There is already an established literature on doctor-patient email, but there is always room for one more journal article, right? Especially one which reveals (to me, for the first time) that the very first phone call was actually a call for emergency medical assistance. Alexander Graham Bell had just spilled battery acid on himself, hence […]
Archives for February 2008
Degrees of Access–Susannah Fox
As of December 2007, 75% of American adults use the internet, 75% own a cell phone, and 54% have a high-speed internet connection at home (download charts here). Seniors, those with less education, and those living with a disability or chronic disease lag behind other adults on all three fronts. Further, a more in-depth survey […]
Friends, Family, and Post-surgical Outcomes
An article in this week’s Journal of the American College of Surgeons shows that “patients with larger social networks showed better outcomes than patients with small or nonexistent social networks.” Here is the abstract (note: the first time I clicked through to the site I was able to access the full-text version but now I […]
Technology as a means, not an end–Susannah Fox
I was part of a brainstorming session yesterday about the role of technology in health and health care, in preparation for a June 2008 Ix conference here in DC. Here is one of the quotes I captured from another participant: Technology is always framed as an end and it is not. It is a means. […]
Go online. Not too much. Mostly…?–Susannah Fox
Michael Pollan’s answer to diet angst is to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Is there an equivalent maxim for information angst? If not, does someone out there want to make one up? Because a new study published in Cancer argues that e-patients can take a common-sense approach to online health research and do […]
Harnessing Openness–Susannah Fox
The Committee for Economic Development (CED) is an independent, non-partisan research organization with a trustee list dominated by corporations (not that there’s anything wrong with that — my own funders, the Pew Charitable Trusts, are also listed on the CED site). CED recently released an engaging report entitled, “Harnessing Openness to Transform American Health Care” […]
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