"'Virtual' self can help dieting, exercise"

Bye bye, bad-for-you foods (at least in California)

I've been meaning to post something about California becoming the first state to ban the use of trans fats--which are known to increase the risk of heart disease--by restaurants and other food facilities, but haven't gotten around to it yet. My aplogies doe the delay.  (By the way, New York City has already done adopted a similar ban, as have Philadelphia, Stamford, Conn., and Montgomery County, Md.)

What if where you live doesn't have enough food to feed you?

The New York Times recently published a map that illustrates the potential for such a Malthusian catastrophe.

You can view the map in detail here

A conference about Web 2.0 as it relates to medicine and health

Medicine 2.0™ is an international conference on Web 2.0 applications in health and medicine, organized and co-sponsored by the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the International Medical Informatics Association, the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, CHIRAD, and others. (When I first saw the announcement, I squirmed a bit at the "2.0" modifier and its trademark notice--doesn't 2.0 seem to be overused these days?) Anyhow, here's how the conference organizers define Medicine 2.0:

Open Health and a health-related application for the iPhone

The innovation technology lab inSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters) has issued a call to developers willing to volunteer their time to build an SMS GeoChat application for the iPhone that emergency responders and aid workers will be able to communicate their exact location; message recipients will be able to view the sender’s location in Google Earth, Google Maps, Live Earth, etc.

BioBarCamp, Live!

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about BioBarCamp, which IFTF has been hosting over the past two days.  It has been fascinating stuff--both in terms of process and content--and my colleagues and/or I will be blogging about it in the coming days.  I have found live blogging to be too challenging to be useful.  So I won't even try to capture what we are talking about right now.  Stay tuned, though!

Medical experts wanted

By now, I think that it is safe to say that Wikipedia plays a ubiquitous role in the world of online information. This is even true for health information. At our Spring 2007 conference on Biocitizens and New Media Technology, Health Horizons Program Director Rod Falcon noted in his presentation that, "Wikipedia is the most frequently cited source [of user-generated health content] and appears on the first page of 63% of health searches" (emphasis is mine--I marvel at this phenomenon). 

A new player will soon be entering the field of online medical information: MedPedia.

A new player in the online health care marketplace

Courtesy of my colleague, IFTF Research Affiliate Richard Adler:

American Well is a new company that is creating a "online healthcare marketplace." On its website (www.americanwell.com), it states that consumers can,

"Talk to a doctor anytime, without leaving home or scheduling an appointment. Choose from a variety of specialties and connect with the doctor who is right for you."

Read more >

Putting in context another newly-launched health-related social networking site

Trusera--a website that allows people to share their real-world health experiences--launched last month. Its tag is "Come experience the Power of Been There." When I first came across the announcement on the bbgm blog, I wondered what would set Tujera apart from similar sites, like Daily Strength or iMedix, which I blogged about here.

Four Ps represent the future of medicine

Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) claims a trademark in the term "P4 Medicine," which represents its take on the future of health care: Predictive, Preventive, Personalized, and Participatory. It emphasizes improved personal measurements and personalized treatments as the key to improving health care.

As the ISB website explains, "The goal of systems biology is to fundamentally transform the practice of medicine."  How will medicine change?  Let's go back to the four Ps: