It’s hard to see beyond the catchy headlines, and understand where the 18% of GDP that we also call healthcare is spent. Luckily NPR has put together these two simple graphs that illustrate where the money is going and where it’s coming from.
In December we wrote about the new cool gadgets that help you keep track of your exercise targets. Now we bring you the best 5 Mobile Apps that help you get back in shape.
Moves Free app turns your iPhone into an activity tracking device. Moves automatically records any walking, cycling and running you do. The app is always on, so there’s no need to start and stop it. The best part is that Moves can be on all day without eating your battery.
After couple of weeks of use the app feels very effortless and in the evening you are excited to see the end score. This is definitely an app that can help anyone become more conscious about daily activity level. App is best suited for someone who wants casual tracking and is not training for marathon. The app was officially launched today and we’ll see a lot of new features going forward.
Sports Tracker, Free (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, etc.)
Sports Tracker is the original sports tracking app that was launched already in 2004, years before the competitors. If you are runner, cycler or take your hiking seriously this is the app for you.
You can compare times, race against yourself, and even connect a heart rate meter to make sure you know exactly how the training went.
BetterDoctor team has tracked tens of thousands of miles on the app and it just works. There are many users who use the app as a journal where they record their daily walks and take photos of interesting things instead of running.
All Trails, Free (iPhone, Android)
All Trails App is your best friend when exploring the great outdoors. It works equally well when you want to find a new route through your local park.
The app provides thousands of routes to hike, bike and explore the nature without getting lost. We all have used maps and got lost, but with All Trails’ GPS guided maps you can’t get lost as long as you have cell coverage and juice in your smartphone battery.
All Trails also helps on planning your future trips as you can browse through trails on you sofa. You can even see photos, reviews and route descriptions.
Skimble, Free (iPhone, iPad, Android)
Skimble turns your smartphone into a personal trainer that never yells and is always there for you when you need it. The app offers thousands of professionally tailored multimedia programs that guide you through your exercise routines.
This is a perfect app for anyone who wants to exercise alone, but needs some motivation and guidance.
Skimble is also a community where you can share your exercises and build some healthy peer pressure to help you achieve your goals. There are already 9 million Skimblers so you won’t be alone.
Pocket Yoga, $2.99 (iPhone, iPad)
Pocket Yoga costs $2.99, but will save itself in just one time when you are not paying $15 for the class.
The app is very simple, but it will take years to master all the poses. Pocket Yoga offers 3 different practices which last 30, 45 or 60 minutes. You can also choose the difficulty level from easy to hard (which is really very hard).
Pocket Yoga is made for people who don’t have time to get to gym every week or for them who want to practice at home, but just can’t remember the poses without an instructor.
2013 will be the year of healthcare apps and gadgets. Here’s a list of the most interesting new gadgets that help BetterDoctor team stay motivated on their exercise targets.
Basis is a wristwatch and health tracker with lot of cool technology. It uses an accelerometer to track your steps. It has a galvanic skin sensor to detect your sweat. It has an optical blood-flow sensor to track your heartbeat. It has a skin temperature sensor and an ambient room temperature sensor, so it knows if you’re hot because you are exercising or because you’re in a hot room. It also monitors when you’re sleeping and knows the best time to wake you up.
You can log onto the Basis Science website and study your stats via a cloud-based web service. The service focuses on actionable information, like reminders that you’ve been sitting in a chair for 40 minutes. The site tells you more about why it’s important to get enough sleep and allows you to drill down into the data to see patterns. With all of that data, you can learn what impact your physical activity has on your body, such as how it stirs your heart rate. The first patch of Basis Watches is sold out, but the next patch should come available soon.
You can use Up to track your steps, distance moved, calorie count, activity time, and activity intensity. It also tracks your light and deep sleep as well as your waking moments.
It comes with a cool iOS app that allows you to study your stats. And you can also use it to track your meals and share pictures of what you’re eating with your friends. If you really want to find out how many calories you’ve consumed, you can do so by checking against a big food database.
The battery lasts for 10 days, and the design is water-resistant. Up wakes you up at optimal time when you the most alert. It reminds you to move when you have been inactive for too long. It has no display, so you can’t check your movements while on the move. You also have to sync it to your iPhone by plugging it into your headphone jack.
The folks at Fitbit are on their third device since they created the Fitbit Classic pedometer in 2008. Now the Fitbit One can track your steps, distance traveled, calories burned, stairs climbed, and your sleep. The device screen tells you how many steps you’ve moved.
The new device clips to your clothing easily. It syncs wirelessly with your smartphone via Bluetooth, or you can sync it via USB or Wi-Fi on your computer. You can look at your stats on the web. It’ll also teach you how to sleep better and will wake you up in the morning. It has a nice ecosystem of other devices, including the Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi scale and the Fitbit Zip for tracking kids.
Nike+ FuelBand gadget is a wristband that allows you to capture data on a variety of activities, like tossing a Frisbee or throwing a football. It collects information on exercise time, calories burned, steps taken, and overall movement. You wear it all day and transfer the data to the Nike+ web site through a USB or via your iPhone.
You can set a daily NikeFuel goal and track your progress. It syncs with the Nike+FuelBand app, which you can use to track your activity history and connect with friends online. Like the Fitbit One, the wristband has a display on the plastic. It can tell you the time, your goal, your steps walked, and other text-based information. You can share your achievements via Facebook, Twitter, and Path. FueldBand is the BetterDoctor team’s current favorite.
Larklife tracks your steps and distance moved. It also tracks the type of exercise, the amount of time you spend doing it, the calories you burn, and when you started and stopped. If you have been inactive for a while, it will send you an alert to get moving. It tracks your sleep and offers you coaching about it.
As a diet logger, it tries to reduce the dullness of manually entering the meals you eat. It has a list of foods, letting you log what you eat with the touch of a button. You can also tap the screen to log that you have drunk a glass of water. This set of features about food intake is crucial to completing the loop of information about your activity, your body’s reaction to it, and refueling. However, it’s easy to forget.
If you remember, then Larklife can remind you of the best time of day for you to eat and how much you should eat.
Bia is a multi-sport watch for women. Slim lightweight design. No-wait GPS. Plus a must-have safety alert for solo workouts. Bia team collected $400K on KickStarted and are soon shipping the first patch of products to backers.
The Bia GPS Sports Watch is made for women by women. It’s prettier and stronger for women who run, bike and swim, according to the project’s Kickstarter page. Why? Because the watch is “ergonomically designed” to sit perfectly at an angle on a woman’s wrist.
The lightweight fitness watch records time, current heart rate and calories burned. It also sends fitness data straight to an online profile with one touch (no logging or syncing needed). The watch lasts 17 hours between charges.
We all know that it’s painfully hard to find a new doctor, but you might wonder how long it normally takes to see a doctor. Here’s a look at average wait times in days at major metropolitan areas across the country:
The map above shows the average appointment wait times (in days) for five medical
specialties: cardiology, dermatology, OB/GYN, orthopedic surgery, and family practice.
Bad as this looks, it gets even worse. The physician-to-population ratios in these
metropolitan areas are traditionally some of the highest in the country. If it takes weeks to see a doctor in these areas, the problem can be expected to be worse in areas with fewer physicians per capita.
BetterDoctor’s mission is to fix this problem!
Image: Teladoc
Data: 2009 Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times, Merritt Hawkins & Associates
BetterDoctor team is committed to simplify healthcare and help every American to find the right doctor. Today we are very happy to announce that after successful Bay Area beta the service is now live nationwide with 600,000 doctors.
Check out the new features on BetterDoctor:
The BetterDoctor team feels that we are just getting started! We have a list of great new ideas that will make it even simpler to find the right doctor.
Keep the feedback coming support@betterdoctor.com
Dr. Marty Makary wrote an interesting article on WSJ titled “How to Stop Hospitals From Killing Us“. He offered 5 simple ways to make health care safer and more transparent.
1. Hospital Online Dashboards
There is still little visibility on care outcome on hospital or doctor level. Dr. Makary believes that consumers should have access to a full hospital dashboard with hard and comparable performance metrics. Some of the recommended data points include annual volume by surgery type, patient satisfaction scores, rates of infections, readmission and errors.
As an informal exercise throughout my career, I’ve asked patients how they decided to come to the hospital where I was working. Among their answers: “Because you’re close to home”; “You guys treated my dad when he died”; “I figured it must be good because you have a helicopter.” You wouldn’t believe the number of patients who have told me that the deciding factor for them was parking.
2. Better teamwork in care teams
Hospital work environments can be hierarchical and sometimes nurse practitioner or interns have no confidence to stop an error even if they noticed it beforehand. Studies show that hospitals with best teamwork scores offer better care.
3. Oversight by cameras
Dr. Makary offers a simple yet powerful method to enforce best practices by mounting cameras in operation rooms. This has been proven to dramatically increase the quality of care.
4. Open Notes
Most of information is lost during the doctor’s appointment because the patient tends to be sick and scared, and often has little understanding of the condition. Dr. Makary suggest that doctors should dictate the medical record while patient listens so the patient can correct possible errors. It would be even better if doctor could share the medical records with patient and the patient could update and modify the record online.
5. No more gagging
Transparency is improving and more data is coming public. Yet there is still a halo of secrecy and fear of legal actions against a whistleblowers. Some hospitals make patients sign a gag-order promising never to say anything negative about the doctor or hospital.
Transparency can also help to restore the public’s trust. Many Americans feel that medicine has become an increasingly secretive, even arrogant, industry. With more transparency—and the accountability that it brings—we can address the cost crisis, deliver safer care and improve how we are seen by the communities we serve. To do no harm going forward, we must be able to learn from the harm we have already done.
Today BetterDoctor launched a completely updated website that makes it simple to find the right doctor. Read more on TechCrunch.
Select what kind of doctor you are looking for, pick your insurance plan and instantly get a list of verified doctors near you. BetterDoctor team has spent months collecting all the relevant information on each doctor so you don’t need to.
Bookmarking your favorite doctors is very simple. Click the heart-button on doctor profile card and find the doctor later on the web and on your iPhone.
Friends often ask doctor recommendations. Share a doctor profile directly to your family or selected friends. You can also let all your Facebook friends know about the great new Pediatrician you just found.
This is just the beginning of something great! We have a ton of other interesting news to share in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned!
We are quite proud about the new website, but we would love to hear what you think. Send comments and feedback to support@betterdoctor.com.
We at BetterDoctor believe that smartphones and tablets will transform the healthcare system. This infographic from RockHealth helps you to become a convert too and don’t forget to test the BetterDoctor’s iPhone web app at app.betterdoctor.com.
Visualization from RockHealth & Greatist
