Quoted: New tools are being developed that may help harried patients monitor their medications, home tests and other details. This is part of a shift toward a medical system that is more centered on and directed by patients themselves.

First, however, patients will have to become comfortable placing medical data like readings from home tests online...such programs are still under development, and all of this remains to be seen.

Quoted: Revolution Health has inked a deal to merge with one of the largest online health companies in the world, with a network of more than 20 sites. The deal, estimated to be worth $300 million, joins together Revolution and Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Waterfront Media -- the second- and third-largest purveyors on online health information -- in a bid to compete with the acknowledged front-runner, WebMD.

Quoted: Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

Quoted: CDC Health-e-Cards - Send an electronic greeting card to friends, family, co-workers!

Quoted: They're not your typical greeting cards...The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has developed more than 80 electronic greetings called Health-e-Cards to spread health information. Some are animated, others have music, and one urging screening for colorectal cancer features actor Jimmy Smits.

CDC officials said they did not have any estimate of what each card cost to produce. It's minimal, said Ann Aikin, CDC health communications specialist, noting the cards are built in-house...

http://www2a.cdc.gov/ecards

Quoted: Map of the latest alerts on infectious disease around the world

Quoted: Most doctors I know seem unwilling or unable to make even email part of the way they practice medicine.

1. The first is that email is another stream of information on top of phone calls, faxes and electronic pages...
2. The other factor is the privacy and security laws scared docs from trying something new...

We had a Web site that supports confidential e-mail and provides a secure venue for electronic visits with patients. I thought if we built it, patients would log on. But I was wrong. Over the last three years they haven't. The patients who send me email prefer to use their regular, unsecure email.

Right now it costs my practice $1,800 a year to maintain our cool Web site. The company that provides it wants a $6 transaction fee for each e-visit, and 50 cents for every appointment and prescription refill I process with their software. We haven't come anywhere near covering our costs.

Quoted: In retrospect, I should have surveyed my patients before I spent money on a secure email platform and state-of-the-art software for electronic consults. I guess I was a little too far ahead of the curve.

Patients who monitor their blood pressure at home and have regular contact with a health-care provider through e-mail and the Internet control their hypertension more than twice as well as those who don't -- and they do it with fewer office visits.

Quoted: Mason tracked his blood pressure and exchanged e-mails with pharmacists about twice a month. They reminded him when to send in his blood-pressure readings and developed lifestyle goals for him to follow. They also adjusted medication doses as needed -- all via e-mail.

Quoted: The 2008 Information Therapy (Ix®) Conference at the Newseum will provide a fabulous venue for a national dialog on the intersection of patient-centered care (PCC) and health information technology (HIT).

Health literacy, numeracy, the "digital divide," and other health disparities create special challenges in designing Ix and patient-centered HIT initiatives.