What better way to add a little bit of education during the wait time. I know that in every doctor’s office I’ve ever been to I’ve read every single thing posted or written on the wall and even read most of the outdated magazines that have been throught the ringer. I think the best solution is actually providing wireless internet access to me in the waiting room, but what about all those people who don’t have a laptop(or didn’t think to bring a laptop) to the Dr’s office?

The idea of having some podcasts available is a great idea. They could be educational as is described in a recent post on EMRUpdate where it gave some good ideas for sources:

Search engines
Sites like Medscape
Ipodder and Itunes both have searches for popular health related RSS feeds with audio

feed://feeds.feedburner.com/healthbeat

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=47403

You could easily digitize your own voice for short lectures on smoking etc., and have them available on the hard drive.

However, why not also include some more popular selections also?

I think this kind of model is perfect for the college health market too. Students are really into technology and would enjoy the use of this information. Also, many colleges have health educators who could spear head the project and create content that would be appropriate for the patients that are visiting. Not to mention advertising special benefits of a college health center like free and confidential HIV tests. I’ve wanted to do it on an even broader version with video and streaming the video and audio across the internet and allow questions where the internet provides nearly complete anonymity. I’ll have to take this into consideration for the new building we’re doing at my office.