Steve Jobs got a new liver, the rest of us got an easier way to watch Hulu in bed, and the health-care industry just may have gotten the big break it needed to launch into the 21st century. Following his hush-hush surgery last spring, it's easy to imagine the colossus of Cupertino, Calif., staring at the ceiling tiles in his hospital room and wishing for a way to hop online without having to bother with a laptop.

It's also no stretch to picture him watching doctors, nurses and orderlies peck away at a bevy of poorly designed, intermittently integrated and just plain ugly devices and thinking there had to be a better way.

So while the rest of the world texts, tweets and generally fawns over the thing, that's muted compared with the reception the iPad is getting in the health-care universe.

Well, I've got doctors who show no apparent interest in using a computer and a cardiologist who blows me away every time I see him come into the examination room with a tablet computer--I want to know exactly what he's doing with that device and how it's integrated into his practice. I'm frustrated that I can't use a computer to communicate directly with my doctors, frustrated that there's no standard for sharing medical information--every practice seems to have a different kind of patient questionnaire that makes initial visits harder than they need to be. (It really bugs me that most practices I've visited insist on a questionnaire but don't make it available on the web ahead of time, so most initial visits are more time consuming than they need to be. Since I've got use of only one hand, it would be a great convenience to me o have a form I culd fill out on a computer.)  It would be great if I could keep (and update) my basic information in one place and have it available in a second for me and a doctor. Here's something to look forward to in medicine and tehnology.

Imagine no waiting room at the doctor's office. Scratch that. Now picture no doctor's office at all. In this practice, you make appointments via text, video chat or email, and sometimes your doctor makes house calls. Oh, and you deal directly with the insurance company, because there's no staff for that. Meet Dr. Jay Parkinson. After completing his residency at Johns Hopkins University, the pediatrician was unsure of what he wanted to do with his life. So he founded Hello Health, a newfangled practice in Brooklyn that promises to streamline the process of health care. Is it working? 

"Evidence says that about 50 percent of all doctor visits are unnecessary. But they only get paid to bring you into the office, so that's what they do. So, if you don't have that incentive, that means 50 percent of problems can be taken care of without physically seeing you, but augmented with good communication," says Parkinson. He describes the genesis of his idea, and his thoughts on how we can reform the U.S. health care system. What about developing a Facebook for health care? "How much would it cost to Facebook if it were designed to power medicine to sign up all 11 million healthcare workers in America? It surely wouldn't cost $20 billion."

Finally, Parkinson weighs in on the consequences of the potential death of primary care in America. Plus, should we stop taking prescription drugs? You might rethink filling that prescription when you find out what some medications could be doing to you.

At a pivotal point in the movie "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," Tommy discovers in an intimate moment that Hedwig is not who he thought she was...

Tommy: What is that?
Hedwig: It's what I have to work with.

You don't have to let those perceived flaws define you. You don't have to let those fears stop you. You just have to have the willingness and determination to push past those negative thoughts, start embracing your special qualities, and take the risk of putting yourself out there. Hedwig knows her limitations better than most. But she's out there, committed to making it work.

How many times have I kept myself in a rut instead of seeing a simple way out? An inspiring post from Lisa Braithwaite. And Pauline Shirley picked up the theme, a little more actively, on her blog

As part of his unique marketing strategy, my dentist engraves a message on the complimentary toothbrush I receive as compensation for my stress due to the dreaded semiannual cleaning.

Today, he engraved, “Spring 2010 Plant Something!”

I imagine, that like me, when you read that you thought of planting spring flowers, vegetables or perhaps a shrub or tree.

Think bigger than that! Interpret ‘Plant something” as a suggestion to plant an idea; to plant a positive thought; to plant the beginning of an entrepreneurial venture; to plant potential in the possibilities of yourself and others.

To spark plain old ideas.  Some of the most popular blog posts I've ever written came from questions on Twitter.  "Could you help me do this...?" "Where do you find that?"  or "What do you think about...?" are my favorite queries, because they always spark ideas.  I think of them as reader requests, and run with them--and it never fails.

Here's reason #9. Click through to read the rest.