Mayo Clinic has created a comprehensive mobile health application; combining a custom mobile experience with unparalleled expertise and access. Empowering patients with information at their fingertips, this app sets a new standard for health care apps.

The Mayo Clinic patient app provides patients and consumers access to health information and management tips from Mayo’s Web and on-line publications, a list of clinical trials at Mayo, and links to request an appointment at any of our locations.

For a Mayo Clinic patient, the functionality is personalized, providing secure access to their medical record, an up-to-date appointment schedule, lab results and navigation to amenities on Mayo Clinic campuses as well as in the community.

“Mayo Clinic has always put the needs of patients first, and we built this mobile health application based on what our patients said they would find useful to enhance the way they connect with us,” says Sidna Tulledge-Scheitel, M.D., vice dean of eHealth, Mayo Clinic. “Mayo Clinic is now literally an in-your-pocket resource for people across the world, extending beyond our walls and following them wherever they go.”

The Mayo Clinic Patient app is available in the Apple iTunes store. For more information or to download the app visit: https://mabemmcu.mayo.edu/PatientApp

In this video, Kevin Barrett, M.D., director of Mayo Clinic’s neurocritical care unit in Jacksonville, Fla., shares information about stroke – who’s at risk, the signs and symptoms and information about treatment.

According to the National Stroke Association, about 795,000 Americans will suffer a stroke this year, yet most people in the U.S. cannot identify stroke warning signs or risk factors. Many strokes – some studies indicate that up to 80 percent – can be prevented through risk factor management. Visit MayoClinic.com to learn about stroke signs and risk factors.

Journalists: Mayo Clinic experts are available for interview.
• Mayo Clinic neurologist Robert Brown, M.D., stroke expert.
• Mayo Clinic neurologist Bart Demarshalk, M.D. a stroke expert and expert on telestroke program. Follow him on Twitter for stroke, telestroke updates.

Patients across the nation are faced with a dilemma when it comes to mental health care: There aren’t enough psychiatrists to treat their needs. Exacerbating the problem is that when a patient is having mental health problems, they will most likely see their primary care physician who may not have the time or training to effectively treat and diagnosis their ailment. Even if a patient manages to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist, the waiting period to see someone can take weeks, even months.

The Depression Improvement Across Minnesota, Offering a New Direction (DIAMOND) program is aiming to fix this mental health care gap. Mark Williams, M.D., of the psychiatry and psychology department, has taken part in the program at the Mayo Clinic and within Mayo Clinic Health System sites. In a nutshell, DIAMOND gets a patient in front of an advocate who will spend the appropriate amount talking about their potential condition, begin to suggest treatment and get them in front of a psychiatrist within a week of their original visit to the doctor if need be.

Listen to Dr. Williams explain the unique program above. For more information about DIAMOND or to interview Dr. Williams contact, Nick Hanson.

Dr. Mark Frye, chair of the department of psychology and psychiatry at Mayo Clinic, participated in a discussion on state-of-the-art treatments for bipolar disorder Sunday at the 2012 American Psychiatric Association meeting. The panel featured some of the top names in the field of bipolar research and treatment.

Frye called it a fast moving review of how best to treat the acute phase of mania; how best to treat bi-polar depression; how to bring in structures psychotherapies – and discussion about how to keep people well after they’ve been treated.

Arguably one of the most difficult illnesses in mental health, bipolar disorder — sometimes called manic-depressive disorder — is associated with mood swings that range from the lows of depression to the highs of mania.

Our 2012 APA blog posts:
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Our 2012 APA YouTube videos
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Our 2012 APA Photos
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On Saturday May 5 at the American Psychiatric Association meeting, Mayo Clinic Health System psychiatrist Mohit Chauhan, M.D., gave an update on the Mayo Clinic Bipolar Disorder Biobank. Biobanks are a repository used to store human biological samples for use in research of genomics and personalized medicine – in this case gathering data to better treat patients with bipolar disorder.

The potential use for the Bipolar Biobank is twofold: The first is identify what types of genes make people more susceptible to bipolar disorder; and the second is learn which type of medications are more likely to work for an individual based on their genetic mapping.

Researchers are establishing this large-scale biobank of Bipolar Type I and II Disorder, collecting both biologic samples and clinical data from 2,000 individuals ages 18-80. Dr. Chauhan believes the information being collected from the bank will be extremely useful in treating patients in the coming years.

Why do adults sign up children for cancer trials, yet not pursue the latest research projects when they have cancer themselves? There are several reasons, according to a Perspective piece by epidemiologist Sherine Gabriel, M.D., chairwoman of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s Methodology Committee and the William J. and Charles H. Mayo Professor at Mayo Clinic; and Annetine Gelijns, Ph.D., of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Among them:

_ Effective coordination of pediatric cancer research: 90 percent of U.S. children with cancer receive care in centers affiliated with the Children’s Oncology Group, an international clinical research group that includes more than 5,000 U.S. cancer specialists.

_ The frequent separation of medical practice and clinical research, with inadequate communication between the two.

_ Community physicians, who care for most U.S. patients, are often unaware of trials that might help their patients; screening patients, obtaining consent from them and pursuing insurance coverage of care costs associated with trials is expensive and time-consuming; and physicians often are inadequately reimbursed for such efforts.

Solutions include building regional and national research networks like the Children’s Oncology Group, connecting local physicians with academic centers; using social media to engage patient networks; involving advocacy and community groups; and adding participation in research as a measure of physician performance, rather than judging them solely on the number of patients seen and the number of tests and procedures performed; and adding a focus on improved health outcomes to the standards researchers are measured by, rather than just the grants won and articles published, the authors say.

The high participation of child cancer patients in clinical trials seems to be paying off, Dr. Gabriel and Dr. Gelijns note: Survival rates for childhood cancers have quadrupled over the past four decades and now top 80 percent.

A suicide study will be among the research presented by Mayo Clinic psychiatry and psychology experts at the American Psychiatric Association meeting Saturday through Wednesday at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. They also are available to offer expert comment on other research findings. Mayo Clinic presentations include:

Saturday, May 5:

*The Clinical Demographics of the Mayo Clinic Bipolar Disorder Biobank, presented by Manuel Fuentes Salgado, M.D., 3:30–5 p.m. EDT. Location: Room 109B Level 1.

Sunday, May 6:

*Bipolar Disorder: State-of-the-Art Treatments, presented by Mark Frye, M.D., 8–11 a.m. EDT. Location: Room 119B Level 1.

Monday, May 7:

*Presidential Symposium: “New Approaches to Integration of Mental Health and Medical Health Service” with Mark Williams, M.D., 2–5 p.m. EDT, in Room 122 A/B Level 1.

Tuesday, May 8:

*Scientific and Clinical Report, “The relationship of health anxiety to state anxiety, depression, somatic symptom burden, and disability in a tertiary psychosomatic medicine population” by Jeffery Staab, M.D., 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m. EDT, in Room 111B Level 1.

*“Assessment of Suicidal Behavior in Children and Adolescents,” Timothy Lineberry, M.D., from 1:30-3 p.m. EDT, Room 102A Level 1.

To contact a Mayo Clinic psychiatrist for a comment on a study or to inquire about research, contact Nick Hanson at 651-235-2265 or hanson.nicholas@mayo.edu. Follow our tweets at #APAAM12.

This four day event promises to update geriatricians’ knowledge and skills through various learning formats including symposia, workshops, hands-on experience, meet-the-expert and poster sessions.

Representatives from the Mayo Clinic Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging will be on hand at booth #205 to provide information and answer questions on how education, research, and practice come together to improve the quality of life from birth to end of life.

James L. Kirkland, M.D., Ph.D., and Director of the Center on Aging shares the goals of the center and encourages meeting attendees to stop by the Mayo Clinic booth.

ABC’s Nightline aired a special program on transplants, Tuesday May 1, 2012.  Bill Weir and the Nightline crew spent a considerable amount of time at Mayo Clinic in Rochester over the past couple of months interviewing physicians and patients.  Watch the entire episode where patients have been awaiting transplants.

If you want to register to be a donor with the new Facebook program, or if you are already a donor and want to spread the word through social media, it’s easy. The director of Mayo Clinic’s Transplant Center,  Dr. Brooks Edwards , gives  a on how to sign up.

He can be followed on Twitter @BrooksEdwards1

Winner of inaugural dermatology art contest: "Hair Follicle Triplet" by Alex Meves, M.D.

It turns out beauty really is skin deep.  A hair follicle or skin specimen that doesn’t look like much of anything to the naked eye can become a complex, colorful work of art under a microscope.

Mayo Clinic dermatologists struck by the beauty they see in the cellular have started a competition to celebrate art in medicine. The inaugural winners appear in the May issue of the Journal of Cutaneous Pathology. See our poll below to view art in the current contest and vote on your favorite entry.   

“Every single day, dermatopathologists get to see beautiful images under the microscope, and most people never have the opportunity to see that. So I thought it would be a nice way to show not only the science of dermatopathology, but also the art,” says the contest’s creator, Julia Lehman, M.D., a Mayo Clinic dermatopathologist.

Dermatopathologists and immunodermatologists examine skin specimens to help diagnose skin conditions.  For “Hair Follicle Triplet,” the winner of the Mayo dermatologists’ first art contest in 2011, Alexander Meves, M.D., used fluorescent dyes to highlight proteins and took a picture of the result.

See the other winners and runners-up here.

Journalists can download the images on the Mayo Clinic News Network.

Dr. Lehman hopes medical societies will run with the idea and hold similar competitions to highlight aesthetics in their specialties. People in other lines of work can also celebrate the beauty of what they do each day, she says.

“Art can be seen in every aspect of life,” Dr. Lehman says. “You just have to have an open mind and be looking for it.”

Vote on the 2012 entries in our poll: