health

Only about half of kids ages 6 months to 17 years received the flu shot in the 2010-2011 season, which may be one reason influenza remains one of the most common causes of hospitalization among kids today, according to a study in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

So researchers from Columbia University and beyond tested an intervention program on a randomized control trial of more than 9,000 kids of that same age range at four community-based clinics in the United States, where more than 7,500 kids had not received the vaccine … Read more

Random strangers can change your life. So can ear, nose, and throat specialists who trained as engineers at MIT.

This is something 52-year-old Jan Christian discovered when she was in a supermarket and someone heard her attempts to talk. The stranger suggested she visit Dr. Sid M. Khosla.

"I sure wish I could remember what she looked like and knew who she is," Christian told WXIX in Cincinnati.

Khosla studied engineering at MIT and when he came to the University of Cincinnati, he received a grant to study flow in the voice box. In another random occurrence that characterizes this extraordinary story, one of the finest experts in jet noise happened to be at the same university. … Read more

A fair number of consumers in the United States are relying on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to help them with medical and health care issues.

Polling 1,060 U.S. adults in February, PricewaterhouseCoopers found that a third use social media to find medical information, research and share symptoms, and offer their opinions about doctors, drugs, treatments, and heath plans.

One in four of those surveyed said they've used social-media services to track down reviews from other consumers about treatments and doctors, while one in three have searched for information about medical ailments related by other … Read more

If you have diabetes, hypertension, or other chronic medical conditions, you no doubt know the value of tracking your blood sugar, blood pressure, and other health metrics. Health Monitor is an easy-to-use program that lets you record a variety of types of health information and track it over time.

Health Monitor comes with two sample users, so it's easy to see how the program works before you create a profile for yourself and get started. The interface is arranged in six tabs: Summary, Readings, Charts, Reports, Users and Help. We created a new profile for ourselves, entering our name, … Read more

File this under the bizarre but potentially life-saving category of new tech: an intelligent floor that knows who is doing what on a given surface, and can alert police or first responders in the event of an intrusion or medical emergency.

IBM, which filed for a patent describing such a system in February 2009, is now, just more than three years later, the proud holder of said patent. What it does with it remains to be seen, but the initial vision is clear.

From the patent abstract, IBM reports on an approach that "uses an electronic multitouch floor covering that has numerous sensors to identify shapes."… Read more

You're in Vegas. Your head is throbbing like your heart during the Super Bowl. Your lips are drier than a tire in Paris-Dakar Rally. You feel like your body is on the verge of bursting in several awkward places. There's only one thing that can save you. Yes, an IV drip.

Yet the folks from ER seem reluctant to provide the service, even if you have health insurance.

Enter, then, the site Hangover Heaven. I am not sure that the words "hangover" and "heaven" have ever been successfully mixed -- except in the context of "He had such a huge hangover that he went to heaven."

However, this fine, socially conscious startup has buses that will come to your Vegas hotel and drip you back to life. At least that's what the site claims.… Read more

What's more fun? Playing with your Xbox, smart device, or Rubik's Cube, or playing with yourself? OK, we know that's a tough one for this crowd. How about the following: which is healthier?

Well, when it comes to testicular cancer, the answer is probably playing with yourself -- provided, of course, you're playing by the rules.… Read more

Patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center may receive cancer diagnoses and treatment with the help of IBM's Watson supercomputer by the end of 2013.

Watson would make diagnoses and suggest treatment approaches that take into account individual patient concerns, the Associated Press reported today.

Using its natural-language processing powers, the artificial intelligence system will study textbooks, oncology studies, and medical records if patients give permission. An advisory panel will test its assessments of increasingly complicated cancer cases. … Read more

Former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz says the idea for a health care site like CareZone had been germinating for about a decade.

But it wasn't until two years ago that he had some time to really devote to it. It was then that he and his good friend Walter Smith, one of the creators of the Apple Newton, sat down to talk about how they could make a difference in the lives of people who are caring for elderly parents or for children who have issues--people who want a safe place to store medical records and share access to … Read more