How visualizing health problems through infographics could help solve medical mysteries

In the blog posting, an information specialist designs an infographic to visualizing her own medical history and symptoms related to the auto-immune disease Myasthenia Gravis. She does so in hopes of making the most of my appointment with a new doctor.

The post  includes both her medical history and the infographic that, in her words “charts the progress of my Myasthenia Gravis since I was 13 – not only the hard facts like the medications I was taking at the time, but the way I *felt* during those times and the degree of weakness I was experiencing. Overlaid is the progression of my stomach problems over my lifetime, including the points in time when I took antibiotics.”

Related articles

• When the Patient Designs Infographics (scienceroll.com)
• Infographics Solve Information Overload, Says Visual.ly’s CCO (contently.com)

Most patients don’t need extra tests for diagnosis

A technician performs an electrocardiogram on a patient in the hallway of the emergency room at a hospital in Houston, Texas, July 27, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi

 

(Reuters Health) – Examining patients and taking a medical history are more useful to hospital doctors in diagnosing patients than high-tech scans, suggests a new study from Israel.

Doctors said that when tests such as CT scans and ultrasounds were given to patients right after they showed up at the ER, the imaging only helped in making a diagnosis in about one in three cases…..

Read the article

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