Molly Merrill

One day after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck Virginia, two new surveys by the American Red Cross suggest that the uptick seen on sites such as Twitter and Facebook is part of a growing trend of Americans turning to social media in response to emergencies. "Social media is becoming an integral part of disaster response," said Wendy Harman, director of social strategy for the American Red Cross.

A new Facebook app has been developed with the aim of boosting medication compliance in young transplant patients.The software, developed by UI Children's Hospital physician and members of the hospital's information systems team, is called Iowa MedMinder. The app is customized to each patient's circumstances and creates a pop-up box listing all of the medications to be taken that day. The box will appear on their Facebook page, and the patient clicks on the medications that have been taken. That information is then relayed back to the primary physician.

Federal officials are challenging software application developers to design new Facebook applications to help people prepare for emergencies and get support from friends and family after an emergency strikes - from personal medical emergencies to natural or man-made disasters.

Fifteen community groups across California have been awarded more than $5 million through the California e-Health Community Awards to adopt telehealth technology for the rural areas they serve.The awards were announced August 18 by UC Davis Health System and the California Telehealth Network (CTN) and are designed to assist the communities in becoming best-practice examples in the use and integration of technology to improve health and healthcare for local residents. Recipients of the Broadband Adoption Model eHealth Communities Awards:

In the age of social media and text messaging, one would guess teenagers would prefer those methods of contact over something more antiquated like the telephone. But the opposite is true, according to research from Georgia Health Sciences University.The research is based on the responses of 188 ninth through 11th graders in four rural Georgia counties who were asked how they preferred to be contacted about their participation in a Georgia Health Sciences University research study.

Meaningful use remains the strongest driver to implement electronic health records for physicians, according to a new survey that finds both potential EHR buyers and current users valuing the technology, but with substantially different perceptions and expectations.

During UC Irvine's White Coat Ceremony on Friday each member of the School of Medicine's incoming class of 2015 will receive an iPad as part of its initiative to provide students with a digital medical education.

EMR and mobile medical app companies have little to fear concerning the guidelines put out by the FDA, according to healthcare market research firm Kalorama Information.Kalorama, which studies mobile medical app markets, previously estimated an $84 million market for mobile medical apps and expects accelerated growth rates in this segment of the mobile apps industry.

Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and foursquare may be important keys to improving the public health system's ability to prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine.From earthquakes to oil spills and other industrial accidents to weather-related events like heat waves and flooding, the authors suggest that harnessing crowd-sourcing technologies and electronic communications tools will set the stage to handle emergencies in a quicker, more coordinated, more effective way.

If you are a woman, between the ages of 25-44, non-Hispanic white, employed, college educated, have an income at or above 300 percent of the federal poverty level and have private health insurance, you are more likely to use the Internet to search for health information, according to a recent survey. These findings are based on data from the National Health Interview Survey, which was conducted in 2009 by the National Center for Health Statistics and authored by Robin A. Cohen and Patricia F. Adams.