Patient and doctor interactions are one of the cornerstones of medical care and with the advent of modern technology, there is now more than one way for doctors and patients to communicate with each other. With the rise of the mobile phone, instant two way communication has become even easier. I have found that having a patient’s a mobile phone number a great resource when I need to contact them urgently when they have an abnormal test result. In addition, the general and widespread availability and use of e mail both within the healthcare setting and in society as whole, you would think patient and doctor e mail interaction is common. more…

It is always good fun to speculate what will be happening in medicine in years to come. There are so many areas to think about clinical, diagnostic and therapeutic breakthroughs; political and economic aspects, and technological innovations. It is the latter, I want to discuss and speculate about. more…

I remember as a medical student, which was some time ago (over 25 years ago to be truthful), that if I wanted to find a journal citation as part of a literature search, then I had to search by hand, a collection of tomes called Index Medicus (ring a bell anyone?). It was published monthly and I checked recently, it ceased publication in 2004. It was replaced by CD and then on line products which if you think about it, is a natural progression in the evolution of technology within the publication industry. However progress moves on even more quickly, our practice library is rarely used now, despite being well stocked. It just can’t compete with some fantastic and often free on line medical knowledge bases. more…

The widespread use of e-mail is one of the greatest advances of the internet boom and many people, certainly in the developed world now have at least one e-mail address which they regularly use. In medicine, certainly between health professionals and increasingly between health professionals and their patients, e-mail is a key communication medium. more…

The well known web site YouTube has amassed a reputation for containing a huge repository of video footage covering virtually every subject imaginable (and more). So it may come as no surprise that there are serious and educational videos to be found here. One video comes from the UK and covers cardiovascular examination. more…

I’ve just emailed my GP asking her to give me online access to my medical records. It was quite a palaver as I couldn’t find her email address, or the email address of the practice after searching on Google, and the practice doesn’t seem to have a website. Eventually I had to ring. more…

Once the domain of big broadcasters like the BBC, video is now becoming more democratised. The plummeting cost and increasing quality of consumer cameras has opened up the world of filming to the masses. Internet services like youtube or vimeo have given people a platform to broadcast their movies. more…