In short, each Petri dish represents an illness (e.g. sleeping disorders or diabetes), and each cell within a dish represents a tweet. Clicking on a Petri dish offers a look at what’s being said about that particular condition.

The most tweeted topics are color-coded so you can see what’s popular. When I was on the site the other day, “psychiatry” was leading, with 280 tweets. A particularly interesting tweet led to a study on colors and feelings, where doctors used color to gauge the moods of patients with verbal challenges.

Health Tweeder is a nice snapshot of real-time discussions in the world of health. It turns hashtags and key issues into groupings that are easy to navigate and peruse, making it the sort of experience that fosters new learning and encourages conversation. So…dig in.

Apparently our attitudes toward spirituality don’t fluctuate all that much. But the researchers in this study were working with patients with tumors and found that the parietal region (the top rear) of the brain can change spiritual attitudes. Patients who had tumors removed from that part of the brain “showed a significant elevation in their level of self-transcendence.”

It’s a paradoxical finding, because the front and rear sections of the brain interact with one another. They “work in sync to regulate the level of spirituality of the brain.” So, changes to the rear of the brain resulted in more control in the front of the brain, leading to an increase in spirituality.

For more on this study and the role that the brain and body might play in spirituality, take a look at this MSNBC article.

in Jay’s mind, the healthcare system of the future should be:

Transparent
Communicative
Efficient
Convenient
Safe
Sustainable
Affordable
Empowering
A Platform
Social
Minimal
Decentralized

And he thinks consumers will lead such a transformation, meaning change will be driven from outside of the healthcare industry.

What do you think are the most important tenets of a healthcare system, and who will be responsible for affecting change?

So even if you use the shaker sparingly, where’s all the salt coming from? The Mayo Clinic breaks down the sodium intake of the average US diet as follows:

5% is added while cooking
6% is added while eating
12% is from natural sources
77% is from processed and prepared foods

The overwhelming majority of salt lies in processed and pre-made provisions. Lesson learned? Eat fresh foods whenever you can.

The Dummies Guide to Salt Intake offers advice on buying low-sodium food and also lists which foods to avoid (hint: check the sodium count on the cottage cheese and spaghetti sauce in your fridge).

When you’re eating fresh foods, follow the old Brylcreem jingle: a little dab’ll do ya! Use herbs, spices and juices for flavor in place of salt.

Unless you live in Texas, you’ll have to wait to try out NowClinic. It’s being introduced state by state, starting with the lone star. Created by OptumHealth (a division of UnitedHealth Group), it operates independent of insurance coverage. That’s a first.

This New York Times article, written when NowClinic was first introduced, reveals some mixed emotions concerning this type of virtual practice. One doctor called it a “pale imitation” of an in-person visit, others think it’s the future of healthcare and a way to offset shortage areas and overcrowded medical facilities.

Face-to-face visits are essential in creating a meaningful relationship with a doctor. But once those have been established, virtual communications can be a great way to build the relationship and cut down on costs and time. Our Better Health Conversation is designed not to replace an in-person visit, but to make that visit more valuable.

This technology isn’t a heart monitor or stem cell research (or even the Vscan). It’s the set of technologies that can “improve the most critical factor in the quality of health care: the patient’s relationship with the provider.”

The great thing is, many of these technologies already exist: email, videoconferencing, mobile phones, etc. But we aren’t using them within the healthcare system as well as we could be. Author Dr. Ronald Dixon believes virtual communication can and should augment in-person visits, improving the patient-provider relationship as a whole. In his words “virtual interaction can support more solicitous care, not less—and lead to better outcomes.”

What if you could email your doctor? Or what if an elderly relative had access to a kiosk that could monitor blood pressure straight from his or her assisted-living facility? Reliable data could be shared with the doctor in real-time, creating a situation where prompt feedback from a doctor or nurse is viable.

According to Dr. Dixon, up to 60% of today’s office visits could be eliminated if doctors and patients engaged in multiple forms of virtual communication. Wow. That time could instead be used to care for additional patients and address shortage areas. A pretty amazing prospect.

The idea is physicians will provide an answer within minutes of a question being asked. According to this NY Times article, Truth On Call wants to eventually offer the service to caregivers and doctors in developing countries who are looking for advice from doctors in the US.

A great idea, but it comes at a price. Right now, it costs $50 to ask one question—not cheap, especially considering less targeted or reliable (but wider reaching) real-time services like Twitter are free. Speaking of, you can follow the organization on Twitter: @truthoncall. Their bio is promising: “earth’s fastest verified physician input.”

The panelists specialize in health, economics and public opinion, so their discussion conveys the complexity of the issue while putting the politics in context. They talk about what needs to be resolved in order to take constructive legislative action. It’s about an hour and a half long, so you may want to pop some popcorn for this one.

MIT has several other videos on health taken from public events the university has hosted. You can also search by topic (e.g. cancer) to pinpoint your results. They’re worth looking at, especially for the times when you feel like watching instead of reading.

BMI is a statistical measure comparing one’s weight and height. It looks at the relationship between those two numbers to estimate a healthy body weight. You can calculate your (or your child’s) BMI here.

A healthy BMI is typically in the range of 18.5-24.9. That’s accurate for most people, but not all. As the Mayo Clinic points out, BMI doesn’t consider individual factors such as bone or muscle mass, meaning it may:

- Underestimate body fat for older adults or those with low muscle mass
- Overestimate body fat for people who are very muscular and physically fit

That said, even if your BMI does accurately reflect your health, it can be hard to put a single number into a larger context. One of our recent data visualizations helps illustrate how BMI can correlate to certain health risks.

When you have a comprehensible picture of how common conditions relate to one another, you’re better able to understand your own health.

An intriguing use of Twitter, it’s also an innovative way to alleviate fear of the unknown, educating individuals on various procedures by sharing what happens behind closed doors. The medical team can answer questions in real-time, making a great teaching tool for medical students and the general public.

Here’s a look at how surgeons walked medical students (and curious onlookers) through a double-knee replacement surgery, via Twitter last year.

Do you think tweeting belongs in the operating room?