Home Health

caregiver/shutterstock

Increasingly, family caregivers with no formal training are doing the kind of work more commonly associated with hospital-based nurses: operating dialysis machines and ventilators, administering IVs and injections, and using monitors for blood glucose, oxygen saturation and more.[read more]

new mobile app

You can take your own temperature or someone else’s right from the iPhone using the Kinsa Smart Thermometer. The device simply connects to the iPhone headphone jack. The app will display the patient’s temperature almost immediately on the screen.[read more]

medication mix-up? / shutterstock

Medication mix-ups are a well-known source of errors in the hospital, so we shouldn’t be surprised that it happens in the home. "Medication Errors in the Home: A Multisite Study of Children With Cancer" documents the high rate of errors in at-home administration of medications for pediatric cancer.[read more]

patient-centered

In healthcare, it’s common to hear buzzwords thrown around. While patient-centered medical homes and Medicaid health homes share some similarities, there are key differences in how each model enhances care for those with chronic conditions and supports aging in place. Here's a breakdown.[read more]

sedentary americans / shutterstock

A new government study says that Americans are more sedentary than ever, and that includes people who exercise regularly. Americans, on average, take 5,117 steps a day, far short of the averages in western Australia, Switzerland and Japan. The American Heart Association recommends 10,000.[read more]

micheal j. fox

The 7-month study at patients' homes and outpatient clinics at two academic medical centers sought to examine the feasibility, effectiveness and economic benefits of using web-based videoconferencing (telemedicine) to provide specialty care to patients with Parkinson disease at their homes.[read more]

mobile health

Stephen Colbert ran an interview with Dr. Eric Topol from the West Wireless Institute. I first started covering some of Dr. Topol's presentations from 2008 and 2010 with TED; back then, I agreed with him that perhaps everyone was just not ready for wireless yet.[read more]

Yoga tips

One of the crucial aspects of practicing yoga is the so-called contraindications for practitioners. Contraindications could be a result of the characteristics of an individual, or simply general guidelines on things to do or avoid in order for you to practice yoga safely.[read more]

rehabilitation robot/shutterstock

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst are touting success in the case of a robot that delivered speech and physical therapy to a 72-year-old male stroke patient. In 10 years we’ll look back at these early results and it will be totally obvious the direction things were moving.[read more]

public health

One of the smartest illness prevention strategies is frequent hand washing, but taking steps to avoid germs is another important component to wellness. You don’t just catch a cold by going outside with a wet head – the viral and bacterial contamination of public surfaces is well known.[read more]

fitness

It’s true that someone can have a body mass index (BMI) in the overweight or obese range and still be considered physically fit. In other words, the number on the scale is only a piece of your body’s puzzle. Let's take a closer look at all the pieces of physical fitness.[read more]

image credit: Terry Simpson

The recently touted Mediterranean Diet study was anything but conclusive. There was no decrease in heart attacks, and there was no decrease in the death rate overall. Further, one of the “Mediterranean diet” groups were to drink a liter of olive oil a week — one liter![read more]