By: Sara Suchy Let no American think for a moment that we are the only nation with a weight problem.  While the U.S. continues to grapple with a staggering and seemingly constant rise in obesity among adults and children over the last 30 or so years, Europe faces similar problems keeping their collective weight down, [...]

Last Wednesday, my friend Joe Wheeler and I threw Louisville’s inaugural Quantified Self Meetup, sponsored by HealthCentral and igNew. We had 50% participation from our fledgling group’s total membership, which was an awesome way to kick off the movement in the Derby City. There is definitely an interest for all things quantified and self in [...]

In honor of Migraine Awareness Month we want to pay a small tribute to the deeply moving  Putting Our Heads Together Migraine Poetry Contest co-hosted by HealthCentral and our expert Teri Robert’s (@trobert). Consisting of over 80 migraine themed poems, the 2011 contest contained prose filled with pain, anger, sadness, and even humor. Migraine expert [...]

Last week I became curious about how sites like Travelocity and Orbitz get their information. When I think about all of the different flights, times, locations and prices that I can access in real time with a few clicks of a mouse, it makes me wonder why something equivalent doesn’t exist between Doctors and Insurance [...]

Guest Post by Beryl Lee and Tina Robles Tina steers video planning and production undertakings at HealthCentral where she puts her Video Production and Psychology underpinnings into full practice. Beryl adds her voice to social media, communications, and outreach at HealthCentral where she applies her former studies in Sociology, Humanities and Bioengineering. With a reality [...]

The number one million, doesn’t mean what it used to… but it is still an important number in mobile health technology. Mainly because we haven’t heard it used much, in the context of adoption. The fitness and nutrition category has bested the coveted one million user mark, but I haven’t seen any other category touting [...]

Guest Post by Anne O’Brien If it is true that no publicity is bad publicity, then Facebook was the big winner at this week’s ePharma conference.  While the comments began as reprimand on the misuse and over-reliance on Facebook by the category as a whole, there were was the acknowledgement that Facebook can extend reach [...]

If the World Health Organization defined the term “health” as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity back in 1948, then can we really believe that health records only containing information about our physical health will be a panacea for the future of health [...]

Going through some old posts on my (seemingly defunct) personal blog for street cred on the topic, I was reminded how much I really liked Twitter lists and niches, as I’ve been rekindling that old flame lately. What I’m enjoying about Twitter lists these days is how far they’ve come toward serving as an all [...]

Fascinating panel discussion of leading patient advocates – Ann Bartlett, Dave deBronkart and Alicia Staley – moderated by Jeremy Shane at the ePharma Summit. My only complaint is that it was limited to half an hour. I was particularly struck by the unanimity on the panel that they welcome open interaction with pharma and that [...]

Last November, Microsoft unveiled the Kinect and sold 8 million units worldwide in 60 days. In case you don’t know what the Kinect is, it’s a sophisticated camera that use infrared lights to locate and track 48 points on the human body for up to two people at a time, in conjunction with an Xbox [...]

Guest Post by Sara Suchy Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Annual NBC4 Health and Fitness Expo right here in lovely Washington D.C.  In their 11th year of organizing and hosting this event, NBC4 certainly knows how to execute a fantastically diverse and informative expo with something for everyone. The NBC4 Expo [...]

Patients can find or request the care they need at a price that is fair… Doctors and medical facilities list their services, select from the requests that are made, and acquire new patients willing to pay a fair price for their services.

That’s what I thought when three friends of mine in the Louisville start-up scene approached me about posting pictures of the food we eat on a Group Posterous they set up, as a direct result of Tim Ferriss’ new book: The Four Hour Body. It’s also what I thought when I read this article about [...]

My friend, Mark Hawker, hipped me to this amazing Nicholas Christakis TED talk called: The hidden influence of social networks that will be 18 minutes of your life well spent. I get that anybody who looks at Facebook’s latest valuation knows that social networks are “powerful.” But Nicholas Christakis dives into the individual’s network architecture [...]

Data sets are much more interesting when compared to other data sets. But they’re even more interesting than that, when they’re animated, eh? If you’ve always been curious of how wealth determines health, but didn’t know where to look, then I recommend taking the next four minutes of your life to let Hans Rosling, Director [...]

Guest Post by Sara Suchy For two and a half days, I was lucky enough to be in a room with some of the best and brightest minds in research, public health, education, marketing, the food and beverage industry, and web technology all talking (very candidly) about the problem of obesity in America during DTC [...]

Here on the product team at HealthCentral, we’re in continuous deep discussions about the growth and value of mobile health apps.  Last year, we launched Mood 24/7,  creating a new platform for patients to track their well-being in close communication with their physicians — and with data and technology guru Chris Hall now steering the [...]

In an article just published on Nextgov, there is a good overview of the shifting sands in the Open Government agenda of the federal government. I’m quoted in the story because I have served as a volunteer auditor of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Open Government Plan and also am co-leading [...]

Guest Blog Post by Sara Suchy Last Thursday night (7/29), HealthCentral had the pleasure of attending an exhibit of paintings by Regina Holliday presented by Clinovations. Ms. Holliday’s artwork collection, dubbed “e-Patient Ephemera—73 cents meets the world of data capture” aims to illustrate, through various pictures, stories and objects, the “complex world of health care [...]

Guest Blog by Alli Bush, HealthCentral Site Product Manager Yesterday was a satisfying day on two levels: the first was that for the first time ever, I was greeted by a driver at Newark airport that was holding a sign that read, “A. Bush.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten off a [...]

Three events in early June spotlighted the pace of change in how new treatments are being created.  The biggest winners from new approaches to drug development will be patients, who hold all the keys to how new treatments are found and tested.  The clearest losers will be policymakers, who will face more worries about meeting [...]

Last night, in prep for today’s CBI patient panel, Ignite Health’s Fabio Gratton invited Alicia Staley, Ann Bartlett,  Diane Bayer and myself to a lovely dinner, all with the purpose to “plot for world domination” (as Alicia said it!) and talk about patient empowerment and pharmaceutical marketing. On nights like these, I’m always struck by [...]

Yesterday, we put a great DCWeek session together entitled “The Data We’ve All Left Behind: Uncovering The Social Media Data Trail”. Nevermind the genius of holding the session at James Hobans authentic Irish Pub during the exciting World Cup. The session was designed to present a very broad canvass of all the many types of [...]

For all the talk of “shovel ready,” it’s still not easy to identify public works that got money from the stimulus bill. I have seen a few signs labeling road construction work as “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” projects, but that’s about it. However, on a local radio show this week, I heard about specific [...]

Although transparency wasn’t a highlight of the negotiations around the new health care law, it does seem like this idea is going to be a bigger factor for doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and patients in the near future. There are at least two new disclosure requirements in the new law. InsuranceNewsNet.com highlights several aspects of the [...]

A few weeks ago I was invited to volunteer join an independent review effort of federal agency open government plans that were delivered by key federal agencies on April 9, 2010. The independent reviewers were organized by a non-profit transparency organization call Open the Government. Since I work routinely with health information and have gotten [...]

In a study commissioned by Practice Fusion (an electronic health care record (EHR) company), custom research firm GfK Roper found that patients see 18.7 different doctors on average throughout their lives. While the number isn’t that shocking (count back through specialists, second opinions, moving to a new part of the country, etc.) it does underscore [...]

When Facebook announced its new Open Graph functionality at the F8 conference last week, the first thing we did at our office, obviously, was rush to Pandora to see what kind of music our coworkers were listening to that we could make fun of them for. (By now, most have heard of or experienced Facebook’s [...]

For a number of years, SEO folks have fruitlessly wondered if or how Google has used searcher behavior to improve the results it serves up.  Will they push a site down if searchers ignore that link on the results page?  Or bump it up if searchers click through and spend a lot of time on [...]

President Obama signed the health insurance reform bill today at the White House. Meanwhile, the Senate is preparing to take up a bill that makes changes to the brand new law. The 153-page list of fixes includes: Scaling back the tax on “luxury” health insurance plans Increasing the subsidies the government will provide to insurance [...]

The balance between privacy and innovation online is a recurring theme for a health-centered product development team, but is it really THAT different? The foundation of our group is based on the guiding principle that we’re meeting user needs through useful, usable and desirable products.  We know that online health searches are growing across demographics [...]