Today was the first day of occupy… the Vancouver protests were held at the Art Gallery, about a block from where the conference was. When I left the hotel the protest was peacefully contained in the plaza.

Spent the day in a seminar on mobile technology and psychiatry. Some highlights.

• Be careful about the platforms you choose. In Canada, RIM (Blackberry) is becoming less popular and the iPhone more popular. In Canada, women prefer tablets to phones.
• There are more cellphones than computers — about three quarters of the worlds population have a cellphone of some type.
• They are highly capable — they can take photos of skin with enough resolution that a dematologist can give an initial opinion.\
• Most have a usb serial port which allows other types of monitoring.
• The human part of the equation is the main barriers — concerns about confidentiality, security of data and integration into clinicians work day and practice.
• Simple is good. Complex is not bad. Needlessly complex is bad.\
• Medical apps are not being certified and tested. An app may not make things better — it can make things worse.
• In North America, teenagers live of facebook and their texts.
• There are malicious interchanges on the web (cyberbullying) and dangerous pro cutting and pro anorexia sites, but the bigger problems relate to getting good information about patients from their devices in a way that empowers them and helps them