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The link between digital health and self diagnosing [mHealthWatch]

Nearly two-thirds of Americans now turn to online and mobile resources to research their medical questions and whatever ails them. Approximately half of these individuals then go on to diagnose themselves. Understandably, this reality has raised no shortage of concerns among healthcare professionals. A recently published infographic highlights the emerging trend of self-diagnosis and points to some alarming problems that must be addressed.

45 percent of smartphone users want online physician appointment booking [mobihealthnews]
A large percentage of Americans want access to health services from their smartphone, but more want it through their laptop or desktop, according to a recently published survey conducted by Harris Interactive and HealthDay. Some 43 percent of respondents were interested in asking doctors questions, another 45 percent were interested in booking appointments, while 42 percent were interested in checking the effects and side effects of a medicine. While the percentage differences between the age groups didn’t vary much, people over the age of 65 were less interested than other age groups. Of the healthcare services listed, the patients were least interested in getting reminders to participate in programs for exercise, diet, weight loss and other wellness programs.

How accurate are fitness trackers? [NY Times]
Nate Meckes recognized that he needed to study the accuracy of activity monitors after wearing one. A shipment of the devices, known technically as accelerometers and designed to measure a person’s movement and energy expenditure, had arrived at Arizona State University, where Dr. Meckes was a researcher. To ensure they were operational, he slipped one over his hip and wore it throughout the day, including to an interminable meeting where he stood up and paced. “I’m not good at sitting still,” he says. Checking his monitor afterward, though, he was flabbergasted. “It had recorded that I was not moving at all,” says Dr. Meckes, now an assistant professor at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, Calif. The experience inspired him to set up an experiment examining how reliable such devices are.

5 ways social media makes patients stronger [Parker White]
Facebook now boasts 900 million users, and is posed to reach 1 billion users soon. Twitter is estimated to have more than 500 million users. With this many users, communities within communities have developed in each social network. These communities have served to fill a void in the lives of people who face health problems, satisfying the universal human desire to know “you are not alone.” The Internet is incredibly powerful in its way to connect people and to also educate and empower people. Here are 5 ways social media is giving rise to the empowered patient:

Family caregivers are wired for health [Pew Internet]
Four in ten adults in the U.S. are caring for an adult or child with significant health issues, up from 30 percent in 2010. Caregivers are highly engaged in the pursuit of health information, support, care, and advice, both online and offline, and do many health-related activities at higher levels than non-caregivers. Eighty-seven percent of caregivers in the U.S. own a cell phone and, of those, 37 percent say they have used their phone to look for health or medical information online. This is a significantly higher than the rate of mobile health search among non-caregivers at the time of the survey: 84 percent of non-caregivers own a cell phone and 27 percent have used their phone to look online for health information.