“If Dr. Rob can inter­view Santa, why can’t I inter­view a select group of health & med­ical blog­gers? They will have some good ideas to share”.

So did President-elect Obama came to real­ize a few days ago. After his peo­ple kindly con­tacted our peo­ple, we felt com­pelled to grant him open access to our col­lec­tive wis­dom. With­out fur­ther ado, below you have Grand Rounds 5:12 — a Q&A ses­sion led by the incom­ing Pres­i­dent on how to reform (for the bet­ter, we hope) healthcare.

On Health Insurance

Q:  How does the blo­gos­phere per­ceive the prob­lem of hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant group of peo­ple uninsured?

Health Insur­ance Col­orado: a grow­ing eco­nomic bur­den, which may lead to emer­gency rooms turn­ing peo­ple away if they are unable to pro­vide proof of health insurance.

Dr Rich: well, a recent arti­cle in the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion showed how over­crowd­ing in Amer­i­can emer­gency rooms is NOT due to the unin­sured. Rather, it is due to insured Amer­i­cans who can­not get in to see their pri­mary care physi­cians. We may need improved care both for the insured and unin­sured groups.

Insure­Blog: I’d sec­ond that. Lack of health insur­ance is a major prob­lem but is it really our Biggest Problem?

It’s All about Attitude

Q: You may have heard my cam­paign mantra, “Yes We Can”. Can I count on your support?

ButY­ouDont­Look­Sick: Yes. If Leslie Hunt can talk so openly about her chronic ill­ness (Lupus) yet ful­fill her Amer­i­can Idol dreams, we can ful­fill our dreams too.

Notes of an Anes­the­sioboist: you are talk­ing to the group of pro­fes­sion­als will­ing to self-experiment with our own body for the ben­e­fit of sci­ence and our patients.

Med­views: My wife, son, and I signed up to work as med­ical vol­un­teers for your upcom­ing inauguration.

Emergi­Blog: I am on board too. But, please, remem­ber that car­ing is the essence of nurs­ing. And that is why my patients will always be my patients and never my  clients.

Neu­roan­thro­pol­ogy: Mr. President-elect, it seems to me that, despite all our good inten­tions, bal­anc­ing the bud­get and mul­ti­ple com­pet­ing pri­or­i­ties will be a chal­lenge. May I sug­gest you start prac­tic­ing some capoeira for equi­lib­rium training?

Shrink Rap: Happy to help. Now, we will need to pro­tect some time for qual­ity sleep time.

Train­ing

Q: I am encour­aged by your words. How can my team and I bet­ter sup­port you in your daily activities?

Aequa­nim­i­tas: we need more role mod­els for us to “learn to think, observe, and com­pare” and that the patient is our “first, last, and only teacher”.

Mud­phud­der: Couldn’t agree more. We need Read the rest of this entry »

If you are a blog­ger or read blogs often, you know that there are a good num­ber of excel­lent blog car­ni­vals focused on spe­cific themes. If you are inter­ested in med­i­cine, you know what car­ni­val to visit. Edu­ca­tion, the same. Biol­ogy, neu­ro­science, nurs­ing, birds, aging, philosophy…a vari­ety of top­ics are very well cov­ered in the blogosphere.

What you prob­a­bly haven’t come across is a high-quality “metacar­ni­val” or “car­ni­val of car­ni­vals”, where you can read the best blog posts ACROSS top­ics, sub­jects, disciplines.

This is why a few blog car­ni­val “orga­niz­ers” are launch­ing next Mon­day a monthly rotat­ing “MetaCar­ni­val” to fea­ture the most inter­est­ing posts from a vari­ety of high-quality blog carnivals.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing blog car­ni­vals so far, alpha­bet­i­cally: Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

First, I am pleased to report that have been invited to par­tic­i­pate in a new ini­tia­tive by the World Eco­nomic Forum. Described as “In a global envi­ron­ment marked by short-term ori­en­ta­tion and silo-thinking, Global Agenda Coun­cils will fos­ter inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and long-range think­ing to address the pre­vail­ing chal­lenges on the global agenda”, my spe­cific Coun­cil will focus on the Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy. More infor­ma­tion on the Global Agenda Coun­cils here. Will keep you updated via this blog.

In the News

Yes, It is Smart to Learn New Tricks: a recent Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle presents a good overview of brain health trends, but framed around a highly arti­fi­cial choice for con­sumers: either you a) do phys­i­cal exer­cise, or b) take part in social inter­ac­tions, or c) engage in men­tal exer­cise. What about switch­ing off those TVs and hav­ing time for all a, b, c, and more?

Mind Games: the August issue of Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Jour­nal brings a very good piece on the emerg­ing brain fit­ness soft­ware cat­e­gory (sub­scrip­tion required), which we enhance by pro­vid­ing a quick overview of the field.

Cog­niFit raises USD 5 mil­lion: if 2007 was the year of brain fit­ness media cov­er­age, 2008 seems to be the year of seri­ous invest­ments. This Cog­niFit round fol­lows other recent ven­ture invest­ments: Dakim ($10.6m), Lumos Labs ($3m). We hear all these com­pa­nies are devot­ing part of these resources to fund clin­i­cal trials…never too late.

Brain Sci­ence and Life­long Learning

Schools as Brain Train­ing Hubs?: in a recent post we asked for sug­ges­tions to refine our pre­dic­tions for the 2007–2015 period. A good num­ber of read­ers con­tributed, and the win­ner of this infor­mal con­test is… Scott Spears, retired pub­lic schools super­in­ten­dent, for his thoughts on the future impli­ca­tions of cog­ni­tive research on schooling.

Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis and Brain Plas­tic­ity in Adult Brains: while “adults may have a ten­dency to get set in their ways I’ve been doing it this way for a long time and it works, so why change?”, change itself is an excel­lent prac­tice for healthy brain aging, as Lau­rie Bar­tels explains.

A Farewell to Demen­tia?: a fas­ci­nat­ing recent edi­to­r­ial in Archives of Neu­rol­ogy, titled Demen­tia: A Word to be For­got­ten, calls for more con­struc­tive ter­mi­nol­ogy. Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man weighs in.

Other Thought-Provoking Articles

To Think or to Blink?: should Ham­let be liv­ing with us now and read­ing best­sellers, he might be won­der­ing: To Blink or not to Blink? To Think or not to Think? We are pleased to present an arti­cle by Madeleine Van Hecke, offer­ing the “on the other hand” to Mal­colm Gladwell’s Blink argument.

The impact of web 2.0 on health­care: we hosted Med­i­cine 2.0, a bi-weekly col­lec­tion of arti­cles that ana­lyze the cur­rent and poten­tial impact of web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies on med­i­cine and healthcare.

Brain Teasers

Brain Teasers: Spot the Dif­fer­ence: how many dif­fer­ences can you spot (and how many cog­ni­tive func­tions can you engage with this sim­ple exercise?)

I hope you are hav­ing a great August!

Wel­come to the 30th edi­tion of Med­i­cine 2.0, the blog car­ni­val devoted to arti­cles that ana­lyze the cur­rent and poten­tial impact of web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies on med­i­cine and healthcare.

“Med­i­cine 2.0″ 101

The first ques­tion is, of course, “What exactly is Med­i­cine 2.0?”. The sec­ond, “Who cares?”. The third, “Why?”

Anthro­pol­o­gists are here to help. Who bet­ter to help under­stand emerg­ing arti­facts of the health and med­ical tribe, as evi­denced by the fan­tas­tic lec­ture An Anthro­po­log­i­cal Intro­duc­tion To Youtube given to the Library of Con­gress by Pro­fes­sor Michael Wesch. As Open Think­ing sug­gests, the video which is 55 min­utes long pro­vides an “excel­lent back­grounder on social media, user-generated con­tent, and online com­mu­ni­ties through the lens of anthropology.”

If you are more the Pow­er­Point type, you can access the great slide pre­sen­ta­tion and list of web­sites pro­vided by eHealth: see Web 2.0 in Clin­i­cal Research.

The Future of Med­i­cine and Health 2.0

Admit­tedly, the Med­i­cine 2.0 field is still small and emerg­ing. But, how will it grow? What new health­care out­comes will it enable and sup­port? What may be the trade-offs to con­sider, if any? Read the rest of this entry »

A cou­ple of excel­lent col­lec­tions of blog posts:

-The Tan­gled Bank: all things sci­ence, with a very clear presentation.

-Med­i­cine 2.0: inter­sec­tion of Health and Web 2.0, hosted by Berta­lan Mesko, its creator.

Pro­fes­sor, trader and author Brett Steen­barger, one of the main experts on Trad­ing psy­chol­ogy and Trader Per­for­mance (see our inter­view with him here), just announced he will speak at a Free Inter­ac­tive Webi­nar on Trader Performance

• “Dur­ing the Webi­nar, I will sum­ma­rize and elab­o­rate basic ideas from my book and also intro­duce new ideas devel­oped and applied since the book’s pub­li­ca­tion. A unique fea­ture of the ses­sion will be a par­tic­i­pant Q&A mod­er­ated by Steve.” (Steven Buss, a mem­ber of the NeoTicker forum)

He recently wrote a great post on My Favorite Tech­niques for Over­com­ing Per­for­mance Anx­i­ety in Trad­ing, includ­ing a won­der­ful tech­nique (see arti­cle to read the full description)

• “Of late, I’ve been mak­ing use of heart rate vari­abil­ity feed­back through the Freeze-Framer pro­gram, which offers a nice graph­i­cal inter­face to help users track their progress and visu­ally deter­mine whether or not they’re in “the zone”.
• “Once the trader becomes adept at this, I then add Read the rest of this entry »