Tag: HEALTHCARE

President Obama has devoted up to $27 billion in federal funds to digitize health records at hospitals across the country, but a new study suggests that he probably shouldn't bother. In the nationwide study, a team of researchers from Stanford University analyzed data from more than 250,000 patient visits between 2005 and 2007. According to their findings, digital record-keeping systems didn't ...

The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never move from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over their creations, nevertheless. This ...

When Peter Bentley wrote the 'iStethoscope' app for the iPhone, it was meant, we think, to be entertainment. The $0.99 app has some surprisingly powerful features for recording and measuring heart beats, but the tiny iPhone microphone makes it quite difficult to use and a tad unreliable. In the U.S., the app hasn't seen much success, but, overseas, it's gained traction since Bentley introduced a ...

In 2007, we were introduced to the term "cyberchondriac," which refers to a person who constantly looks up health information online, presumably in an effort to self-diagnose illnesses. Now Harris Interactive, the group that coined the phrase, has updated its prior study, and shown that more and more people are using the Web to demystify symptoms -- or perceived symptoms, anyway. Since 2009, the ...

Back in January, President Obama outlined a five-year plan in which all of the country's medical records would be digitized. By streamlining and introducing electronic standards to health data, mistakes like duplicate tests could be avoided. But, considering that only "20 percent of doctors and 10 percent of hospitals use even basic electronic health records," -- according to Kathleen Sebelius, ...

Share As we know all too well here at Switched, everyone makes mistakes. Not everyone, however, makes mistakes quite as far-reaching as was the blunder that private DNA-testing company 23andMe recently made. On Friday, the company announced that "a number of new 23andMe customer samples were incorrectly processed" by the third-party lab that conducts the DNA tests, and confessed that "up to" ...

Genetics are kind of like Mexican food; if you happen to have good ones, your life can be sublime. If you're not so lucky, though, things can get ugly. And as doctors have become more aware of the critical role that genes play in determining a person's likelihood of developing breast cancer, obesity or Alzheimer's, genetic testing has become increasingly common in diagnostic labs and hospitals -- ...

It may seem like an automatic daily routine, but keeping up with the various precautionary measures required by certain illnesses can be a significant obstacle, particularly for needle-bound diabetics. But, technology could at least offset the inevitable confusion, annoying tedium and physical pain related to frequent glucose monitoring. Researchers have already crafted designs for contact ...

Don't snicker at these knickers. Incontinence, or involuntarily leakage, is no laughing matter, especially for the elderly. But now, Australian company Simavita has created a new system that could revolutionize caring for the elderly and infirm. According to Engadget, the SIMsystem is the world's first texting underwear. By outfitting a patient's underwear with a replaceable pad equipped with ...

Facebook's population officially outnumbers that of the entire United States, and Twitter has obviously become firmly established within pop culture. That being the case, the creation of specifically marketed social networks capitalizing on the online networking boom should be completely expected. Some of the demographically geared services cater to white collar professionals and others to nerdy ...

In an effort to save money and gain support for health care reform, President Barack Obama is calling in the nerds. According to an Associated Press report, Obama said Tuesday that he's hiring a group of private "bounty hunters" to crack down on health care fraud, particularly those cases pertaining to Medicare and Medicaid. They won't be armed with mullets and pepper spray like TV badass Dog, ...

Carol Kasyjanski has lived with a severe heart condition for 20 years. Until recently, she's lived her life, often in fear, in strict obedience to the condition's limitations. Now, though, a medical breakthrough has given the woman a chance to live her life on her own terms. Kasyjanski is the first American to receive a wireless-equipped pacemaker, according to Reuters. The device gives her much ...

Barack Obama is no stranger to spurious claims about his heritage, citizenship, and religious beliefs, but most of these claims have been met with little more than stolid dismissal by our secretly Muslim, terrorist-fist-bumping, Kenyan-born president. Start attacking the man's policies with deceptive chain e-mails and viral videos, though, and you might just find yourself on the losing side of a ...

What do you get when you mix the Royal College of Art in London, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, ambulances, and a healthy James Bond obsession? 'Healthcare on the Move: The Smart Pods Project.' Part art show and part conceptual technology pageant, the project envisions what future British ambulances might look like. One design, for instance, envisioned a rear ...

There's a constant and ongoing struggle to get hospitals -- and the health industry as a whole -- to modernize and go digital. Many have resisted, thinking that digital records will result in the same leaks of personal information we've seen in the repeated hackings of Monster.com. However, a new study should give those digital supporters a little more ammunition. According to that study, ...