A Real Labor Day Special!

Sunday September 5th, 2010 will mark the Emory Healthcare 500 NASCAR race. The event is held at Atlanta Motor Speedway and "the best drivers in all of NASCAR will battle it out for 500 miles under the lights on Labor Day weekend! It'll be the biggest Labor Day Party in the USA."

Emory Healthcare is bringing preventive healthcare services to Hampton, GA where the NASCAR event is being held. Blood pressure, BMI, Skin cancer screenings are just some of the free services Emory is offering during the 3-day NASCAR extravaganza. I am proud to be a part of an organization that gives back to the community.

Below is a slideshow of Day 1 of Volunteering, including some pictures with captions. Enjoy!

The Emory Healthcare (official sponsor of the Emory Healthcare 500 NASCAR Event) Tent

Dedicated nurse volunteers excited about offering free screening services to the NASCAR fans

The marketing volunteers had a great time reaching out to NASCAR fans and promoting Emory Healthcare

Nike + iPod = My Cardio Program

After my second visit during my clinical trial study, I left with some goals set by my health professional and myself:

1) Reduce the iron in my body - eat less red meat, donate blood.
My progress: I am drinking filtered water as opposed to tap water as I believe this may be the reason for the high iron content in my blood.

2) Eat more servings of fruit and vegetables per day.
My progress: I bought lots of fruits to increase my serving sizes per day. I take fruit with me to work every morning.

3) Increase vitamin D - take vitamin D supplements daily
My progress: I have a bottle of Vitamin D and I take 1000 mg (one tablet) daily.

4) Perform cardio exercises 3 times per week
My progress: this was the least exciting goal we set for me. I had cardio (running, etc). Seemed boring to me. I thought to myself, as with anything I do, how can I make cardio fun? I went to the Nike store to buy the Nike + iPod shoes so that real-time time/distance/calorie information can be streamed to my phone during every run. After my first run, I had my first "runner's rush" - I was hooked ever since and enjoy running. I am doing short 30 minute runs at the highest elevation on the treadmill.

I am interested in seeing how my heart rate responds in my next clinical trials visit...

The cool part about the Nike + iPod technology is the ability to report my workout information and stream this info online for me to access. Nikeplus.com has many oops to get you more involved and engaged in your cardio workouts - like "run with friends" and "train like a pro."

Learning lesson: no matter how much you do not enjoy a task given to you, try to make it fun and engaging for yourself! You'll find yourself enjoying the very things you rejected and denounced in the beginning - this goes for your professional and personal life.












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iPhone use in Healthcare

So I was surfing the app store on my iPhone and saw an interesting app called JotNot Pro. It boasted scanning capability. I was skeptical at first but then read the amazing reviews about this app. I went ahead and bought the app for under $3 and have been using it at work.

If coworkers leave me hand written notes, I scan the note using JotNot and it converts the scanned image (from the iPhone camera) into a PDF which I attach to email and reference in my feedback response.

As far as healthcare goes, it would be nice to incorporate this scanning application to convert clinical documentation into PDFs so information can be stored easily or transmitted easily - while maintaining HIPAA rules of course. Looking forward to the iPad 2 which will have picture/video functionality to make this possible and more interactive and user friendly.

It completely replaces the need to fax and keep paper lying around the office. It's simply...fun to use.

To use JotNot, you take a picture of the document with your iPhone. Then you crop the document out (this helps if there are other items in the picture like coffee cups, other docs, etc). Finally, convert the document to a PDF and save! All of this is done in one app - really quickly! Try it out.




Check out more on this app:
http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/17/jotnot-turns-your-iphones-camera-into-a-document-scanner/



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USA vs Ghana

This was a very exciting game. The US has been victim of conceding goals early on in their game and find themselves playing catch up for the rest of the game.

They played well but not well enough to beat Ghana whose stamina and discipline proved vital in this game.

Looking forward to the rest of the World Cup mania, including the highly recognizable vuvuzela sounds.

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Location:Embassy Walk Ln,Lilburn,United States

Predictive Health - A new phenomenon

I was randomly selected to participate in a 5-year clinical trials study which is sponsored by The Emory/Georgia Tech Predictive Health Institute.

Predictive Health (according to the website) "is a new and innovative model of health care that focuses on maintaining health rather than treating disease."

"The institute aims to change the future of healthcare by creating a model of health using new tools of bioscience to identify and measure risks and deviations from health..."

Today was my first visit and I started off by signing the informed consent. The visit went very well. After finding out that 10 test tubes of my blood was needed - I instantly went into Shrek mode where Donkey kept asking: "are we there yet?" The blood draw was abnormally long, then we realized it was because my arm was not positioned correctly...

The "dramatic" blood draw process went smoothly because the nurse and health partners were very friendly and supportive. This is the theme of Predictive Health at the Center for Health Discovery and Well Being - support and relationship building. Patients are more willing to go to follow up appointments to find out more about themselves and to learn how to become healthier or stay healthy - a big plus for lower healthcare costs and insurance premiums in the future.

My first visit was indeed a happy ending - no immediate concerns, low blood pressure, normal BMI and body mineral content, and of course a free healthy breakfast - apple juice, 2 bottles of water, and a cereal bar. Thank you Emory Center for Discovery and Well Being - I look forward to my next visit and my next step towards a more healthy lifestyle.



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Get everyone engaged!

I have realized that the power of video instills a sense of excitement and engagement for people. Every time I carry around my digital Sony Camera to video various things at work, I get a lot of "used to be shy" people, all of a sudden, singing and dancing in front of the camera...incredible!

I absolutely love this YouTube clip provided by Providence St. Vincent Medical Center - it shows how the magic of media can help to bring an organization together for a great cause like Breast Cancer in this example video. Additionally, organizations use media to improve employee engagement, recognize their customers (patients), promote great causes, and many more. Keep the reel spinning!

iPad.

I really enjoy the iPad! I remember Steve Jobs' keynote and how excited I was about the iPad launch. I also remember the pre-order date falling on my birthday - could this be a sign that the iPad was meant for me?

I couldn't sleep the night before the iPad launch because of my excitement. I woke up at 6 am and then left to the apple store at 7 am. I waited in line for an hour and quickly made friends with some people in line as we shared something in common: our iPhone and its soon to be "bigger brother."






Pros of my iPad:

Incredible piece of technology that creates a big "wow" every time I turn it on.
A fantastic organizer that streams seamlessly with my work email and calendar - great business/enterprise tool.
A digital powerhouse for media - I never had a digital photo album but now I do, oh and it plays music and surfs the internet too...how could I forget, it's my library of books too...
Clinical/Medical application potential - I am very excited to see how the ipad will be used by clinicians to review electronic medical records/charts/scans/etc. What would be really cool too Is using the iPad as a way to register patients (instead of waiting at the front desk, the patient can use the iPad, have a seat, and fill out a standard questionnaire which will feed into the registration system). As far as billing, patients/customers are bedazzled by fancy technology like Apple's iphone credit card machine - we are actually more willing to pay - just to see how it works!

Cons: needs camera/video functionality









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