For the past few years, we've been keenly interested in how games can be used to encourage healthy behaviors.  My colleague, Jane McGonigal, even developed and prototyped a street game called CryptoZoo on behalf of the American Heart Association.

TEDMED 2010 kicked off last Tuesday night with a performance by opera singer Charity Tilleman-Dick.  At first I thought, "Well, she has a lovely voice, but what does that have to do with anything?"  Then she started to tell her story, and what an incredible story it is.  In short, Charity is still alive—and able again to perform—as a result of the double lung transplant she received more than a year ago at the Cleveland Clinic.

This weekend, I read with interest an article that appeared in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago entitled, "The Laughing Guru."  Turns out that Forbes and TIME have covered laughter yoga recently, as well.

Okay, I admit it, I took the bait. I try not to write about every mobile health app I come across, but this one definitely caught my attention.

Here in Silicon Valley, the lore—and allure—of the garage model for innovation is strong.  I've heard it said, "It has been successful for IT and hardware . . .

Over the last couple of years, we've been interested in the idea that health spreads—for better or worse—through our social networks, and the tremendous potential this understanding has for designing networked-based interventions for optimized health results.  Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler have published some seminal work in this area, using the rich data available from the Framigham Heart Study.

In the past year or so, I have had the opportunity to cross paths several times with Brian Mossop, a really smart neuroscientist/blogger whose wife, Kit, is a senior clinical scientist at Proteus, one of my all-time favorite Silicon Valley bio-tech companies.  In their spare time, Brian and Kit have developed a unique, science-based approach to smoking cessation called Project Kick Butts.  Here's the quick pitch: