The medical blog aggregator WellSphere has been coming under fire for distributing blogger content without sharing traffic or revenues with the authors. 

Would you live-tweet your vasectomy?

I wouldn't. But that doesn't stop others from doing so, as this blogger gives us the play by play on his vasectomy, live on Twitter.

It's as if you're there.

Dilbert livens up the day.



(via scanman)

Drug companies are not able to see a physician's prescribing habits in New Hampshire, according to Tuesday's ruling in a federal appeals court.

Reps often would have a detailed dossier on the doctor prior to any interaction, and can tailor their pitch and approach based on prescribing trends. It would be interesting to see how they do without that information.

Thanks to the WSJ Health Blog ...

Nice tips from Clinical Cases.

I concur with the suggestions of getting on Twitter, participating in Tweets and blog comments, and submitting posts to Grand Rounds.

Also feel free to send me tips or links to interesting stories. Due to volume, I can't promise that I'll link to everything, but I do read every e-mail and I'll link to your post when I can.

I had an interesting conversation on Twitter the other night. Here's the recap. Basically, Ves Dimov didn't think Twitter would substitute for his RSS reader. And he's right. Google Reader offers much more depth and flexibility that Twitter can ever approach.

However, there is a learning curve to using RSS, and recent reports have stated that its used may have already peaked with ...

Find out how this rural physician uses a dose of Twitter and a USB drive to research articles from medical journals. A change from the old days of going to the local medical library and waiting in line for the photocopier.

It also makes one realize how academic physicians can take access to medical literature for granted. In rural areas, articles are expensive to come ...

Solving some of medicine's problems requires thinking outside the health care box. Like borrowing bar codes from the grocery store, or checklists from airline pilots.

We need to do the same for electronic records, which are stuck with archaic, 1990s programming technology. Take the user interface of Google, mix in the social networking tools of Facebook, and allow instant collaboration via Twitter.

Now that sounds like ...

We've talked earlier about the demise of the doctor's lounge.

But here's an example of the power of Twitter, a popular microblogging service. Imaging if doctors were connected here, and able to converse and curbside akin to a "virtual" lounge?

Take a look at this example, held within a span of 12 minutes.

Speaking of which, feel free to subscribe to this blog's

Want to know what the medical community is thinking right this minute? Joshua Schwimmer mashed all the physician Twitter feeds he can find, and conveniently broadcast it in RSS. Enjoy.

Clinical Cases suggests using Twitter and Facebook to help manage asthma.