I was 3 when my maternal grandfather died, 40 years ago today. My only memory of Frank H.J. Figge is of him making me laugh. Thanks to M.J. Tooey, my community colleague at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, I learned that his “happy chuckle” was a hallmark, along with his “true research brain.” My mother, […]
librarians
Alpha Geeks in Health Care
Here’s how tech guru Tim O’Reilly describes his work: So often, signs of the future are all around us, but it isn’t until much later that most of the world realizes their significance. Meanwhile, the innovators who are busy inventing that future live in a world of their own. They see and act on premises […]
Health Sites: Some Are More Equal Than Others
Eric Schmidt wants to solve health care’s “platform database problem” and one critic has countered that “computers cannot practice medicine.” One of Google’s initiatives is to guide consumers to safe, trusted health websites. Is that such a bad thing? Search result placement can make or break a site or a business model, which is where […]
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 […]
Consumer Resources–Susannah Fox
As we continue our discussion of the definitions of 2.0 and user-generated content (UGC), I thought I’d highlight some other buzzwords and link to a few consumer-oriented resources. I still trust librarians to help me judge information sources, so my first set of links are to articles that first appeared in The Journal of the […]
E-health Reality Check–Susannah Fox
Press coverage of the Pew Internet Project’s recent report, “Information Searches That Solve Problems,” focused on how “libraries still matter” especially among young people. One aspect that I think merits further attention is how people interact with various information sources when they are dealing with a serious illness or health concern.
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