Camille Schenkel

The following is a round-up of some emails to the Editor reacting to the post entitled Abolish the Waiting Room that ran March 15. ... (more)

USGBC to Require Building’s Performance Data for LEED Certification

The US Green Building Council sent a press release out today announcing that all buildings seeking LEED certification will be required to provide energy and water usage data on a recurring basis as a precondition to certification. The new requirements will be part of LEED v.3, which all registered projects will be required to follow starting June 27. ... (more)

Open Letter to YouTube (and Google)

Health 2.0 Magazine Last week was a bad one for Google. There was a lot of chatter on the web regarding a Credit Suisse report estimating that Google may lose $470 million on YouTube in 2009. The AP and the Wall Street Journal also have Google (among other news aggregators) in their sights for copyright infringement as the print newspaper business has fallen off a cliff. As Google tries to find ways to make money in the health space, they seem to have devoted most of their energy on the Google Health initiative (still in BETA), which allows users to gather medical records online... (more)

Health Social Media: The Good, Bad and Ugly

Numerous web-based activities such as social networking, blogging, etc. has fostered a patient-centered movement in the health industry, known as Health 2.0. Social networking in particular has empowered patients with chronic conditions to go online and find other patients to share their experiences and talk about their treatments. The availability of the technology has coincided with social trends of patients who are more open to alternative therapies like acupuncture and eastern medicine. Patients and even medical students have also grown somewhat cynical due to conflict of int... (more)

Swine flu intelligence: Twitter v. Google

The media coverage of the Swine flu and its elevation to Phase 4 status by the WHO has caused a lot of discussion across TV and web chatrooms. It also renews interest in predictive tools such as Google's Flu trends project. The fascinating thing about Google's flu prediction system is its apparent accuracy and ability to predict flu activity one to two weeks ahead of CDC reports. This ability is clearly critical with potential pandemics. ... (more)