General Health and Medical Career Blogs

You can get the latest news in the health and medical industry, as well as learn helpful information about a variety of professions in health and medical careers.

1. Health Careers Blog from About.com provides information about careers in health and medical fields. Includes news about prominent players in medical careers.
2. Health Care Employment Opportunities This blogs offers information about careers in health care, as well as posts about health and wellness.
3. Cal’s Career Center Health Team is a blog from University of California Berkeley that is aimed at helping pre-med and pre-health students figure out what they need to do to land jobs in medical careers.
4. Premier Health Careers Blog offers information about the medical and health professions. Also includes information on hot jobs, so that you know which medical careers are in high demand.
5. Explore Health Careers helps potential medical workers learn more about the environment, and see what is needed in today’s health care industry.
6. Health Careers Center at the University of Minnesota is very helpful in terms of sharing information about medical careers, public health and different fields related to medicine and health care.
7. Health 2.0 Blog offers information on the latest practices and health technology for medical careerists and students.

Nursing Blogs

Nursing is one of the medical careers in highest demand right now. There are a number blogs devoted to the nursing profession, offering a number of insights and stories about working in this demanding profession.

8. Emergiblog takes a look at nursing today, and the issues that faces nurses — and their patients.
9. Codeblog looks at life as an Intensive Care nurse. Interesting insights into the nursing profession.
10. The Nursing Site Blog is written by Kathy Quan, who has been an RN for more than 30 years and shares her experiences.
11. Head Nurse provides information on different situations that arise in a number of medical careers.
12. Call Bells Make Me Nervous looks at the adventures of a new nurse, and her look at medical careers and nursing today.
13. Impacted Nurse follows the exploits of an experienced male nurse.
14. Nursing Degree Guide is a good place to go to find information about getting a nursing degree and working in a medical career.
15. PixelRN blogs about the ups and downs of a nursing career.

Physician Blogs

Many physicians have blogs. You can read about what it’s like to be a doctor, and some anecdotes from a variety of medical fields.

16. A Change to Cut is a Chance to Cure looks at life and medicine from the perspective of a general surgeon.
17. RangelMD.com provides a look at the medical and health care industry, including regulations, career information and other issues.
18. DB’s Medical Rants offers insight into medical and health care issues, from a doctor’s point of view.
19. NHS Blog Doctor provides a look at health and health care, as well as explores the career of a doctor.
20. DoctorMental writes about his career as a physician, and adds thoughts on other issues facing the health care industry.
21. KevinMD.com provides information about medical trends, the industry and what it’s like to be a doctor.

Dentist Blogs

Learn what it is like to be a dentist, and learn how to look for dental jobs.

22. Dentist Job Blog provides a look at different jobs available for dentists, and where the hot markets for dentists are.
23. Pediatric Dentistry offers helpful information on what it’s like to be a pediatric dentist, and provides insight on different uses for dentistry.
24. Take Care Of Your Teeth provides information on dental hygiene and a look at practices in the dental medical field.
25. Dental Blogs is meant for those interested in the dental field. It provides a look at oral health, and some of the issues facing dentistry.
26. The Digital Dentist looks at how tecnology can enhance dental practices. This blog is aimed at helping career dentists accomplish more.
27. Brookside Dental’s Blog focuses on cosmetic dentistry. Information about careers and issues in a dental practice.

Medical Technician Blogs

Don’t want to become a doctor or a nurse, but still want to work in the medical field? Medical technician can be a great career.

28. The Student Radiographer follows a student technician and provides insights into the career.
29. Tomography Blog provides information about working as a medical technician as well as hosting a place where medical technicians can connect.
30. Cool MRI Stuff offers interesting information on health care, working as a medical technician and tips on living in general.
31. X-Ray Technician Blog looks at the ins and outs of being an x-ray technician, and includes information on jobs available to technicians.
32. Musculoskeletal and Orthopedic MRI focuses on different techniques that can help you improve your work as an MRI technician.
33. RadGirl Radiology Blog is written by a student embarking on a career as a technician. Interesting information on career outlooks as well.

Medical Transcription, Coding and Billing Blogs

You don’t have to actually be working on patients in order to have a medical career. You can provide support through medical transcription, coding and billing.

34. Medical Transcription Blog at the MT Herald offers a look at the job of being a transcriptionist and provides helpful hints for making a career of it.
35. Medical Transcription: What’s in it for you? focuses on tips and hints for becoming a successful medical transcriptionist.
36. Medical Transcription Blog provides information on becoming a transcriptionist, job outlook and earnings information.
37. Medical Billing Blog offers helpful information for those who want to be involved in medical billing, with a special emphasis on those with their own businesses.
38. Medical Coding and Billing looks at how you can find jobs as a coder or biller.
39. Medical Coding Blog focuses on how you can make medical coding a good career.
40. Medical Coding Journal offers information on compliance and billing, helping professionals with their careers.

The following twenty-five bookmark-worthy links are categorized, and each link is listed in alphabetical order within each category. This method assures our readers that we do not favor one resource over another.

Nutrition

You are what you eat, and others are making it easier to find those healthy food choices. Use the ‘cheat sheets’ below to learn quickly about how to eat healthier.

1. Food for Thought: Nothing like a cheat sheet for a cheat sheet – this list provides reviews on some books that might change your health through changing your eating habits.
2. Learn about Local Harvests: CSAs, or Community Supported Agriculture, is making a comeback. Learn about your local resources at Local Harvest.
3. Nutritional Scoring System: Developed by a recognized team of nutrition and medical experts from leading health organizations and universities, the NuVal System is a food scoring system that helps consumers see – at a glance – the nutritional value of the food they buy.
4. Stake Out Your Territory: You may live in an area filled with bad choices. Breaking bad eating habits will be harder in the areas covered in this Forbes article.
5. Ten Worst Foods You Can Eat: Here’s an easy list of items to avoid at all costs if you want to get or stay healthy.
6. The Five Most Unhealthful Fast Food “Value Menu” Items [PDF]: If you’re operating on a slim budget, which value menu items from fast food restaurants should you avoid at all costs? This report, from the Cancer Project, will tell you.
7. Unhealthy Chinese-Food Choices: Do you believe that eating Oriental food is healthier? You may be in for a surprise.

News

If you want a real cheat sheet, then you’ll use press release information that newspapers and other news media use. The following can put you ahead of the game and provide you with news you may have missed.

8. EPA Newsroom: Learn more about environmental news in your area through this site.
9. Eurekalert: This site is a goldmine for cheat-sheet fanatics. They cover every possible health category, bringing press releases straight to your computer on topics such as medicine and health and agriculture, or the food you eat.
10. FDA Press Releases: The FDA, or Food and Drug Administration, issues warning, recalls and more.
11. Harvard School of Public Health: Use these news items to learn more about international health issues – topics that may not be covered locally.
12. HHS Newsroom: The press releases issued here concern news generated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
13. National Institutes of Health: This Web page lists news and events offered by the nation’s medical research agency. Most of the news here focuses on catastrophic diseases such as cancer, heart disease and AIDS.

Medicines

At some point in your life you may need to take medications. Are they safe? What do they do? Are there generic equivalents available? These cheat sheets answer all those questions and more.

14. AAAAI Allergy and Asthma Drug Guide: If you suffer from allergies, learn quickly about brand names, active ingredients, doses and which types of allergy they are used for at this site.
15. Consumer Tips: The California Department of Consumer Affairs offers a list of items to do when you need to take prescription drugs. Very easy.
16. Generic Equivalent Listing: Some brand name medications are available under multiple names. This list may not include all of the brand names that are available for a specific drug, but it’s a good start.
17. Drugs.com Pill Identifier: This site goes one step beyond the RXList site listed below, as it covers non-generic drugs as well as generic medications.
18. RXList: If you’re having trouble identifying generic pills, you can use this site to gain control.
19. Tips from Pharmacists: Read through this list once, and you’ll learn almost everything you need to know about prescriptions. But, keep it on hand to follow the links to learn more.

Sports and Exercise

Exercise is for people who have willpower, right? Not necessarily. If you can walk in your sleep, then you’re exercising. It’s really that easy. The following cheat sheets will make it easier.

20. Back Exercises for Beginners [PDF]: Trouble with the back? Use this cheat sheet, one that includes photos, to go through a simple routine quickly and easily.
21. Diet and Exercise Tips: Want an easy list that will add to your healthy lifestyle? This one covers it all.
22. Facts About U.S. Government’s Exercise Tips: Talk about easy – this article does all the thinking for you and provides you with a free printable exercise log sheet.
23. Food and Exercise Tips to Lose Weight: Use the information here to learn more about calories and how to burn them.
24. Sports Injury Prevention and Treatment: Here’s a quick rundown on how to prevent injury and how to treat an injury once it happens.
25. Weight Loss Diet and Exercise Cheat Sheet: Want to be reminded how many calories you need to lose to lose a pound of fat? Or, do you need to be reminded about what you need to do today to lose that pound? This is your cheat sheet.

To limit this list to 50 projects means that we’ve tapped only the tip of the mountain of open source projects available to the healthcare industry. They encompass every subject from ultrasound technician education to national health care database privacy. The following list is categorized alphabetically, and each link under every category is arranged alphabetically as well. We use this methodology to show that we do not favor one resource over another.

Ambulatory Care

1. ClearHealth: Medical software designed by clinics and hospitals and powered by Open Source software. ClearHealth includes modules for document storage, customizable reporting/forms, lab results and prescription management.
2. EGADSS: EGADSS is an open source tool that is designed to work in conjunction with primary care Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems to provide patient specific point of care reminders in order to aid physicians provide high quality care.
3. GNUmed: Use this free/open source software, released under the GNU Public license to andle your patient’s records.
4. IndivoHealth: Indivo is a personally controlled health record system that enables patients to own complete, secure copies of their medical records.
5. OpenEHR: In the clinical space, it is about creating high-quality, re-usable clinical models of content and process – known as archetypes – along with formal interfaces to terminology. OpenEHR could take you there.
6. OpenEMR: OpenEMR is a free medical practice management, electronic medical records, prescription writing, and medical billing application.
7. OpenMRS: OpenMRS is a community-developed, open-source, enterprise electronic medical record system framework.
8. Tolven: An opportunity to use electronic Clinician Health Record (eCHR) and electronic Personal Health Record (ePHR) systems.
9. Ultimate EMR: Ultimate EMR was designed as a Commercial Open Source application rich in features and that can be combined with many other products and tools.
10. WorldVista EHR: WorldVistA EHR is an open source electronic health record based on the highly acclaimed VistA system of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Collaboration

11. GNU Projects: The Free Software Foundation provides a variety of free and open source software and publishes a list of various open source licenses and comparative features.
12. Medsphere: Medsphere.org is a community gathering place where healthcare administrators, clinicians, developers and enthusiasts can interact, share, and collaborate.
13. Open Health: This Yahoo! Group focuses on discussion of FOSS health I.T.-related topics.
14. Open Source Health Informatics Working Group: IMIA OSWG brings together experts and interested individuals from a wide range of health professions and with a range of interests in the potential application of free/libre and open source solutions within their domains of expertise.
15. OS-WG: The mission of the OS-WG (Open Source Working Group) is to act as the primary conduit between the broader open source community and AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association).
16. OSHCA: OSHCA’s membership comprises a community of people, civil societies and professional bodies in health care and informatics industries that promotes the Free/Open Source Software Concepts in Health Care.

Integration

17. Gello: ANSI-accredited HL7 standard for creating computable, unambiguous clinical queries.
18. i2b2: i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside) is an NIH-funded National Center for Biomedical Computing based at Partners HealthCare System. Their work is designed to facilitate the design of targeted therapies for individual patients with diseases having genetic origins.
19. IHE Open Source: This project holds an implementation of the Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS) profile as defined by IHE (ihe.net).
20. Mirth: Mirth is an open source cross-platform HL7 interface engine that has established itself as the baseline for healthcare information exchange. Mirth allows messages to be filtered, transformed, and routed based on user-defined rules.
21. Records for Living: OpenHealth services allow for a wide variety of safe, secure reports and services to be delivered to consumers, leveraging the power of their electronic medical records.

Imaging/Visualization

22. BrainStorm: BrainStorm is an integrated free Matlab toolkit dedicated to Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and Electroencephalography (EEG) data visualization and processing.
23. Medical Exploration Toolkit: Advanced two- and three-dimensional visualizations with easy application building and efficient case management.
24. MicroDicom: MicroDicom is application for primary processing and preservation of medical images in DICOM format.
25. O3-RWS: O3-RWS is the Radiology Workstation of the Open Three (O3) Consortium. O3-RWS is an Open Source, IHE based, Internationalized, Modular and Portable Image Display.
26. SMIViewer: A free (soon to be open source) DICOM volume analyzer for research/teaching on Windows.

Medical Practice Management Software

27. CARE2X: Care2x integrates data, functions and workflows in a healthcare environment.
28. iHRIS Suite: Open source HRIS solutions, distributed under the GPL, to supply health sector leaders and managers with the information they need to assess HR problems, plan effective interventions and evaluate those interventions.
29. MirrorMed: MirrorMed is a free and open source EHR and practice management system written in PHP. This is a Web-based application that is capable of running a healthcare practice.
30. OpenDental: Previously known as Free Dental, OpenDental is an open source Practice Management Software licensed under the GNU General Public License.
31. OpenTAPAS: Technology Assisted Practice Application Suite (TAPAS) is a model to assist primary care physicians use technology in a targeted manner in their practices. It is an open source (GPL 2.0) collection of tools.

Online Publications

32. PLos Medicine: A peer-reviewed open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science.
33. LinuxMedNews: This is your site for Linux, Free and Open Source medical software news, and has been since March 2000.

Programs

34. Debian Med: The goal of Debian Med is a complete system for all tasks in medical care which is built completely on free software.
35. Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework (OHF) Project: The project is composed of extensible frameworks and tools which emphasize the use of existing and emerging standards in order to encourage interoperable open source infrastructure, thereby lowering integration barriers in healthcare informatics technology.
36. NHS: A UK NHS Interface (CUI), program guidance and product library available to NHS users and service providers using N3.
37. ODIN: ODIN is a C++ software framework to develop, simulate and run magnetic resonance sequences on different platforms.
38. Open Three (O3) Consortium: An innovative open-source project dealing with the multi-centric integration of hospitals, RHIOs and citizen (care at home and on the move, and ambient assisted living), based on the about 60 HECE bilateral cooperation Agreements with healthcare facilities. Use their imaging, collaboration and other software.
39. OpenGalen: Their goal is to promote healthcare through stimulating the use and development of GALEN experience and technology as a basis for teaching, training and services in the area of medical terminology, language, knowledge and information and in anything directly or indirectly related in the widest sense.

Public Health and Biosurvellance

40. EpiSPIDER: This experimental map is generated from news reports from both expert-curated and general news sources on epidemics.
41. Influism: To be used for pandemic preparedness planning by health care offices, this download computes the effect of interventions like antiviral treatment of cases and social distancing.
42. OpenEMed: Biosurveillance and clinical data repository based on Web services and modules. Offers solid interoperability and federation of clinical data.
43. RODS: “Real-time Outbreak and Disease Surveillance” (RODS) is an open-source public health surveillance software.
44. Sispread: This open source tool was created to help people concerned by public health to easily perform epidemic simulations and to analyze their results.

Software

45. ATP III Cholesterol Management: This interactive guideline tool will assist the clinician in implementing the ATP III Cholesterol Guidelines at the point of care on a Palm OS.
46. BMI Calculator : This calculator runs on any device running the Palm Operating System (Palm OS) and PocketPC 2003.
47. Heart Attack Signs: This Palm OS program provides physicians and other health care providers talking points for discussing heart attack warning signs and survival steps with patients.
48. IPath : iPath is an open source platform for telemedicine applications such as consultations, case discussions, virtual staff meetings and more.
49. MedMapper: Medical decision making algorithm tool. Visual design tool generates Tcl/Tk code. Non-programmers can design interactive algorithms. Generates notes for inclusion in medical record.
50. Zephyropen : Open source SDK for health monitoring devices and downloads for OSX, PC and cell phones.