Google health group - no nurses, no internationals

As pointed out by Rod Ward on his Informaticopia blog (www.rodspace.co.uk/blog/blogger.html), Google have set up a 'Google Health Advisory Council' - further details are at:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/new-advisory-group-on-health.html.

And guess what? - surprise, surprise, there are are no nurses on it. In fact, it has 5 women out of the 22 (23%), seemingly no-one from outside the USA, and 13 (59%) have MD after their name.

This does not show the kind of forward-thinking, or even current thinking and awareness, on health issues that one would expect from a global company that claims to want to 'better understand the problems consumers and providers face every day and offer feedback on product ideas and development'. I think, given the tone of many blog posts that are linking to the article, they will soon begin to understand!

Perhaps this is an opportunity for the international nursing community, and the nursing component of the blogosphere, to flex some muscle.

Note also that many other health professionals are similarly excluded.

Launch date for blog carnival

The first issue of 'A global carnival of health informatics' will be hosted on the Health informatics 2.0 blog (healthinformatics20.blogspot.com) in July 2007. It will be available on 22 July - submission deadline to be considered for inclusion is noon UK time on Saturday 21 July.

Please send all submissions via the blogcarnival.com website at: http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_1960.html - or if having problems, to hi.blogs[at]gmail.com

uHealth blog

CHIRAD member Karl Øyri, from Norway, has set up a new uHealth blog - see deltadigital.blogspot.com. Karl states that his "approach to uHealth is to look at not only the technological aspects, but how uHealth tools can be implemented in clinical settings to improve care and include the perspective of nurses, physicians and patients."

Karl's other activities are chronicled at his DeltaDigital site - www.deltadigital.no/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php

eHealthNews.EU

Our colleague, Ruslan David, maintains 'eHealthNews.EU - the First European eHealth News Portal' at - naturally - www.ehealthnews.eu.

It is an excellent resource of news and links, and a good implementation of the Joomla open source Content Management System. Go have a look - you can also subscribe to the RSS feed.

Google Desktop for Linux

According to Linux Insider, 'Google has expanded its Desktop application to be available to Linux users. The search utility comes in 10 languages and is made for users of Debian 4.0, Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10, Suse 10.1 and Red Flag 5, but it also requires an x86 processor. It allows the user to search his or her own hard drive in much the same style as an online Google Web search.'

See full item at www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/58078.html

Linux on flash/pen drives

Many people would like to try Linux but are worried about installing it to their computer. One solution is to use a 'Live CD', of which many abound, in particular Knoppix (www.knoppix.net).

An alternative that we are experimenting with is to run it on a flash/pen drive (or dongle, to use the technical term ;-)) ). An introduction to how to set this up is at www.pendrivelinux.com.

For those who wish to explore installing Linux, a good guide on the use of GRUB bootloader (to facilitate dual boots) is at:
www.foogazi.com/2007/06/14/getting-started-with-grub.

Friday light relief

Just in case the blog gets too serious, a little light relief ...

there's a new film out of New Zealand called 'Black Sheep' (nothing to do with the beer, I suspect - www.blacksheepbrewery.com/).

The film's website is at www.blacksheep-themovie.com and there is a review at >>>


The trailer (on YouTube) is hilarious (IMHO).
See it at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMp8mSRiHow (sorry, embedding it has been disabled)