Our Bodies, Our Apps: For the Love of Period-Trackers
Period-tracking apps are exactly what they sound like — simple menstrual calendars that help you keep track of monthly cycles as well as symptoms like mood fluctuations or headaches. Summer Skyes 11
My 18-year-old daughter knows exactly when it will be that time of the month. Since June, she’s been plugging the dates of her menstrual cycle into a popular period tracking app, and has it programmed to send her an alert every month, two days before her next period is due.
There are over 200 different period tracker apps to choose from, and they are immensely popular.
Continue reading:
How Period Trackers Have Changed Girl Culture, nytimes, NOVEMBER 12, 2015
Our Bodies, Our Apps: For the Love of Period-Trackers, nytimes, JANUARY 23, 2014.
Cours de Dominique Dupagne à l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) pour le Centre Edgar Morin en février 2010.
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Le mode de fonctionnement de Google s’inscrit parfaitement dans la pensée complexe. Le moteur est l’emblème de la Médecine 2.0 et son principal outil. Son fonctionnement révolutionnaire est un modèle à bien des égards.
Dr Now: the smartphone app that puts you in touch with a GP – for a fee
New health apps exploit gaps in overstretched NHS by offering subscribers virtual consultation with a GP.
A UK tech firm is offering video consultations with doctors via mobile phone. The revolutionary Dr Now(®) platform connects patients with qualified GPs through remote video consultation to “give them the medical diagnosis they need, when they need it“.
The Dr Now website, which boasts it is the world’s first website to diagnose and deliver medicine, even has a corporate page that lets businesses calculate potential cost savings, based on the number of staff and average salary. It is in discussions with several big pharmaceutical companies.
Sources and more information
Dr Now: the smartphone app that puts you in touch with a GP – for a fee, theguardian, 2 August 2015.
Amazon is in a race against Google to store data on human DNA
Amazon.com Inc is in a race against Google Inc to store data on human DNA, seeking both bragging rights in helping scientists make new medical discoveries and market share in a business that may be worth $1 billion a year by 2018.
More info and videos
Read Amazon, Google race to get your DNA into the cloud, Reuters, Jun 5, 2015.
Google brings fact-checked health info to top of search results via Google app
Starting today, you can ask Google about common health conditions. Google will give you relevant medical facts from their Knowledge Graph and show you typical symptoms and treatments, and details on how common the condition is.
Google Official Blog posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager, February 10, 2015.
Think of the last time you searched on Google for health information. Maybe you heard a news story about gluten-free diets and pulled up the Google app to ask, “What is celiac disease?” Maybe a co-worker shook your hand and later found out she had pink eye, so you looked up “pink eye” to see whether it’s contagious. Or maybe you were worried about a loved one—like I was, recently, when my infant son Veer fell off a bed in a hotel in rural Vermont, and I was concerned that he might have a concussion. I wasn’t able to search and quickly find the information I urgently needed (and I work at Google!).
Thankfully my son was OK, but the point is this stuff really matters: one in 20 Google searches are for health-related information. And you should find the health information you need more quickly and easily.
So starting in the next few days, when you ask Google about common health conditions, you’ll start getting relevant medical facts right up front from the Knowledge Graph. We’ll show you typical symptoms and treatments, as well as details on how common the condition is—whether it’s critical, if it’s contagious, what ages it affects, and more. For some conditions you’ll also see high-quality illustrations from licensed medical illustrators. Once you get this basic info from Google, you should find it easier to do more research on other sites around the web, or know what questions to ask your doctor.
We worked with a team of medical doctors (led by our own Dr. Kapil Parakh, M.D., MPH, Ph.D.) to carefully compile, curate, and review this information. All of the gathered facts represent real-life clinical knowledge from these doctors and high-quality medical sources across the web, and the information has been checked by medical doctors at Google and the Mayo Clinic for accuracy.
That doesn’t mean these search results are intended as medical advice. We know that cases can vary in severity from person to person, and that there are bound to be exceptions. What we present is intended for informational purposes only—and you should always consult a healthcare professional if you have a medical concern.
But we hope this can empower you in your health decisions by helping you learn more about common conditions. We’re rolling it out over the next few days, in the U.S. in English to start. In the long run, not only do we plan to cover many more medical conditions, but we also want to extend this to other parts of the world. So the next time you need info on frostbite symptoms, or treatments for tennis elbow, or the basics on measles, the Google app will be a better place to start.
Related press release: Google Brings Fact-Checked Health Info to Top of Pages, livescience, February 10, 2015.