Pulse
Briefs
Google what?
This year, public health officials may have a new ally to assist them in monitoring flu trends. It’s called Google Flu, and it’s so simple one wonders why no one invented it earlier.
By tracking the frequency of search terms that Google users have entered over the past five years, including such phrases as “flu symptoms,” Google says it has been able to detect state or regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which relies on virological and clinical data. The Google Flu tool (google.org/flutrends) will analyze the search data as it comes in, creating graphs and charts of search activity in various parts of the country. The idea is to alert the public and health officials about where the flu is spreading.
“My first reaction was, ‘You’ve got to be kidding … what will the Internet do next for us, brush our teeth?’ But then I realized that it could one day be a useful supplement to what we currently are doing to keep the flu from spreading in this state,” says Kristen Ehresmann, R.N., M.P.H., a section chief within the Minnesota Department of Health’s Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Prevention, and Control Division. Ehresmann says the Department of Health will keep an eye on the Google data, which has not yet been validated by the CDC. If the system proves solid, she says, local and state health officials may be able to use the data to pinpoint flu-prevention efforts.
“I don’t want to think it’s the savior of the world, but I also won’t discount it because it offers us the potential to provide some positive information that we can use to promote vaccination and reduce illness,” Ehresmann says.—Jeanne Mettner
Virtual Classroom of the Future?
Online learning appears to be an effective way to teach health care practitioners and students, according to a study led by Mayo Clinic associate professor of medicine David Cook, M.D.
Cook and a team of researchers from Mayo Clinic and McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, reviewed more than 200 studies on Internet-based education for physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, and other health care professionals and students. They found that online instruction was associated with largely positive effects compared with no intervention and that it compared favorably with other, more traditional instruction methods.
The study was published in the September 10, 2008, Journal of the American Medical Association. Cook and his coauthors plan to follow up by looking at how to optimize Internet-based instruction.
Recruiting Tool
Electronic health records (EHRs) are becoming must-haves for attracting new physicians. Recruitment is the No. 1 reason one Northstar Physicians Network clinic started using an EHR, says Rachael Nyenhuis, director of network development for the organization, which serves independent practices in northern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin. “Both physicians at that clinic are thinking ahead to retirement, and they couldn’t find younger physicians who wanted to buy a practice that didn’t have an EHR,” she says.
John Peterson, administrator at Fergus Falls Medical Group, says many young physicians find it acceptable if a clinic can at least say it’s in the process of implementing an EHR. “We’ve had some tell us that if we weren’t, they wouldn’t have been interested,” he says.
Recruitment was one reason why Central Lakes Medical Clinic in Crosby got its EHR last year. “When residents were interviewing, they would ask, ‘Which system do you use?’” says Cindy Seidl, support services director.
Internist Richard Adair, M.D., who trains residents at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, says most of the young physicians he works with wouldn’t consider working at a clinic that doesn’t have an EHR. “You can ride a horse to Chicago,” he says, “but that’s not how we do it today.”—Howard Bell
Too Much Information
Are medical students revealing too much about themselves on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace?
According to University of Florida researchers, many are. Lindsay Acheson Thompson, M.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics, and colleagues from the colleges of medicine and education searched for the names of more than 800 medical students at the school on Facebook and found that nearly half of them had pages that included personal profiles. Of those, only 37 percent had made their entries private; a significant portion of those who did not use Facebook’s privacy feature posted personal information that most physicians would never consider sharing with a patient or potential employer.
Although only 6 percent of the students posted a home address, more than half indicated their sexual orientation, 58 percent their relationship status, and half their political opinions or positions.
A more in-depth analysis of 10 randomly selected profiles found that seven included photos in which the student was drinking alcohol, in some instances to excess, and three indicated the student belonged to a group that was sexist or racially charged.
“I’m not sure I would want to have a permanent, public record of everything I did 10 years ago; but many of our students are creating just such a record, and they need to understand the problems this may cause,” Acheson Thompson said in a news release that came out in conjunction with the publication of her study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine last July.
The news release stated that since the data were collected, many University of Florida medical students have cleaned up their online presence.