Remember reading about Gary Wolf's presentation at TED about tracking and using personal metrics? Stephen Wolfram has a pretty practical answer about how you can use the information in today's New York Times: he looked at 23 year's worth of email and phone usage to find "patterns in his personal activity that might be linked to bursts of creativity." Also noted: Larry Smarr who "wears one wireless sensor to monitor the calories he burns and another to see how well he sleeps. He is keeping track of the bacteria in his body, about 100 different variables in his blood and many other fine points in his biochemistry.

After examining the data, he makes changes to improve his health. (So far, he’s lost weight and gained hours of deep sleep, he says.)"

So I finished a round of rehab, spent a few minutes yesterday looking for a Just Do It t-shirt and a few minutes this morning looking for a pedometer app for my iPhone so I could monitor my activity (I was overwhelmed by the choices), and then I stumbled across this video. Talk about reinforcement!

CultofMac calls attention to the adoption and use of iPads by doctors

Since then, Dr. Halamka has been raising awareness about the dangers of distracted doctors. His efforts included an interview with NPR that ran earlier this week. In that story, NPR’s David Greene also interviewed Dr. Henry Feldman (also from Beth Israel in Boston) who is a such a big proponent of mobile technology and iOS devices in medicine that his collegueas have dubbed him the iDoctor. He points out the advantage sof the iPad, including during patient consultations and notes that he can easily switch off distracting devices.

This story  raises the question of whether iPhones and iPads can be too distracting to doctors. A report that coincided with the NPR story from Kaiser Health News cites multiple studies about thedangers of distracted doctoring over the past two years including incidents that occurred during surgery. At the same time, a recent study from the University of Chicago illustrated that iPads made residents more efficient and effective.

I've seen concerns like this raised at least once before, but I've posted before about the advantages of iPads on medicine and my frustration when technology isn't applied to a patient's advantage. I think I like the common-sense solution CultofMac points out.

In the end, as with other distracted driving, the crux of the issue really isn’t about the mobile devices themselves, it’s about how doctors and other healthcare workers choose to use them. As Dr. Feldman points out, anyone can turn a distracting device off – or at least turn off notifications from potentially distracting apps. Setting policies around that idea is actually the approach that Beth Israel Medical Center has adopted to prevent such incidents.

Jay Parkinson, and lots of others I hope, are looking for ways to use technology to serve patients better and make the most of their time.