Discover the Science of Health
The United States has one of the safest food supplies in the world. Nevertheless, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), foodborne disease causes approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths in the U.S. each year [1] — and that’s just an estimate based on data collected from the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet), other surveillance networks and published studies.
Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said last month that he is moving ahead with a plan to create a new center focused on translational medicine, presently called the National Center for the Advancement of Translational Sciences (NCATS) [1]. The strategy comes at a time of mounting frustration from researchers that the abundance of new information about the molecular basis of many diseases hasn’t led to the development of new therapies.
Welcome to Medlib’s Round, edition 2.7, the monthly blog carnival highlighting excellent blog posts in the field of medical information. Just under a year ago, we hosted MedLibs Round 1.8: Finding Credible Health Information Online. For this edition, we wanted to focus on how social media is being used to promote health information online.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the term mobile is being used quite often when discussing social media and health. Indeed, according to a recent Pew Internet report, 59% of adults are now accessing the internet wirelessly using a laptop or cell phone [1].
Keeping with this month’s theme, we’re tweeting and sharing posts using the Twitter hashtags #medinfo and #medlibs. If you like a particular post, share it with your friends and be sure to add both hashtags.
Welcome to the eighth edition of MedLib’s Round, the monthly blog carnival that highlights some of the best writing on medical librarianship, encompassing all stages in the publication and dissemination of medical information: writing, publishing, searching, citing, managing and social networking.
Here at Highlight HEALTH, we advocate health literacy for improving self-management in health. To that end, all the sites in the The Highlight HEALTH Network strive to consistently provide credible, reliable sources of health and medical information.
A 2008 study by the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest found that searching for health information online can be dangerous, with search engine results pages dominated by websites that appeared legitimate but had zero medical authority [1]. Our hope is that this edition of MedLib’s Round — themed Finding credible health information online — will offer ideas and advice to help people use the Web more effectively to search and find credible health information.
Health Highlights is a biweekly summary of particularly interesting articles from credible sources of health and medical information that we follow & read. For a complete list of recommeded sources, see our links page.
A new academic journal is being launched this week. The Journal of Participatory Medicine will move the field from anecdote to science, with articles on principles, methods and evidence-based outcomes.
This is how we fight health misinformation on the Web. Are you a physician, nurse or medical professional? It’s time to start using social media.
What happens when neurology patients are told that their symptoms have no identifiable physical cause? Researchers followed patients for a year and a half to see if and how their diagnoses changed.
No matter how many times you wash your hands, if your keyboard, desk or doorknob has flu germs on it, you have a problem.
Gary Schwitzer notes a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine that focused on how critical drug information from the FDA may fail to be included on the drug label or in relevant journal articles.
The PubMed website has been redesigned. David Rothman posts a short video tutorial showing where you can find some useful tools in the new interface.
The State Scorecard study shows that there are wide variations among states in the areas of access, quality, cost, equity and ability to live long and healthy lives.
Participatory medicine is a model of medical care in which the active role of the patient is emphasized. Some patients not only take an active role, they push the boundaries of medicine and publish a case report describing their experience.
Have you ever wondered if patients given a placebo during a clinical trial experience side effects? It turns out they do. What’s more, a recent study examining the side effects reported by patients taking placebos in clinical trials to test migraine medications found that the placebo side effects are specific to the side effects that would be expected from the comparison drug.
