Green Health

I have published several articles on green health - and how it is important for health providers to promote ecologically sustainable practices. These articles have been published as video editorials on www.youtube.com - just put "yellowlees and green health" into the youtube search engine and you will find three video clips. This is an important issue as changed practices in the health system in the US could save massive amounts of energy, paper, gas and plastic wastage. I am giving a paper on this topic at this years American Telemedicine Association conference in Las Vegas at the end of April - see www.atmeda.org for details of the conference. Health, as usual is way behind other industries when it comes to modernizing by making "green" changes, just as it has been in introducing information technologies, but the industry will get there in the end. One of the major opportunities is to use information technology to reduce wastage and cut down carbon emissions - by promoting EMR's, telemedicine, server virtualization, homecare and electronic disease management, as well as a whole series of internet related health care systems we can do our part by keeping the planet green as much as possible. Let's face it - it makes no sense for health providers to actually make future generations sick by using poor environmental practices when their whole aim in life is to improve health...!!

This article is based on excerpts from the recently published book “Your Health in the Information Age – how you and your doctor can use the Internet to work together” by Peter Yellowlees MD. Available at http://www.informationagehealth.com/ and most online bookstores. A shortened version of the book, available as an e-Book for download to iPhones, Blackberry's, PDA's and other mobile devices called "4 simple steps to better health - an insiders look" is available at Smashwords at www.smashwords.com/books/view/1271