health

Updated on April 2 at 7:45 a.m. PDT with additional information throughout.

General Electric CEO and Chairman Jeff Immelt and Intel CEO Paul Otellini on Thursday jointly announced an alliance to market and develop home-based health technologies to help seniors.

The technologies will help seniors live independently and help patients with chronic conditions manage their care from their home, the companies said.

GE Healthcare will sell and market the Intel Health Guide (PDF), a care management tool designed for healthcare professionals who work with patients with chronic conditions.

The market for "telehealth" and home health monitoring … Read more

About four weeks ago, I went for an annual physical and had standard blood work done. I was told to call back in a week, and of course I forgot. Today I had a message that said: "Hello, this is Dr. XX's office, please call us back at xxx-xxx-xxxx." That was it--the person didn't identify herself and also didn't say what the call was for. When I dialed the number, I was expecting to be told that I owed them money. But actually, the woman on the phone had no idea why she had called … Read more

Teens in Tech, a blogging network that's written by young adults, announced Friday that it has acquired Youth Bloggers Network for an undisclosed sum. According to a post on the Youth Bloggers Network blog, both companies "decided that by joining forces, our projects could help each other vastly." Going forward, the combined company wants to create unique Wordpress themes, e-books, coupons, and a variety of community features "to slowly transform Youth Bloggers Network into a social network for young and teen bloggers."

Kardia Health Systems, a company that was formed to commercialize the Echocardiography Information … Read more

Remember your New Year's Resolution? No? It's not surprising that you don't. It's not the type of thing you want to remember anyways. Well, today is your lucky day and I'm here to remind you what it was. It was to lose 10 pounds, right? Well, no wonder you let that one slip. Losing weight is no fun. Except if you do it right, there is no need to sacrifice flavor. Drinking juice is certainly a delicious and healthy way to help you to get back in shape in the coming months--if done in moderation.… Read more

At this year's International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association's convention and trade show here in San Francisco, computer-based fitness games and health data for the Web stood out as big trends. Inactivity from sitting in front of computers can lead to obesity, but the health industry seems increasingly to be using computers to combat sedentary lifestyles and attract customers to gyms.

At the IHRSA trade show this week, I saw computerized scales that talk to your watch, fitness data that automatically uploads to the Web, and arcade-style dancing games aimed at fighting flab. As gyms and fitness gadgets … Read more

WASHINGTON--President Obama has called health information technology the "low-hanging fruit" of health care reform, but implementing the use of electronic medical records nationwide will be incredibly difficult, experts warned Wednesday, especially without larger health care reforms.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates (PDF) that the use of electronic medical records could save the nation $12.5 billion over 10 years, and other analyses give more optimistic figures.

At a forum here on Wednesday, hosted by the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, health care providers and buyers attested to the improved quality of care and efficiencies that can … Read more

If you're the sort of person who faints at the sight of blood, gore, corpses or people with missing limbs, please look away now.

Because I want to tell you the story of Jerry Jalava, a software developer from Helsinki, Finland. Jerry bought himself a gleaming new Ducati motorbike. He crashed it just a week later.

He was rushed to hospital. The doctors couldn't save half of his finger, but they saved his ingenuity.

The doctors were Finnish, so they had a sense of humor. They told Jerry he should fill the gap at the top of his … Read more

Spring is almost here, and soon we'll be showing the world much more than just our heads and hands. That means it's time to get up off the couch and start doing whatever we can to get our bods ready for summer. Need advice on that? These sites can help.

Gyminee If you're looking for a way to track your workouts and get some dietary advice, Gyminee is a great place to start.

In a matter of seconds, you'll be able to join Gyminee and start creating a workout regimen that will help you lose weight, tone your muscles, or gain strength. And you won't need to do it alone. With the help of Gyminee, you can find exercises and create a regimen from pre-configured workout routines based on your goals. Gyminee does a fine job of helping you do whatever you want.

Gyminee's tracking tools are very good. Once you sign up, you can put your weight, resting heart rate, and measurements into the system to see where you stand today. As long as you keep inputting that information on a regular basis, it will show you a detailed graph providing your progress over the term of your workout. That's easily my favorite feature because it's a great motivation tool that helps me see just how far I've come since I started exercising.

While Gyminee does a fine job with workouts and tracking, I was disappointed with its dietary advice. It does provide a detailed analysis of required calorie, fat, and protein intake to get you to your goal weight, but it doesn't do much more. It doesn't tell you what to eat and how to do it. It doesn't tell you when you should be eating. It basically tells you that you need to have a certain number of calories every day and leaves it at that. For a full-featured health improvement site, that's weak.

Gyminee boasts extra features like a forum so you can discuss health considerations, and you can make friends with others and track their progress. If you want, you can also set challenges and see how close you are to achieving those goals. Gyminee offers good features and it's worth using even though it doesn't have enough dietary information.… Read more

Perhaps you, too, have friends who go nowhere without their hand sanitizer. Perhaps you, too, laugh at them beneath your clenched top lip.

However, researchers at Ondokiz Mayis University in Turkey are discovering that germs lurk everywhere. Especially in cell phones belonging to doctors and nurses, according to an Agence France Presse report. In fact, these phones may be a significant source of infections such as MRSA, which seems to have become an increasing danger in hospitals all over the world.

In researching the cell phones and dominant hands of 200 doctors and nurses, the researchers found that 95 percent … Read more