Disease-specific blogs may be good for patients, providers

Patients have been using consumer-oriented healthcare IT for some time now through popular sites as WebMD and search engines for looking up information. While many of the healthcare websites have forums and chats for patient-to-patient communications, physicians and nurses should try to turn their patients onto disease-specific blogs as a simple way to help their patients stay informed. Here are a few examples, please comment if you know more.

• Diabetes Mine
• The Skin Cancer Blog
• Autism
• Alzheimers

Simple tip for doctors or nurses trying to help their patients with chronic or long-term diseases: invite them to do a search for their specific disease using the Technorati blog search tool (just enter the name of the disease or common diagnosis terminology in the search box). It works better than broad search engines like Google.