Archives for 2007

The Trust and Credibility of Healthcare Blogs

April 16, 2007 | by

A recent survey from Zogby International finds that more than half of Americans (55%) believe bloggers are important to the future of American journalism and 74% said that citizen journalism and Web 2.0 websites such as NowPublic will play a vital new role [1].

Discovery Setting It’s Sites On Green

April 13, 2007 | by

Discovery Communications has announced that it plans to start a 24-hour channel focused on eco-friendly living. Riding on the tails of its successful “Planet Earth” series, the company will rebrand its Discovery Home Channel with a name that has yet-to-be selected. The channel, expected to debut in 2008, will be dedicated to the highest quality programming for a green lifestyle and will initially be carried in 50 million homes. The channel will be the centerpiece of a new multimedia content initiative called PlanetGreen [1].

Web 3.0 and Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine

April 9, 2007 | by

Since January, Berci Mesko over at Scienceroll has been writing about how Web 2.0 is changing medicine. He’s written a number of interesting articles, including Medical wikis: the future of medicine? and Medical Web 2.0 Sites.

In Web 3.0 and medicine, Berci writes about WikiProteins, a new site that plans to use Web 3.0 technologies to incorporate real time community annotation into a semantic framework. The article Meet the uber-wiki is a great review of the up-and-coming resource.

Pharmacy Errors – Avoid Prescription Dispensing Mistakes

April 3, 2007 | by

Recently, an undercover pharmacy investigation conducted by 20/20 and reported on by Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross evaluated prescription dispensing at some of the best known U.S. chain drug stores.

The results are surprising and the suggestions at the end of this article really could save your life or that of someone you love.

Pharmacy errors and prescription drugs

An Inconvenient Financial Truth – Healthcare Costs Endanger U.S. Financial Stability

March 29, 2007 | by

The federal government has made financial promises over the next 75 years at an estimated value of $50 trillion dollars. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), medicare obligations alone represent almost $39 trillion of that amount and have increased 197% since 2000 [1].

You read that right — future Social Security benefits and future Medicare benefits increased 197% from 2000 to 2006.

And — here’s the clincher — in the absence of extensive reform to both the Medicare program and the nation’s healthcare system, the government won’t have the money to meet those financial promises.