Celebrating the failure of Google flu trends has evolved as a full-contact sport for digital health watchers. The world celebrated Google's potential and then its failure. This piece from Wired shouldn’t be missed. A civil and properly-penned postmortem that sees Google’s predictive potential beyond our shallow schadenfreude. ... Continue Reading about Google Flu – Urine on the Google Flu Grave
Fitbit as the Wang Laboratories of Digital Health
Technology’s history has a way of repeating itself. Consider Wang Laboratories. A 3 billion dollar a year operation in the 1980's, Wang built its empire on the idea that every office in the world would ultimately use a word processor - a freestanding word processor. Wang was right on the first count and wrong on the second. Ahead of its time in reference to ... Continue Reading about Fitbit as the Wang Laboratories of Digital Health
Periscope as a Medical Medium
Doctors are increasingly sharing procedures on Periscope. For the uninformed, Periscope is an in-line Twitter application that facilitates live, personal broadcasting. Most recently, an achilles tendon repair from Ohio State was ’scoped'. I thought it sounded pretty interesting, but I got there too late. The party was over and the video was gone. The use of ... Continue Reading about Periscope as a Medical Medium
Consumer Lab Testing: Will the Doctor be Out?
Health care’s race to the consumer was met with some chatter last week with the announcement that LabCorp will allow patients to order their own diagnostic testing through their consumer lab. This is good, but consumer lab testing can be a tricky proposition. Numbers and results devoid of context are only numbers. Outside of the body from which the number comes ... Continue Reading about Consumer Lab Testing: Will the Doctor be Out?
The Problem with Human Communication
Here Sherpaa founder Jay Parkinson riffs on why video may be an overrated health communication tool. Traditional asynchronous text dialog, he argues, is perhaps our best option. His discussion sparked dialog since it flies in the face of what seems to be an inevitable trajectory toward telehealth. The problem with human communication is that it’s nuanced. ... Continue Reading about The Problem with Human Communication
Digital Stethoscopes: Analog Dressed for Digital
In the late 90’s I was pursued by a start-up that was using web-based audio for physician dictations. Doctors would record, ladies would type, and the web sat in between. During an expensive dinner with the company’s leadership I asked how this was different from recording on a dictaphone. I was met with a broad veneered smile and the incredulous reply, “C’mon Dr. ... Continue Reading about Digital Stethoscopes: Analog Dressed for Digital