ReadWriteWeb

If your life is anything like mine, you've probably got a list of things you'd like to do differently each day. New habits to form, old habits to break. There's got to be a way that a well-developed web app can help with that, right?

Enter Streak.ly, a service in beta built by a group that includes Kyle Bragger, creator of the exclusive design and developer community Forrst. Streak.ly lets you set daily goals, tracks how many days in a row you've accomplished them (your streak) and reminds you each day if you haven't checked your daily goals off a list. It's simple, and I like it. We've got 500 invites to try out the service below.

Google unveiled a new way to display its search results this morning, called Instant Search. Instant brings search results to your browser, as you type. Letter by letter - it's amazing. The feature will be rolled out to all users over the coming hours and days but is available to be tested here.

It's fast. It's satisfying. But if respected critics like Nicholas Carr have raised the alarm that Google's legacy search product might make us stupid - what might Google Instant do to our brains and thinking? There are at least two ways to look at the question.

Practice Fusion, one of the SaaS electronic medical record (EMR) pioneers, has announced a Dell-based hardware system bundle for doctors spinning up to its free cloud-based EMR system. Ryan Howard, CEO of Practice Fusion, walked us through what it means to bring the cloud to a small clinic - ground zero in the medical industry's transition to electronic medical records.

The proposition for doctors is simple: The U.S. federal government has proposed incentives to move to electronic systems. A doctor can qualify for $44,000 or $66,000 in federal stimulus dollars for completing the migration in the next several years.

"The writing is on the wall that there will be baseline privacy legislation introduced," said John Morris, general counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology at a Congressional hearing on location data and privacy yesterday. "It will require location be treated as sensitive data, like medical data. You'll need to do more than just post a disclosure statement."

We're entering an era of location as platform, but should that location data be as fundamentally private by default as medical information is?

Last week, we were at the mHealth initiative conference in Washington D.C. The keynotes were all about the impact mobile health applications are having in shaping the future of the health care system. Nothing demonstrates that more than the iPhone. In the 18 months since it was released, it has been perhaps the biggest thing to happen to health care electronic records, which has seen billions of dollars worth of investment in past decades.

Mobile and wireless health applications directly impact the individual's health and have the promise of ensuring that when a patient leaves a doctor visit, they don't become "lost" in the system. It allows consumers to be engaged with health and wellness in their daily lives and connect back to their health care provider.

While maybe not the most visually compelling product, Healthful Apps represents an interesting new trend for 2010. Created by Apps for All, the product recommends customer-reviewed iPhone health applications in a variety of categories including autism, relaxation and memory. Although the company's first effort is focused on health, the larger industry-wide question remains - will this year's branded iPhone app be a recommendation app?

Feeling a bit under the weather? Soon you'll be able to cough into your mobile phone for an instant diagnosis. A research firm called STAR Analytical Services is working to develop software that can analyze the sound of a cough and identify it as either associated with a common cold, the flu, or something worse - like pneumonia or another serious respiratory disease. Just as doctors have been doing for years, the software will "listen" to the wetness or dryness of a cough and determine whether all you need is a lozenge or if you need to come in for a doctor's visit instead.

Last month, we told you about Google's Flu Trends' expansion to 20 countries around the world. The program monitors mentions of flu symptoms to predict - and hopefulyl help prevent - flu outbreaks.

Today, Google has announced a new feature of Maps that will allow users to find flu vaccines near them. In partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the American Lung Associaltion, and Flu.gov, Google Maps is now helping users search for seasonal flu vaccination locations, H1N1 flu shots, or both together.

Some conversations are best illustrated by educated strangers. Instead of listening to my mother drone on awkwardly about oral contraceptives, breast examinations and what she deemed "special lady time", I wish I could have saved us both the embarrassment and consulted a health-related video site. Instructional video platform 5min is teaming up with HealthCentral to create just that. HealthCentral's vast network of sites like Foodfit, MyBreastCancerNetwork.com and WellSphere will gain new video content via 5min's matching system.

We've all seen how semantic technologies improve search results, but rarely do we see those results put to use in such a targeted way. Jens Tellefsen, VP of Marketing and Product Strategy at NetBase Solutions spoke to ReadWriteWeb about today's launch of healthBase - a medical search and discovery application. Using a variety of semantic indexing techniques, the company crawls the web's leading medical and health players including the Mayo Clinic, PubMed (US National Library of Medicine) WedMd, Medical News Today and Discovery Health. What makes this a truly unique technology is that rather than requiring any data manipulation from humans, Netbase's search results are completely automated.