Google Glass is now available in the U.K.

United States physicians have had the advantages of Google Glass for the past year.  Glass just recently was released for use in the U.K.

Kathi Browne of BrowneKnows, a well known social media moderator on Health Care Talk had the opportunity to discuss the promise of Google Glass for users and developers in the U.K.  In this Google Hangout several medical developers discuss their use and plans for Google Glass.

Now that Google Glass has been made available to the UK, we are seeing many new Glass explorers stepping forward in  +Giannis Anastasiadis  is interested in developing healthcare Glassware. If you have an idea you wish someone would develop for Glass, share it. For those of you who wish to become Glass Explorers,

While Google Glass is not yet  HIPAA compliant there are  developer plans to make it so. Currently Glass users must receive permission from patients if it is used for them. The potential for use of Glass in Healthcare is enormous, more than I want to cover in this post, and will be listed elsewhere (as of September 30, 2014. 

The current iteration of  google glass has some limitations for medical use. It currently has not been cleared as a 'biomedical device', requiring specific adminstrative consent for use in a health facility, for reasons of legal liability. It is a small and powerful computer, generating much heat and was designed for very short bursts of information rather that a continuous use video recorder.

If you are a physician,  surgeon or a google glass developer, we would like to hear from you, for either a post or a Google Hangout Conference.

How Are Disease-Related Facebook Pages Used?

iHealthBeat, Wednesday, August 13, 2014

A study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research finds 32.2% of Facebook pages about diseases are for marketing and promotional purposes, while just 9.4% of such pages are used for general social support.

The study also shows:

• 20.7% of disease-related Facebook pages aim to raise awareness; and
• 15.5% provide Wikipedia-type information.

The study was conducted by researchers from Harvard Medical School, Partners HealthCare's Center for Connected Health and Stanford University School of Medicine.

Source: iHealthBeat, Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Study Finds Strengths of Social Media in Health Care, Room for Improvement

Social media in medicine continues to be controversial.  Those who are recent graduates and/or less than 35-40 years of age seem to have integrated social media within the context of HIPAA restrictions.  Most physicians do not use social media unless they restrict personal identification of patients. None offer treatment recommendations over an insecure connection, and their social media and web sites have a visible warning about information provided by their web site is for informational purposes only and not treatment.

A recent study found that social networking websites like Facebook can be an important tool for both patients and providers but that such sites need to be further refined to fully realize their potential in health care.

In an iHealthBeat audio report by Rachel Dornhelm, experts discussed the future of social media and health care. The report includes comments from:

• Timothy Hale, a research scientist at Partners HealthCare's Center for Connected Health;
• Ben Heywood, co-founder and president of PatientsLikeMe;
• Christina Thielst, a health administration contractor focusing on social media; and
• Robert Wah, chief medical officer of Computer Sciences Corporation (Dornhelm, iHealthBeat, 8/20).

Download a pdf file of this report

Doctors Report Loss of Practice Time After EHR Implementation

Our continuing research done by                      appears to corroborate earlier studies about decreased efficiency and decreased patient volume with the implementation of electronic health records.

Doctors say they waste on average up to four hours per week when using electronic health records, according to a research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine, U.S. News & World Report reports. 

Research Letter Details

For the research letter, researchers from the National Library of Medicine's Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications analyzed the results of a survey conducted in December 2012 by American College of Physicians (Leonard, U.S. News & World Report, 9/8).

The survey consisted of 19 questions and received responses from 411 internal medicine attending physicians and trainees who worked in an ambulatory practice and used an EHR system (McDonald et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 9/8).

Findings

A difference was noted between practicing clinicians and trainees (residents).

The research letter, which was presented Monday at the National Library of Medicine, found that the mean loss of time for physicians was 48 minutes per day, compared with a mean loss of 18 minutes per day for trainees (U.S. News & World Report, 9/8).

Specifically, the research letter found that after EHR implementation:

• 89.8% of respondents said at least one data management function was slower;
• 63.9% of respondents said the time spent taking notes increased;
• 33.9% of respondents said the time spent finding and reviewing patient data took longer; and
• 32.2% of respondents said they spent more time reading other clinicians' notes (JAMA Internal Medicine, 9/8).

The authors wrote, "We can only speculate as to whether better computer skills, shorter (half-day) clinic assignments with proportionately less exposure to EMR time costs, or other factors account for the trainees’ smaller per-day time loss" 

Author:  Our experience is that trainees are often using a particular EMR for the first time, which does not require an 'unlearning experience" and that trainees (who are younger were brought up with computers during high school, elementary school, and college), in addition to their immersion in social media.  Some or all of these traits explain the difference in the findings.