health

Cyborg tech predicted as next big disruptive technology

The next explosive growth in the microprocessor industry, according to chip guru Levy Gerzberg, won't be powering a consumer electronics device. It will more likely be planted somewhere in our own bodies, under our skin, delivering critical information and executing actions that can quite literally prolong our lives.

Speaking at a forum at the Consumer Electronics Show on disruptive technologies, Gerzberg, the CEO of microprocessor designer Zoran, said that by definition a "disruptive technology" is one that changes our lives in a drastic and positive way. With that in mind, there can be no greater disruptive technology, … Read more

MEDgle makes sick search better

Web search is a whole lot easier than thumbing through a household copy of The Merck Manual when you're trying to find out what you're sick with. A simple search based on symptoms might steer you the right way, but several medical Web services have gone the route of attempting to emulate the kinds of questions you'd get when visiting a doctor's office. One of them, called MEDgle has quietly been offering up a symptom-based medical search tool for the last year.

The crux of MEDgle is the search tool, which either lets users type in … Read more

NASA hunts rats for public health

NASA's Applied Sciences Program scours the Earth for climate, precipitation and ground-cover changes that encourage disease carrying creatures to thrive, and allows scientists to offer early warnings about potential outbreaks of diseases such as malaria, West Nile virus and bubonic plague.

Read the full story on USA Today: Earthbound mission for NASA: Public health.

AOL co-founder's Revolution Health acquires HealthTalk

First AOL, next a revolution.

AOL co-founder Steve Case announced Wednesday his online health and wellness company, Revolution Health Group, has acquired HealthTalk, pushing his company into the ranks of the second-largest health information site on the Net.

The deal is designed to bolster Revolution's offerings beyond the health and wellness category and into the area of supplying content on chronic conditions. The acquisition marks yet more activity in the online health care arena, which has seen not only mergers but also the birth of medical and health-related search engines, according to American Medical News. There's also been … Read more

Building a state-of-the-art Emergency Room for Silicon Valley

Today I'm extremely excited to tell you about a philanthropic gift that my wife Laura and I are making:

We are giving $27.5 million to Stanford Hospital, for two purposes:

First, to significantly enhance and upgrade Stanford Hospital's current Emergency Department.

And second, to fund the creation of a new state-of-the-art emergency facility in the new hospital that Stanford will build -- assuming it is approved by the city of Palo Alto -- over the next several years.

As you can imagine, Laura and I are unbelievably excited by the opportunity to make this gift. In fact, … Read more

A urine collector for kings and commoners

It's not the amount that counts--it's the first few milliliters.

That's the word from Helen Lee, an associate professor at the University of Cambridge, who invented the FirstBurst, that device you see in her hands. It captures the first part of a male patient's urine sample and seals it off into a tube. Those initial milliliters are the ones doctors need for testing. Lee hopes to see the device get shipped into emerging markets to help health professionals. (She has also invented a device for rapidly testing for chlamydia.)

The FirstBurst testing has been fairly rigorous. … Read more

Useful: Enurgi marketplace for home-care providers

If you're involved at all in organizing the home care of a person who's recuperating from an injury or serious illness, is elderly and ailing, or for some other reason requires frequent visits from nurses or therapists, keep an eye on Enurgi, a health-care marketplace that just launched.

You can find caregivers on the site, book them for home care, rate their job performance, and manage their payment via Paypal. The service helps you keep a calendar so you can easily tell who's coming over and when, and quickly fill in gaps you may have in your … Read more

Walking to lunch...safely

My wife, Amy, has done a fairly good job of convincing our daughter to wear sunscreen, at least when the sun is shining and the temperatures are soaring.

Amy also does a fairly good job of convincing her to wear sunscreen on cloudy summer days, arguing that just because you can't see the sun directly doesn't mean the rays cannot reach you. … Read more

Study finds electronic health records vulnerable

The results of a fifteen-month study accessing the time to patch software associated with electronic health record (EHR) systems were published today by the eHealth Vulnerability Reporting Program. The program is a collaboration of health care industry organizations, technology companies and security professionals that is attempting to establish best practices within the emerging field of electronic health records in the adoption and reliance of eHealth systems, including electronic medical records (EMR), picture archiving and communication system (PACS), and medical devices. The 39-page report found much room for improvement.

It's one thing to have your credit card information compromised--that can … Read more

Google health exec leaves

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Adam Bosworth, who headed up Google's health-related projects, is leaving the company. The news was first reported on Search Engine Land.

A Google spokesman said Bosworth was on vacation and had "decided to pursue other opportunities after that." He joined Google in 2004 after leaving BEA Systems.

Google and its main rivals have been preparing to expand their health and medical information-related services as more and more people seek out such information online.