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Calling out a bigot

I was updating my blogroll today when I came across the Health Train Express blog. I have chosen not to add this to my blogroll at the moment, but rather to highlight one tremendously offensive post.

In commenting on the presidential campaign, the unidentified author lists personal criteria for choosing the next leader of the United States. One is: “I will not base it upon slick oratory, charisma, and/or rhetoric.” That’s fair. What’s not fair and what really really really pisses me off is the fact that right next to a photo of Barack Obama is a picture of Adolf Hitler. Seriously.

As 1980s punk legends Dead Kennedys so eloquently put it, Nazi punks f— off. No matter whom you support for president, there is no place for Hitler comparisons in American politics, and it’s certainly far out of bounds for a blog that purportedly is dedicated to health information technology.

However, I am all in favor of exposing bigots like the author of that blog.

October 7, 2008 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Thanks for the honor

I am humbled to say that this blog has made the list of “Top 50 Health 2.0 Blogs” at the RN Central site. The blogs are categorized, but not really ranked, so I guess I don’t know where I fall in the hierarchy, but that’s OK. Health 2.0 is but one aspect of health IT, but a fast-growing one.

Or is it? A debate has started on some other healthcare blogs (including The Health Care Blog) about the future of health 2.0. Dmitriy Kruglyak wrote on his Trusted.MD site this week that news of the impending sale of Revolution Health highlights the fundamental flaws of health 2.0 as is exists today.

Matthew Holt, writing at THCB, begs to differ—while also promoting his Health 2.0 Conference. Holt and Kruglyak go back and forth in the comments section, and I imagine this is not the last we will hear on this subject. I’ll be in San Francisco next month for the next installment of the conference, and am looking forward to some animated discussion.

And now back to my discussion of blogs that reach beyond a single category. Nick’s Blog, the first public blog by a U.S. hospital president, has migrated to AskAHospitalPresident.com. F. Nicholas Jacobs is stepping down at the end of the year as CEO of Windber Medical Center in Windber, Pa., and, presumably, will turn over the Windberblog site to his successor. I call your attention once again to a podcast he did with me a year ago.

I’ve added Nick’s Blog to my blogroll, along with the Wall Street Journal Health Blog.

September 18, 2008 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Still more health 2.0

Here is another link in the health 2.0 category:

Visual Medical Dictionary (beta)

There’s a five-minute screencast tutorial of a related Medline/PubMed-based research interface at http://www.curehunter.com/screencast/research/

One of the other health 2.0 offerings I listed in my Sept. 24 post, the Within3 social network for physicians and medical researchers, has a upgrade scheduled for unveiling on Monday.

So there, I’ve just set myself up for a flurry of e-mails from other health 2.0 projects wanting a mention.

On a totally unrelated subject, I stumbled across a Dutch-language healthcare blog today called MedBlog.nl. The site also has an aggregation of English-language healthcare blogs, but that’s not why I call your attention to it. Today’s post has a photo scanned from the Roanoke Times in Virginia of a pregnant woman who “worries about the effect on her unborn child from the sound of jackhammers.” She’s holding a lit cigarette.

And as I was typing that last paragraph, I got a call from a robo-dialer. The recording said, “Please hold for an important call.” The message repeated itself before I hung up. I guess it wasn’t important enough for you to have a live person make the call.

There’s proof once again technology can’t fix broken processes.

October 18, 2007 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Quick update

It’s late, I’m tired, I’ve got a busy week ahead as I prepare for HIMSS and write several stories, but I wanted to draw your attention to the updated blogroll and associated links.

I’ve broken the blogroll into three categories now: Health IT/quality blogs from the U.S.; English-language blogs from outside the U.S.; and blogs in other languages. So far, the only other languages I have listed are Spanish and French—and one of the French blogs is written by an American expat in France. If anyone knows of any more interesting blogs I’m missing, please drop me a line.

I realize I’ve just opened myself up to bombardment from PR reps, just one week before the heaviest onslaught of the year, a.k.a. the annual HIMSS conference. The IBM HealthNex blog notwithstanding, I’m inclined to exclude most corporate blogs. It just so happened that I found that one a long time ago and see that it contains a great deal of useful information and is not merely a shill.

As for HIMSS, I’m actually flying down a few days early to do some follow-up reporting from my trip to the Gulf Coast last summer. Sure, the extra hotel nights will wipe out any savings on the airfare (and I am saving a lot by flying early), but at least I’ll have the chance to pursue some extra stories without the pressure of the typical HIMSS 12-hour work days.

I can’t promise a whole lot of blogging from New Orleans, but I do plan on recording several podcasts. I went shopping on eBay recently and I now have a reasonably good recording setup for up to three microphones. We’ll see how long it takes for me to get tired of carrying that stuff around all day. My money’s on a Tuesday burnout.

Lastly, don’t forget to register for the second-annual Meet the Bloggers, Sunday night in New Orleans.

February 18, 2007 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.