The very first time I walked into a healthcare organization I was hoping to sell the marketing department a static website. It was 1996 and the hospital did not have Internet connectivity, but they knew that they should have an online brochure. I knew much more about web design than I did about the healthcare industry, so I was surprised to hear the marketing department discussing "customers" and “profit centers”. Who were these customers that required advertising and service line promotions? I was shocked to discover they were talking about the patients!

My son and I started a tradition when we received a 1 lb. box of See's chocolates for Easter. We could each have one chocolate after performing the 2-Minute Candy Dance. The dance starts by setting the kitchen oven timer for 2:00 minutes - hit Start. Then for 1 minute one of us leads the way around the kitchen island clapping, stomping, humming and jumping. When the minute is up, we reverse directions and leader. More clapping, jumping and following the dance leader. The dogs LOVE it, and soon they have joined the kitchen parade and are hopping and skipping along with us.

Good Clinical Practice is an international quality standard provided by the International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (or ICH). The latter is an international body, whose defined standards can be used by governments to transpose into regulations for clinical trials, involving human subjects.

The hunt for the first brave Health 2.0 experimenters has begun. The place: Austin, Texas and the surrounding counties. Nearly 1.5 million people live in Central Texas, over half of them in family units. They are educated well above the national average, have more wireless capability than any other city after Seattle and San Francisco/Bay Area, and are considered a blend of the “weird” in Austin, and the “soccer mom” population in outlying communities. They also have a mixed population, mostly white and a third Hispanic, and one out of four has no health insurance.

My garden grows beautiful roses. I go out in the early morning when the dew is still on the blooms and choose a full near-bursting bud. The petals are thick, rich in color and velvety soft to the touch. I cut the stem at a sharp exposing angle and plunge it immediately into a waiting vase of warm water...this, I am told, keeps flowers fresh the longest.

The wildflowers this year have been the best in years; whole hillsides are purple with lupine, great swathes of orange poppies and golden mustard glow in every direction. Gorgeous!

About 2 years ago in the summer of 2006, there were perhaps 3-4 sites where one could rate and review physicians. As the summer of 2008 approaches, there are over 30 such sites. All of these sites are competing for the same eyeballs, hoping these eyeballs might also submit a review for a physician or three. Needless to say, there is no single dominant player -- not one has crossed over a million ratings. And given the current state of these web sites, no viable player from amongst these appears likely to emerge.

Physician ratings are here to stay, and trying to decipher them can be a bit overwhelming. Navigating through the aggregation of information can cause a bit of confusion and spinning for most folks.

My grandmother used to tell me I'd catch more flies with honey than I would with vinegar, that I'd have better success accomplishing my ends by being positive.

Several years ago I suffered from reflex sympathetic dystrophy, a painful and uncommon sympathetic nervous system disorder that can be disabling. It was still possible to find references to it on the net that called it a psychiatric disorder, although by that time it had been generally recognized as a physical disorder with an accepted course of treatment.