Health Alert: iPod for the heart

Imagine you have been diagnosed with a cardiac dysrhythmia, such as atrial fibrillation, and you want to listen or view an expert explain the disorder while taking the train or bus to work. Now you can. Podcasting technology is being used by healthcare professionals to assist patients' learning. Grayson Wheatley, a thoracic surgeon at the Arizona Heart Institute, constructed a website that offers videos about heart disease that the public may access and download to MP3 palyers. The podcasts may illicit questions that patients have not thought of, and therefore the patient may ask the physician the next time they have an appointment. Wheatley reports patients who listen to the heart podcasts are better informed and ask more pertinent questions when compared to the patients who do not access the educational podcasts.