HealthyConcerns.com

Wow, I finally feel like the Jetsons are here: Artificial pancreas in the works

Thanks to Amy Tenderich from Diabetes Mine for doing a thorough job reporting on the recently announced partnership between the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and a J&J company that makes insulin pumps and the like. Their goal? To create an artificial pancreas for Diabetes patients that can be ready for market within something like four years!

It's fascinating to read the details. 

It's not that this pancreas will create insulin...there will still be a need to have some kind of patch/pump system to provide the insulin, but the "pancreas" would monitor levels and dispense in an automated fashion.

Read the whole post, so much information.

It may not be a hovercraft, but it feels like the future to me!

Kevin MD's top links for 2009: I think this shows the power of Google

Kevin MD is one of the most popular, prolific and comprehensive MedBlogs out there. Multiple posts per day cover just about every piece of medical news out there.

So, I read with interest his list of his Top 13 most popular blog posts of 2009.

The tally:

• Three about Michael Jackson
• Three about swine flu
• One about the Octomom
• One about Jett Travolta
• One about the Brazilian model who died from sepsis

So, six of thirteen about celebrity death and another three about swine flue, admittedly a hot topic. Given that, I'm guessing a whole lot of hits come from Google search.

I find it somewhat sad that there was only one post about health care reform out of the whole Top 13. 

In general I think the Internet has made us smarter, more connected, more informed, more able to express ourselves. But it's also made us more able to pursue every last morsel of information about inconsequential things.

And I don't mean anyone's death or birth is inconsequential, but neither the Octomom nor Michael Jackson have impact on our individual lives...not the way health care does.

I wish the traffic reflected it.