetic disease of the immune system that causes the skin to crack, itch and bleed, affecting roughly 7.5 million Americans. It is the most common autoimmune disease in the country.

Observers of the digital health ecosystem seem addicted to the idea that it is accretive when in truth it is commutative.

 

News of the demise of sleep tracker Zeo, theclosure of Google Reader through which many of us have reviewed health news, and the imminent  withdrawal of the best (IMO) version of the best Twitter client through which many health tweet chats have been conducted should hopefully serve to remind us of the transitory nature of digital environments.

 

Personal health data is certainly going to continue to be collected. It will be at the centre of our genome-informed, personalised medical future.

However, we aren’t going to be collecting it via a panoply of trackers, gadgets, wristbands and glasses.

 

We no more want external health peripherals than we do a keyboard for a tablet computer. They are extraneous, inconvenient, and will only be used by health hobbyists.

 

Nor are we ultimately going to want to see that data collected by a smartphone-like device. Mobile devices, whether carried, or viewed via a HUD contact lens, or placed on the back of our hand as a removable skin-like overlay, may be a great way of reviewing data, but in the last instance we don’t want integrated onboard sensors tracking our data for the sole reason that it requires us to remember or desire to continue to collect it, even if the process is passive.

 

This needn’t mean a Matrix-like plug of course, but rather a sensor of whatever sort that merely gathers data.

 

However, not everyone wants to be a cyborg, nor will it be necessary to be one in order to enjoy the long terms health benefits of fully quantifying (and adapting) our health behaviours.

 

Assuming that we don’t all succumb to the beguiling technological singularity, the paradigm will be inverted and the social face of health will be human rather than a mimetic poly-alloy.

 

The future of quantified health will reside in non-invasive sensors that will become as ubiquitous and cheap to use as the bar code, incorporated not only into public spaces but also into products and packaging. Aggregated personal data is Big Data by any other name, and will facilitate the study of health trends and behaviours at a population level.

 

This may sound like science fiction.

 

However, aspects of the transformation of  digital health into a non-invasive sensor-facilitated model are just a few steps down its evolutionary pathway.

 

So let’s look beyond the device-driven quantified self.

 

We’re not still discussing what happened to our Walkman, pocket calculator PDA, diary, Filofax, digital camera, and so on, and nor do we need to talk about how everything that can be integrated into mobile devices will be, because we already know it’s going to happen.

 

There are more interesting questions to ask of the future of digital health, such as....

 

Video games help reading in children with dyslexia," BBC News reports. The news is based on a study that found that video games could be used to treat dyslexia in children.

 

The results of this study warrant further investigation. However, as it included only 20 children, it is too small to draw reliable conclusions from, and many questions remain unanswered.

 

Previous studies have shown that action video games could improve visual attention. So this study investigated whether an improvement in visual attention led to improvements in reading.

Researchers from North Carolina State University asked 140 people aged 63 and older if they play video games, and if they do, how often. Around 61 percent said they play games on occasion, while 35 percent said they play at least once a week.

 

Those who said they play video games demonstrated higher levels of well-being. And the non-gamers? They tended to have more negative emotions and higher levels of depression.

"The research published here suggests that there a link between gaming and better well-being and emotional functioning," says Dr. Jason Allaire, lead author of a paper describing the study and an associate professor of psychology at NC State. "We are currently planning studies to determine whether playing digital games actually improves mental health in older adults."

Click on the title link above for a list of patient-friendly resources from medical specialty societies and consumer reports addressing:

 

Allergy tests: When you need them and when you don't

 

Bone-density tests: When you need them...

 

Chest X-rays before surgery: When you need them...

 

Choosing pain relievers with kidney disease/heart problems

 

Chronic kidney disease: Making hard choices

 

Colonoscopy: When you need it...

 

EKGs and exercise stress tests: When you need them...

 

Hard decisions about cancer

 

Heart tests before surgery : When you need an imaging test...

 

IgG replacement therapy: When you need it...

 

Imaging stress tests: When you need them...

 

Imaging tests for a headache: When you need them...

 

Imaging tests for lower-back pain: When you need them...

 

Imaging tests for ovarian cysts: When you need them...

 

Pap tests: When you need them...

 

Spirometry for asthma: When you need it...

 

Stress tests for chest pain: When you need an imaging test...

 

Testing after heart procedures: When you need a nuclear stress test...

 

Treating heartburn and GERD

 

Treating sinusitus: Don't rush to antibiotics

Three companies at the forefront of the biomonitoring movement:

 

Proteus Digital Health - for putting a GPS in every pill you swallow

 

Dexcom - for bringing design to your blood sugar monitor

 

GE Healthcare - for making an ultrasound for your whole body

 

 

 

 

 

One of the biggest questions in biology is the nature versus nurture debate, the relative roles that genetic and environmental factors play in determining human traits.

 

In 2006, George Church at Harvard University and a few others started the Personal Genome Project (PGP) to help answer this question. The goal is to collect genomic information from 100,000 informed members of the public along with their health records and other relevant phenotypic data. The idea is to use this information to help tease apart the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors.

 

The project does not guarantee privacy for those who sign up. Indeed, the participants can reveal as much information as they like, including their ZIP code, birth date and sex.

 

However, the data is ‘de-identified’ in the sense that the owners names and addresses are not included in their profiles on the PGP website and this generates a veneer of privacy.

 

Today, Latanya Sweeney and colleagues at Harvard show that even this is practically useless in keeping owners identities private. They say a relatively simple comparison of the list of PGP participants with other databases such as voter lists reveals the identity of a significant number of them with remarkable accuracy.

A health system in Pennsylvania has made a novel use of technology to remind men about their prostate health: urinal games. The healthier the prostate, the higher the score should be.

 

Reuters’s Joe McDonald reported late yesterday on installation of urinal-mounted games at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, PA., by sponsor Lehigh Valley Health Network. Players steer snowmobiles across a course (dodging penguins) via their “aim.” Coca-Cola Park is home to a minor league baseball team called the “IronPigs.”

 

“Baseball fans know all about RBI, ERA and OBP,” said Angelo Baccala, MD, of Lehigh Valley Urology Specialty Care and chief of Lehigh Valley Health Network’s division of urology. “But when it comes to their own PSA, many men don’t have a clue. We see this game as a fun and unique opportunity to remind men about the importance of prostate health.”

 

The gaming system was created and developed by United Kingdom-based Captive Media, and was first deployed publicly in the U.K. in 2012. The average game lasts 55 seconds, the company says. Score are streamed in real-time on videoboard displays within the stadium and can be followed on a Web site.

Samsung's Galaxy S4 smartphone will support a number of health peripherals to interact with its S Health app.

 

S Band

 

The S Band is a wearable accelerometer that can hook up to your Galaxy S4 and provide further data on all the exercise you're doing. Inside the S Band is a pedometer, which feeds the updated S Health app information.

The S Band will send to your phone details of steps taken, calories burnt and even sleep patterns, to provide more data on your activity and help with your fitness training.

The SGS4 has a built-in pedometer and can also track data, so the S Band is more an extension device, or handy if you don't have your mobile phone with you.

S Scale

Samsung's accessory line-up is starting to mirror that of Withings and Fitbit, both of which have their own wireless set of scales.

 

This device is designed to provide the S Health app with precise data on how much you weigh, as part of  a diet or fitness regime.

  

Using data drawn from queries entered into Google, Microsoft and Yahoo search engines, scientists at Microsoft, Stanford and Columbia University have for the first time been able to detect evidence of unreported prescription drug side effects before they were found by the Food and Drug Administration’s warning system.

 

Using automated software tools to examine queries by six million Internet users taken from Web search logs in 2010, the researchers looked for searches relating to an antidepressant, paroxetine, and a cholesterol lowering drug, pravastatin. They were able to find evidence that the combination of the two drugs caused high blood sugar.

 

The study, which was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association on Wednesday, is based on data-mining techniques similar to those employed by services like Google Flu Trends, which has been used to give early warning of the prevalence of the sickness to the public.

Many lower-income patients say they would like to communicate electronically with their health care providers but are unable to do so because of insufficient technology at the clinics where they receive care, according to a new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Medical News Today reports.

 

Study Details

 

For the study, researchers from the University of California-San Francisco surveyed 416 patients at six San Francisco Department of Public Health community clinics that primarily serve uninsured or publically insured individuals.

 

The study participants: 

Were ethnically and racially diverse;Spoke 24 different primary languages; andWere representative of the overall clinic population (Medical News Today, 2/27).

Study Findings

 

The study found that:

78% of the study participants expressed interest in electronic communication with their health care providers (Martinez, "On Central," KPCC, 2/27);60% said they use email;54% said they obtain information from the Internet; and17% said they already use email to communicate informally with their health care providers.

According to the researchers, many safety-net clinics do not offer the patient portals or secure messaging systems necessary to support electronic communication with doctors.

 

Read more: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2013/2/27/lowincome-patients-interested-in-digital-health-communication.aspx#ixzz2MZg2DE1x

Two months ago a close friend of mine tore her Achilles’ tendon while playing tennis. She is a very active individual and her social life revolves mainly around the activity clubs she belongs to. I found out about her injury via a Facebook post.

Throughout the past eight weeks she has posted updates on her rehab progress. Updates ranged from her progress at physical therapy, to who popped by for a visit and boosted her spirits, to how her incision was healing. And though I could have gone without the pictures of the surgery incision, I have appreciated the honesty and raw emotion behind her posts.  

Facebook has allowed her to keep in close contact with her support system even though she can’t make it to the tennis court 3 times a week.  It has also allowed me as a friend who lives in another province the ability to keep up to date and support her even if it is with a “like” or a small comment here or there.

The Internet can be so powerful in the way that it connects people, educates them on their illness or injury and empowers them to take charge of their recovery.

People can now share their experiences with strangers who have the same injuries or illnesses, research their own treatment options or even become advocates for others long after they have recovered.

The first mobile health device invented in 1975 is credited to the work of Gregory Lektman at Biosig Instruments. He collaborated with several companies included Polar Electro of Finland, which in 1977 introduced the first commercial wireless heart rate monitor. Healthy people -  running and cycling enthusiasts - were able to train and perform better knowing more about their personal and physiological performance. The infection spread and Finland may well be the birthplace of today’s mobile health industry.

 

As more and more companies introduced heart rate monitors, the technology behind the product was fueled by a parallel technology progression across numerous industries. Boundaries disappeared and sensors became more available, sophisticated, smaller, implantable, injectable, and even tattoo-able. The integration between smartphones and sensors has sprung to life moving medicine, fitness, wellness, and human productivity to new levels, possibly as one industry.

 

Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf collaborated in 2007 with users and tool makers who shared a common interest in self-knowledge through self-tracking. This was the start of the Quantified Self Movement. Mobile health took a quantum leap forward and Quantified Self lead to Participatory Health, Health at Home and Hospital at Home. In essence the ability to deliver care anywhere.

Do you remember doctors making house calls? Well, this medical practice has returned because mobile technology has eliminated the physical and time barriers between the patient’s home and the hospital. And, mobile health incubators growing new mobile health companies are further enabling the collaboration and communication between doctor and patient that is further fueling the new consumer-centric healthcare ecosystem.

 

The 45th International Consumer Electronics Show took place this past January in Las Vegas. Over 175 companies exhibited their mobile healthcare products, most of which were not traditional healthcare companies. The rapid consumer and physician adoption of mobile health devices is real and potentially considered the future of healthcare. But the device is only part of the solution. The data is proving to be more important, and the experience of wearing a device a key driver. Doctors and patients alike are adopting and craving the next best medical or health gadget or app.

How MDConnectME (@MDConnectME) works:

 

* The doctor sends an invite to the patient.

* The patient signs up for the mobile application and sends a list of family and friends to be notified.

* Surgeons and/or other members of the care team send immediate alerts updating the patients' procedure, condition and recovery.

 

MDConnect ME is free for patients.