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I found this great video by Esther Dyson of the Digital Health Revolution. The video is around 35 minutes long but it is a great interview if you have the time.

Esther Dyson is a well regarded futurist and proponent of health consumer empowerment. In the video she sits down to talk about the future of the Internet and the racial, personal and economic implications of the genetic revolution. Dyson discusses a range of subjects around health and how people given more information can make better choices.

This is the link for the video http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1494874807/bclid1182795426/bctid1713734252
The video is from ScribeMedia.org.

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DailyStrength is a website that offers answers to health and life challenges as well as a wide variety of support tools. The site enables users to create and track their progress towards specific goals, create their own support groups, and read consumer reviews of more than 500 drugs, treatments, and alternative therapies.

For example, the site offers a Tooth Grinding support group of which there are currently 133 members. The latest activity is displayed in a side bar and information is provided primarily from Wikipedia. There are also several people looking for advice on wisdom teeth.

The site allows you to see the members who are online, offer them hugs, share stories by video, photo and text. People can also designate themselves as members in need and you can chat live with others.

The site prides itself in being free and anonymous and receives the input of several M.D.s. The site was founded by senior executives from Yahoo and Facebook. DailyStrength aims to be a free online support group that helps patients with the emotional aspects of their health challenges.

The site is not bogged down by ads, and they blend in nicely with the content. The design is sleek and professional looking.

There are also numerous articles posted by experts in the field regularily and you can even sign up to create your own health journal.

If you have any experiences or opinions on DailyStrength please let me know.

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Organized Wisdom is a website that offers a human powered health web search. The health information is well organized and covers numerous topics. For example on Oral Health they offer the following categories: GuideWisdom, 5 Great Resources on Oral Health, What is Oral Health?, Oral Health Resources, Wisdom, Personal Experiences and Blogs about Oral Health, Foundations and Support Groups on Oral Health, Message Boards, Chat and Discussions about Oral Health, Clinical Trials on Oral Health, Related Wisdom Card, and User Recommended Links for Oral Health. Under each category are links primarily to external sites that the people who have edited the page feel are important and great rescources. For example, under Oral health there are links to WebMD, Mayo Clinic, and the American Dental Association. Unfortunely, there is no link to my website http://www.teethremoval.com.

The site provides reviewed and organized search result pages called WisdomCards which go through a general reviewer and a doctor, such as the one on Oral Health I just described.  Guides and Physician Reviewers are paid for each WisdomCard that gets accepted and published. You can even get payed by being a contributor. The first five WisdomCards are payed at $10 each, and the pay goes up as you contribute more WisdomCards.

A nice feature of the site is that each page shows the team who approved it. There are profile pages, too, but these are very simple: just a picture, bio, a link to a website, and a list of the articles users have contributed and saved.

Organized Wisdom also offers forums for participants to discuss health topics. The forums do not have very many posts though. You need to register a free account in order to access the forums.

The one complaint I have with OrganizedWisdom is they have a lot of Google Adsense Ads on their pages. I feel that more professional looking sites should not have many of these as the deter from the postive experience. Further, I feel like the name choice of the website may not be that great and it is slightly too long. I wonder why they didn’t go with something such as HealthWisdom or PatientWisdom.

In addition, I find it ironic that wisdom is such a large part of their website. If you have any experience using OrganizedWisdom I would be interested in hearing about it.

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iMedix is a website that combines social networking with healthcare to allow patients to find and connect with people facing similar health-related issues as themselves.  Users create profile pages with tags relevant to their interests to inform the site’s search engine, and search results can be voted on in order to help the site learn more about your preferences over time.

I signed up for iMedix to see what I think of the site as a health resource. It has a search engine but I prefer using Google. The benefit of iMedix to me seems to be the ability to answers questions, ask questions, and browse and view other’s people’s questions on health topics that you are interested in. It is kind of similar to Yahoo Answers. Users also receive a rating from 0 stars to 5 stars on how helpful they are to other users.

The problem with iMedix is that I did not see anything on dental issues. There was and is no discussions on wisdom teeth, teeth cleaning, dentists, nothing. Although these topics were available in the search engine.

However, there are many other health topics that are important, such as issues on depression and headaches. I think iMedix could help answer questions people may have about their health while providing them with a sense of community. However, the advice is all based on other patients and thus is not from a doctor.

If anyone has any experience with using iMedix I would be interested to know your opinion.

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I found an interesting article the other day written by a Chiropractor and describing how myofascial trigger points can mimic signs and symptoms of a neurological disease.

The case describes the patient as the following.

“A 44-year-old female, an office manager for a dentist for eight years, was referred by an EENT specialist with a chief complaint of headaches (HA), with a six- to eight-year history of HA and facial pain. Although all of her symptoms were usually on the right side of the face and head, the HA occasionally became bilateral when very intense. The facial pain was always located on the right. Once started, her symptoms lasted anywhere from four to ten hours. The only thing she remembers that may have triggered the onset was dental work done within six months of the start of the symptoms-several fillings and a root canal, all on the right side. Initially, the symptom was a pain in the upper molars, which appeared to be another cavity. Over the next few years, however, the pain developed into HA and facial pain.”

The article goes on to describe the different types of neuralgias that most closely resemble the symptoms experienced by the patient. Eventually myofascial triggers points were determined to be the cause.

“The patient was treated four times with adjustments to the cervical spine and intra-oral ischemic compression of the pterygoids. After the second treatment, her headaches and facial symptoms had disappeared. Eight months later, the headaches have not returned.”

To learn more and read the full article by Ronald Henninger which appeared in the Journal of the American Chiropractic Association in June 2002 visit the following link on the signs that mimic neurological disease.

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