New-Old Blog to Check Out

I love surfing the blogosphere and thought that I had hit most of the major blogs in the medical world. I was surprised to find a large one in my own backyard that I had not noticed.

If you would like an insiders view into world of socialized medicine with a critical analysis check out Dr. Fullerton. The blog is very focused on the Ontario (Canada) Health Care community but she's insightful and the commentary is devoid of the usual platitudes, agendas and bullshit that can often accompany political agendas.

Another website to check out comes from the Canadian Medical Association (the professional association of Canadian physicians) called mydoctor.ca . It offers a secure way for patients, clinics and doctors to communicate with each other. For the problems and pitfalls of regular email check out my post on high-stakes email. Having a closed system like this (where communication only occurs inside the system) has some advantages and disadvantages. The major advantage is security and lack of spam. Spam can be a major hassle because it makes up 70-95% of email sent, so sorting it and protecting users is a full time job. The major disadvantage is that support is needed for all the users of the system (e.g. patients) so you need to finance a help desk, and maintain the secure logins. Only a major corporation can afford to do it. The solution for a small office is to use a main server such as mydoctor.ca or set up a simple web-site with a sharepoint portal (you need IT for this but it's much simpler to administer). I'm not sure if OHIP is going to pay for web communication yet. I don't think that this is going to take off quickly, save the world from global warming or transform medicine into a highly efficient web-based machine but it's a great step forward.