Birdie is one of my favorite fellow D-bloggers. Her colorful images and sincere words are always worth a double-take. She recently compiled a coffee table book that will evoke the same reaction from your party guests — or anyone you know living with illness.

A Guest Post by Birdie B, creator of Aiming for Grace

As a little girl, I always wanted to be Lois Lane. Now that I’m grown up, Susannah Fox is my heroine of sorts.  She’s the former editor of the U.S. News & World Report website, who’s now become a national authority on Americans’ use of the Internet, in particular when it comes to “participatory medicine.”

For those of you who haven’t discovered this yet: the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation launched a so-called Blogger Round Table back in January.  It’s organized by Allison Blass with two members of the JDRF communications team. Participants are: me, Kerri, Bernard Farrell, Scott Johnson, Allie Beatty, Manny Hernandez, Scott Strumello, Sandra Miller, and Gina Capone.

You think the economy is bad?  Maybe, but the tsunami of new companies creating health/medical tools on the web continues unhampered.  A few to highlight today:

As usual, the annual ADA Scientific Sessions Conference was exhilarating and exhausting. You have to be in awe of such a confluence of the pharmaceutical and technological advancements that enable us PWDs to live happy and productive lives.

American Public Media, the people who bring us public radio programs, are very smart. They not only have some very cool ideas, but they also know how to implement them. The latest is something called the Health Care Idea Generator, an “online activity that allows the public to share ideas and solutions regarding America’s health care system.”

So a diabetic walks into an endo’s office and says, “Hey Doc, can I get your email address in case I have any follow-up questions?” And the doctor replies, “Sorry, we do medicine, not email.”

I made that up myself. No, really… I did.

Future visions of mobile health tools are all very well and good, but what about RIGHT NOW? A couple of new gadgets/services you might like to know about:

Wireless technology leader Qualcomm Inc. has some very big ideas about untethered devices for healthcare, and in particular, about using your mobile phone as a health aid. I was lucky enough last week to get a “back stage pass” for a chat with Don Jones, the company’s VP of Business Development, who’s considered a visionary on the application of wireless technology to the healthcare and medical device sectors.

Scott Shreeve, an MD and progressive Health 2.0 thinker over at Crossover Healthcare , pinged me on this discussion yesterday. He’s trying to help people understand and see the difference between Health Insurance and Health Care. “People need both, but it blurs to the point of confusion when you try to mix the two in a single financial instrument. Most insurance provides for catastrophic coverage of health related risk, however, it does not function well as a financial instrument for ongoing maintenance,” he writes.