Blab.IM for Medical Education, Advocacy, and Conferences

In the past few months, mobile live video streaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat have been all the rage. I've also been experimenting with Google Hangouts recently, and in the past, I've used platforms like ustream and livestream.

But, tonight on twitter, I think that the next big thing has found me. It's called Blab.IM and it's a combination of periscope, hangouts, and twitter. You can see from the picture above, there are four people who can video chat at the same time. There is also a live chat room, a twitter stream, and the ability to record these sessions with the ability to post on platforms like youtube.

My mind then started racing about the potential implications for Medical Education and for Advocacy. First of all, it's mobile, and this expands the potential audience for this chat to worldwide. Secondly, the root of this is on twitter, where there a lot more people on; and not google hangouts, for which there are less people on. Finally, unlike periscope and meerkat, the video and audio is on the blab.im site indefinitely, and not for a limited time.

In doing research, I found the video below about blab.im. In addition, I found a resource called "The Ultimate Guide to Blab.IM" by Marc Levy. There is also this article from Mashable. It's really cool that you can mark a "Question" in the chat stream. In addition, you can give "+1" to comments and the equivalent of "hearts" from periscope. There is so much functionality here, it will be fun to explore.

One thing that I look forward using this platform is at live events like medical conferences. How fun would it be to give live video updates from conferences, even with people at the conference. This was something challenging to do with hangouts, periscope, and meerkat. In addition, people can "call" in from off site and chat with us. The video stream is pretty solid and the audio stream really holds up well. I'll be curious about how the post audio and video files look like.

I pulled the slide above from a blog post entitled "Blab Tutorial: To Blab or Not To Blab, That is the Question" by Ian Cleary from RazorSocial. Other interesting questions brought up in this article include: Is Blab going to take over Google Hangouts? Hm...

You can see an example of a blab at this link from the business world entitled "Blab for Customer Service and Social." But, you can really see the potential for Medical Education, Advocacy, and Medical Conferences, can't you? If any one of my peeps out there want to jump in and help me experiment with this, let me know. I think this is going to be very exciting!

Previewing #Polaris15 Conference

The 2015 Family Medicine Global Health Workshop will be taking place on October 1-4, 2015 in Denver, Colorado. On August 9, 2015, I had a great conversation with my guests Dr. Kyle Hoedebecke and Dr. Maria Colon on a variety of topics.

We talked about the WONCA (World Organization of Family Doctors) Polaris Pre-conference to take place on October 1st which is the day prior to the Global Health Workshop. We also talked about Maria going to France and presenting on their Balint 2.0 project. It's so exciting that the WONCA President, Dr. Michael Kidd from Australia, will be attendance at the Global Health Workshop and Polaris Pre-Conference. Check out our conversation below. Enjoy!

Revolution, Sharing Stories, and Friends Forever: Lessons from #APA2015

As I sit here from my #APA2015 hotel, watching Toronto Argonauts football I wanted to try to capture some thoughts following a fascinating day here in Toronto at the 2015 American Psychological Association Annual Meeting. I have learned three big picture lessons from my time here at #APA2015...

Lesson One: We Need Many Revolutions....

It's so cliche to say "We Need A Revolution" to move the hearts and minds of people to bring about change. But, in my years of doing advocacy work, the word "revolution" really reaches people and hits the right emotional nerve.

Many people have been saying that "We Need A Revolution" in health care. But, what it's really going to take is each community and each stakeholder group needs to have their own little internal revolution first. And then, through the synergy of this passion and drive, maybe something substantial will be done.

Kerri Sparling is part of the first health care change revolution that I was aware of - This is known as the "E-Patient Movement" in which very motivated patients like Dave DeBronkart, i.e. "E-Patient Dave, " they are taking control of their own health care and challenging the health care establishment to give them better care.

My own Family Medicine community is trying to rally our troops by declaring a Family Medicine Revolution, better known as #FMRevolution on twitter. Goals of this movement are to show the Value of Family Medicine to our communities and to our legislators to bring about things like better health care delivery models, like Patient Centered Medical Home and Direct Primary Care. In addition, we're advocating the exploration and implementation of new health care payment models like moving from episodic fee-for-service care to payment for quality of care.

The plenary talk I saw Ben Miller give at the American Psychological Association Annual Meeting was amazing (see pic above). Through energy, passion, data, and stories, Ben is challenging his own discipline of psychology to look within themselves and not settle for the status quo. "We (as psychologists) should not let our discipline be defined by "The Couch," he said. ("The Couch" is the stereotypical place where mental health patients receive care by psychologists.) Ben continued, "We are better than that. We have to define our discipline by assuring the public that we can deliver a complexity of care that we have been trained to do. The time is now. We cannot be left behind." What a powerful call to action.

Lesson Two: Want Revolution? Decide if you need data, or stories, or both...

To bring about revolution, you first have to define your goals and what do you want to accomplish. This will define your strategy. To win the hearts and minds of people, it has been shown time and time again that powerful stories can help to bring your point across.

What I have seen is that to try to inspire revolution in your own community, sharing data with community leaders is the next step to try to "bring your own house in order." For Family Medicine, hearing about and showing things like the decreasing medical student interest in the specialty, the increasing difficulty of patients to have and to hold health insurance, and showing the increasing fragmentation of the health care delivery system - all these and a lot more data have helped to spur on the Family Medicine Revolution.

However, in the area of health policy and in the area of legislative change, you really need a balance of both powerful stories and data people can understand - to even attempt to bring about change. I have heard this for years from my colleagues at meetings like the Family Medicine Congressional Conference, but I really didn't believe it until now. Kerri Sparling said during our session, "When we (as patient advocates) lobby on Capitol Hill, we bring our sob stories, but what would really help is data to help support our stories." That statement really solidified it for me.

Lesson Three: You need Revolutionary Friends...

"You cannot bring about change by yourself," Ben Miller told his fellow psychologists during his plenary session. "We need to be creative and look for opportunities for partnerships, like with our patients, and then we can start to work together on common issues." Sound familiar? Patient advocacy groups, FMRevolution groups, and other groups have been saying this for years.

My thanks to Ben Miller and to the American Psychological Association for the opportunity to speak and to share my Family Medicine and Primary Care story. Thanks to Kerri Sparling for being an inspiration to me an to others in sharing her story. Did you know that Kerri was one of the first people that I met online when I started blogging around ten years ago? She knew me way back in the "Doctor Anonymous" days and it was so much fun talking about those "old days" and reminiscing about our social media journeys.

There is so much more I learned from this brief time at the conference, but those are the highlights. I did video record my sessions. I have to check to see how the video and how the audio worked out. Hopefully, I'll share these sessions with you on my youtube channel soon. Hope you had a great weekend!

Speaking at #APA2015: Primary Care, the Patient Story, and Mental Health

I'm here in Toronto, Canada at the 2015 American Psychological Association annual meeting. Ive been asked by my friend Dr. Ben Miller, to take part in this panel presentation along with Kerri Sparling, patient advocate and founder of SixUntilMe.com.

Our presentations this afternoon at #APA2015 will be talking about the intersection of Primary Care, the Patient Story, Mental Health, and Health Policy. The first session is entitled "Desire Lines in Healthcare: Design With The End In Mind." The second session is entitled "Advancing Health Policy Change Through Patient Stories And Data."

I've never been at an APA conference in the past, and talking with people at the conference, it is difference, but similar discussions to what we have in our Family Medicine community. All of us agree that we need a better healthcare delivery system to deliver better health care.

I'm going to try to record the presentations to share with all of you. In addition, I haven't been to Toronto in a long time, and I will try to take in some of the tourist sights while I'm here. The photo above was taken at the Momofoku Toronto restaurant (really interesting food, let me tell ya). Hope you're having a super weekend!

Medicine Is Going Through A Revolution: With Doctors' Help

Thanks to Dave Chase and Forbes.com for including me in this article from August 5, 2015 entitled, "Medicine Is Going Through A Revolution: With Doctors' Help." I'm honored to be included on this list with great people like Paul Grundy, Rob Lamberts, and Bryan Vartabedian. Big thanks to my friend Bunny Ellerin for suggesting that I be added to the list. In addition to me, our #FMRevolution is given a shout out in this article. Happy Reading!

Excited To Be Speaking at #UCIapamsa2015

I am proud to announce that I will be a Speaker and a Panelist at the 2015 National Conference of the Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association (APAMSA) on Saturday, September 26, 2015 at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. This year's conference theme is "Intersections In Healthcare." The twitter hashtag for this year's meeting is the following: #UCIapamsa2015

Thanks to my friend and colleague Dr. Jay Lee who is the Keynote Speaker for this year's #UCIapamsa2015 conference. He forwarded my name to the planning committee and they graciously extended an invitation to me. 

In addition to my presentation topic of "Social Media and Medicine," the planning committee also asked me to participate in a Primary Care Panel along with Dr. Jay Lee, Dr. Emily Dow, and Dr. Bena Teo. I'm really looking forward to this panel discussion.

Registration just went live last week. Especially for all my medical student colleagues out there, early bird registration ends August 31, 2015. Register for the meeting at this link. Housing and accommodations for an event like this probably also goes very fast. Check out hotel options at this link.

According to their website, APAMSA is a national organization of medical and pre-medical students committed to addressing the unique health challenges of Asian and Pacific Islander American communities. The first National Conference of APAMSA occurred in 1995. The fourth National Conference was at The Ohio State University. Ohio is in Region V and I'm looking forward to meeting students from my region. Also check out APAMSA's Facebook Page. I'll see you at the 2015 APAMSA National Conference!

What It's Like To Date A Medical Student

Cute video from Buzzfeed. Good stuff...

Thanks David Letterman

I just watched the final Late Show with David Letterman. This final week of shows, really made me think about the final week of shows of The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. These two gentlemen have shaped by sense of humor for almost my entire 43 years of life. And, they really sparked by dream to become a talk show host like them. With my little podcast and youtube channel, I keep pretending.

So many memories going through my head right now from junior high, high school, college, and all the way through today. Memories of watching the show with my friends, and trying to recreate those jokes and imagining a live studio audience laughing along. I'm going to have to watch that last segment again with all the images of the Dave show through the years. Thanks Dave for all the great years of laughs. He closed out his show with these simple words:

"Thank You and Goodnight..."

My Apple Watch Review

As I write this review, I've had the Apple Watch for two weeks. The photo above was taken my first morning with the watch, when I really didn't know what I was doing yet. I know there has been a lot of reviews out there already, but many of my friends wanted me to write this from my point of view. Spoiler Alert: There will be nothing in this essay that you haven't already read elsewhere. I'll be breaking things down in the following sections below.

My Pre-Watch World:

• No, I have never worn a smart watch before. Some of my friends checked out products like the pebble watch, but not me. In fact, I'm not really a watch or jewelry person in general.
• Yes, many would classify me as an "Apple Fanboy." I had every intention of purchasing this product sight unseen. I watched each Apple keynote previewing the watch and I looked at them again before I ordered the watch.
• Day of Preorder: I woke up at 2:55am on April 10, 2015. I read online that the website would probably be too busy, and to use the Apple Store app as an alternative to order. This was true, and I ordered the watch at around 3:08am.
• Which Watch? I knew that I wanted the 42mm size and the milanese loop band. I went back and forth between the aluminum case (sport watch) and the stainless steel case. I went with the latter.
• Waiting for the Watch: I really thought that I was going to receive the watch on the first day of shipment which was April 24, mainly because I wanted to be wearing the watch for a conference the next week. I received the watch 10 days later. However, I was so excited when I received the e-mail heads-up that the watch was shipping.

Unboxing the Watch:

• Many of my friends had the watch delivered to their work. I recommend NOT opening it at work. The unboxing experience itself is so much fun, I'd leave this for home.
• There have been so many unboxing videos out there, but I recommend this one from our pal Brandice to check out before you unbox your own watch.
• The most interesting part of the unboxing process is the pairing of your watch with your iPhone. The watch will pull over the available apps from your phone to give you a baseline batch of apps to play with. Wouldn't be a bad idea to go to the iTunes store now and download new & different iPhone apps that also have watch apps in preparation for your unboxing.
• Watch Contacts: Using the watch app on the phone, you can designate up to nine priority contacts on your watch. You want to make sure some of those contacts also have the watch, because you'll be able to try out fun communication messages like sending your heartbeat, tap, or sketch.

You have the watch, now what?

• Demoing the Watch to Friends: After your friends want to see it, they'll ask you, "Make it do something." For me, the best ways to demo the watch, was to be a remote control to play music on iPhone, and to be a remote control to take pictures on iPhone.
• Change the watch face: One of the first things I tried to figure out was how to change the watch face. I really wanted to see the Mickey Mouse watch face LOL. Check out this Macworld UK article.
• Battery Life: Of course, when you first start playing with your watch, you will go through battery quickly. After that, I have never had problems with battery life. I charge the battery at night along side my iPhone. Don't worry about battery life for routine use.

Watch For Fitness:

• I've used other wearables in the past, like the fitbit, so I was curious about how Apple Watch would be with fitness tracking.
• The Activity Rings above on the Activity App are still confusing to me. I never really figured them out. Sure, it tells, me to stand every hour, but other than that, I haven't gotten that much out of it.
• The Workout app was a little more interesting. You'll see some screen shots below. I enjoyed the "Avg heart rate" data on the watch. Yes, I know other devices can do this too, but, for me, I thought it was helpful. The third picture below is from the Walkmeter app, which I use for cycling. Yes, I use both the watch Workout app and Walkmeter on iPhone.

The Bottom Line on Apple Watch:

• Many of the anti-Apple people out there will be enjoying this part of my review.
• Lower your expectations for Apple Watch: Remember your first positive experience with an iPhone? How things all seemed to come together? There is no such experience and feeling here. The watch tells time. You get some text messages. The fitness functions are adequate for me. And that's it (at least for now).
• The "Wow" Factor wears off quickly: It was really fun for the first few days experimenting with the apps. But other than that, I was going back to my phone for a lot of my daily work flow and functionality.
• Will I wear Apple Watch one month or six months from now? I will definitely keep wearing the watch for the rest of this month. Maybe with yesterday's software upgrade, and future upgrades, there will be more functionality. Will I still be wearing Apple Watch in 6 months? Not sure yet.
• Do I regret buying it and Will I buy the next one? I absolutely have no regrets. I'm not an Early Adopter, I'm an Early Believer in this product. I know that I'm a part of the initial "test" group of users on how this works. As with all their products, Apple set the bar so high on expectations, that tech press and public opinion enjoy saying negative things about these products. I will absolutely purchase the next generation. I will always enjoy technology. It's not perfect the first time around, but it's still fun exploring and seeing how we can use technology to better our lives!

World Family Doctor Day 2015

World Family Doctor Day was first declared by the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) in 2010 and it has become a day to highlight the role and contribution of family doctors in health care systems around the world.

The event has gained momentum globally each year and it is a wonderful opportunity to acknowledge the central role of our speciality in the delivery of personal, comprehensive and continuing health care for all our patients.

In addition to these logos from the WONCA organization, I also invite you to check out the video below from The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners including their "I Chose GP because" photo campaign. Another video below are words from Michael Kidd, President of WONCA. Happy World Family Doctor Day to all my friends and colleagues around the world!

Tuesday May 19 is World Family Doctor Day. To celebrate and share the incredible work of GPs, the RACGP is running a social media campaign that asks GPs to state why they chose general practice as a career, using the dedicated hashtag #IchoseGP.

World Family Doctor day message from Michael Kidd, President of the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA)

Family physicians have the skills and training to practice in a variety of settings around the world. Join Kyle Hoedebecke, MD, co-founder of the North American young doctors' movement Polaris, to learn why family medicine is the perfect fit for students interested in global health.