Toronto's Bridgepoint Health launches latest eHealth presentation.

Last Tuesday, an exciting new Bridgepoint Health LiveWell! Podcast and Videocast were aired by first featured speaker and initiator Dr. Alex Jadad, Chief Innovator and Founder, Centre for Global eHealth Innovation.

His presentation, entitled "Living Well with Chronic Disease in the Age of the Internet and Social Networks" is now available as a Video(pod)cast: here.

Highlights are:

• Why a "tidal wave" of chronic illness is coming
• How can we minimize its impact
• How are Virtual Social Networks impacting chronic care
• Facebook: Bringing friends, students and patients together for chronic disease management
• How patients are self organizing today
• Joining forces
• Embracing innovation and change

Bridgepoint Health launched the new LiveWell! lecture series to support the community's understanding of the economic, social and public impacts of people living with Complex Chronic Disease.

Bridgepoint Health has taken the lead in recognizing that Complex Chronic Disease patients require a different kind of care than the current system was designed for.

With our commitment to changing the world for people living with Complex Chronic Disease, Bridgepoint Health is building a unique "campus of care".

This hospital will provide specialized care to meet the complicated medical needs of our patients. It will also create an environment to foster a new generation of researchers, doctors, nurses and therapists.
These professionals will be equipped with new knowledge and new skills to help people live well while living with Complex Chronic Disease.
Which means we'll be ready to help you enjoy your extra 10 or 15 years.

Dr. Alex Jadad Dr. Alex Jadad's mission is to help improve health and wellness for all, thorough information and communication technologies (ICTs). Dr. Jadad is the founder of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation. He is also spearheading the development of the Global eHealth and eWellness Network Initiative (GENI, pronounced as "genie").


More info can be found at www.lifechanges.ca or www.bridgepointhealth.ca.

Vaccination opposition leverages social networks to spread opinion

Opponents of vaccinations are using YouTube, FaceBook and other internet social networks to promote their views that vaccines are dangerous, says a research letter published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Public health officials need to understand the impact these efforts can have on universal vaccination campaigns and find ways to counter this dangerous trend, said researchers from the University of Toronto and York University in Canada, the CP reported.

"This is their new strategy for communicating," said senior author Dr. Kumanan Wilson, an internal medicine specialist and public health policy researcher.

"These people believe their viewpoint is not being aired in public. They believe that they are being shut out of the discourse and they want to get their viewpoint out. And this is their way of creating commercials for their viewpoints."

Wilson said vaccination opponents are putting a lot of effort into using internet social networks to promote their opinions.

"And other people ... just from the view counts and the ratings, are coming on and wanting to find out more about these viewpoints. Their videos are being viewed and rated highly," Wilson said.

Healthday

Editors opinion:

"Instead of criticizing this phenomenon, the healthcare industry should cease the opportunity to start promoting social networks among their peers themselves. The industry can really benefit from the more efficient, more targeted and better accessible forms of communication.
Also, if they want to grab the attention of many for certain important health care related messages to the public, social networks are one of the better and fastest ways of doing that.
It's about time that the industry moves away from their good old ancient faxes and starts adopting today's ways of communication"