by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Apr 15, 2016
Next in our #DocTom10 series, which started here. I first met Tom Ferguson in 1994 online (where else?) when he reached out via email to chat about online support groups. I was still in graduate school at the time, and he had come across my indexes of Internet...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Apr 15, 2015
According to a new study in JAMA, data breaches into people’s protected health information (PHI) records are increasing: “[The] study that found almost 30 million health records nationwide were involved in criminal theft, malicious hacking or other data...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Dec 19, 2013
Go ahead and type in virtually any health or mental health condition into Google. Heck, even try a popular medication or two. Time and time again, you’ll notice a reliable trend — 2 or 3 of the top 10 search results are nearly always going to be WebMD. But...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Aug 27, 2013
A few months ago, I complained about the layout of one of my doctor’s offices. There’s a rough layout drawing of the office waiting area to the side there. I’m standing just in front of the number 1, while people are sitting along the wall behind me....
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Apr 22, 2013
Imagine a black box. You can feed all sorts of information and data into it all the live long day. But the amount of data you can get out of it is limited. It just stares back at you with its blank, neutral sides. It can tell you things like where it was manufactured,...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Mar 17, 2012
I’m a little confused… I’m not sure where the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the government’s right to interfere with the doctor/patient relationship. Nowhere in this historic document could I find anything about the government’s right to...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Oct 23, 2011
The 60 minutes interview with Steve Jobs’ biographer is an intriguing piece that gives us a few insights into Steve Jobs and his battle with pancreatic cancer. But the most disturbing part of the interview for me was watching Walter Isaacson, a former editor of...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Oct 16, 2011
Please join us for the 2nd Annual Society for Participatory Medicine Cocktail Reception, taking place on Thursday, October 20, 2011 at the Liberty Hotel in Boston (http://www.libertyhotel.com/) from 6:00 – 8:00 pm. If you’re attending the Connected Health...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Jul 24, 2011
I’m all for citizen journalism, and can even stand the content mills like LiveStrong, who have pimped out their name and brand in order to make a quick buck. But I draw the line with bad reporting and worse, biased representation of the data to prove a point....
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Jul 7, 2011
Well, it was bound to happen. Skin Scan is a new iPhone app that purports to analyze your moles for evidence of malignancy — all in the application itself through its own proprietary algorithms. Just take a few photos over time, and it will analyze their...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Jun 25, 2011
Like so many attempts before it — drkoop.com and RevolutionHealth.com to name just two — Google has found that implementing personal health records in a meaningful way is really, really hard. So hard, in fact, that it has given up and is shuttering its...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Apr 12, 2011
While doing some research the other day on personal health records (PHRs), I came across this article, describing Revolution Health’s announcement — without much media attention — about dropping its PHR at the beginning of 2010. (Disclosure: I worked...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Mar 16, 2011
As a reminder that even the best technology still relies on humans not making dumb mistakes, PCMag.com reports that Health Net’s technology partner, IBM, has seemingly lost a few hard drives. Normally not a big deal. Except that these drives contained patient...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Mar 5, 2011
I’ve heard this sentiment more than once… “Doctors should participate more in social media. They should be Facebooking and Twittering and Tumblr-ing far more often than they do!” Houston Neal makes the case again over at The Medical Blog,...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Sep 7, 2010
The Boston Globe has a revealing article about a study published in Annals of Internal Medicine where patients thought that a heart stent would help prevent another heart attack. But doctors had only told patients that it would relieve future chest pain. How can such...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Sep 1, 2010
A friend of mine, Ms. S., recently had an unsettling experience with a company called Caremark (the parent company of pharmacy CVS), whom she fills her prescriptions through. She was reordering a prescription refill she buys through the mail, and needed to pay for it....
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Jun 26, 2010
The e-patient movement is so real that in April the National Library of Medicine had its first ePatient Conference. Yes, that’s what they called it. The event is covered on the inside front cover of the current Medline Plus, including Society co-chair e-Patient...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Nov 21, 2009
Imagine a world you live in where every insurance offering is accompanied by a creepy set of Big Brother-like ongoing investigations into your life. Everything will be used as evidence against you. Yes, even your Facebook profile. That world is here. Well, not right...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Sep 18, 2009
I hear it time and time again in the e-health industry: “If only we had everyone on an electronic medical record, all of our security and privacy issues would be solved!” Really? Perhaps I should introduce you to a little something psychologists like to...
by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. | Aug 12, 2009
You know you’re going to get a pretty interesting debate about healthcare costs when George Lundberg offers his advice on how to control health care costs right now. A well thought-out piece and one deserving of everyone’s time to read it. Costs can be...
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