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INFOGRAPHIC: How are hospitals using social media? [Mediabistro]
One survey has found that 90 percent of hospitals in the Ohio area of the U.S. are using social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. And they’re investing in these channels, too. Almost half (49 percent) are devoting more staff and time to social media, and more than one-third (36 percent) are spending more money on these tools. Community relationships, sharing news and building reputation are the top priorities for hospitals on social media, and 80 percent have initiated social media campaigns to raise general health awareness.

Balance app: Alzheimer’s care goes digital [Science 2.0]
He says the goal was simple enough, he wanted to create a way to help multiple caregivers communicate and coordinate with each other in real-time and also include family in the information chain. And it certainly does; the entire process can quickly be integrated with everyone in the Alzheimer's patient network. Since debuting a few weeks ago, they say it has been downloaded all over the world, showing that Alzheimer's care solutions are a global need.

Is the era of patient centered care decidedly anti-physician? [KevinMD]
We’ve entered into the era of patient-centered care—an era that champions patient safety, provider communication, avoidance of “medical mistakes.” But this era is also decidedly anti-physician and assumes that we as providers are somehow purposefully unsafe. Look no further than Obamacare’s soon to be established registry of medical mistakes, which asks patients the loaded question: Did a medical mistake happen because a doctor, nurse or other health care provider did not communicate well with the patient or the patient’s family?

Social media use isn’t healthy enough, study finds [Wall Street Journal]
That’s the finding of a new paper based on telephone surveys of 1,745 adults who go online for health information. Nearly a third of those used social networking sites for health-related information, but only 15% posted a comment, question or information to a social networking site (a category that, in the study, included blogs and online discussion forums).

INFOGRAPHIC: Patients are self-diagnosing online [InsuranceQuotes.org]
A few highlights:

59% of internet users say they’ve looked up health information online in the past year

A full 38% decided they could take care of the problem on their own, without consulting a doctor after researching on the Internet.

18% of those who did go to the doctor were told their self-diagnosis was incorrect. This means some of those who didn’t visit a doctor were also probably incorrect.

Women are more likely than men to go online to figure out a possible diagnosis.

Online diagnosers are going mobile, too. 1 in 3 cell phone owners have used their cell phone to look up health information.

Doctors prescribing phone apps to manage health problems [The Columbus Dispatch]
Doctors are beginning to prescribe smart-phone applications and medical devices they work with to help patients manage chronic illnesses, including heart disease, diabetes and asthma. Simple apps that help people with their fitness or remind them to take their pill prescriptions already are widely popular. But new device applications are taking mobile health — or mHealth as practitioners are calling it — to a new level.

WebMD introduces allergy app [Smart Phone Healthcare]
The app features:

Allergy Forecast: Allergy levels specific for your location that are regularly updated. You can also look up the “allergy forecast” for places you are visiting.

Personalized Forecasts and Tips: After indicating which allergies you and/or your family suffer from, the app will give you tips on how to manage those allergies.

Allergies 101: This includes WebMD’s library of allergy related resources — articles, photos, and videos. It focuses on seven categories: Outdoor, indoor, skin, drug, food, insect bites and stinks, and latex.

Timely Alerts: This helps you plan your days, and know if certain triggers will be worse, according to the allergy forecast.

The tweet of the week:

@MOMeo: Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently - Henry Ford