There’s been a lot of debate about how to get health-care costs down in America, but simple preventative measures like this should be a no-brainer. Signs, after all, are a lot cheaper than surgery.

In a fascinating short post at fastcoexist, Andrew Price writes of gains in physical activity achieved when a simple sign, Burn Calories, not Electricity, was placed near a building's elevators. The New York Times reports today that handwashing has been promoted effectively in England by placing signs reading Don't Bring the Toilet with You in restrooms. Makes you marvel at how much you can accomplish by choosing your words carefully.

Debra Meyerson was hiking near Lake Tahoe 15 months ago when a stroke destroyed part of the left side of her brain, leaving her literally speechless. It happens to more than 150,000 Americans a year.

But now Meyerson is learning to talk again through an approach that trains the undamaged right side of her brain to "speak." Specifically, it's a region that controls singing.

Here's a fascinating story on NPR about the use of singing therapy for speech recovery after stroke. I'm interested in the technique, in the results that are possible, and in the report of using MRI in identical twins to image the changes the therapy effected. Thanks to Denise Graveline (@dontgetcaught) for digging this one out.

For another story about brain injury, see today's New York Times, When Injuries to the Brain Tear at Hearts.

Hospitals and doctors’ offices, hoping to curb medical error, have invested heavily to put computers, smartphones and other devices into the hands of medical staff for instant access to patient data, drug information and case studies.

But like many cures, this solution has come with an unintended side effect: doctors and nurses can be focused on the screen and not the patient, even during moments of critical care. And they are not always doing work; examples include a neurosurgeon making personal calls during an operation, a nurse checking airfares during surgery and a poll showing that half of technicians running bypass machines had admitted texting during a procedure.

Over at the New York Times, an article about the distractions iPads and iPhones and other devices can cause for medical staff. Hard to laugh this one off, as plenty of evidence is offered, but I've got to say I trust doctors to do what they're supposed to be doing and believe that they have the sense to stay focused. Sort of like the current move to ban all cell phone use by drivers. There's plenty of distractions for a driver besides a phone, and we won't automatically be safer just because the phones are supposed to be eliminated.

Nguyen envisions robots that will be able to measure blood pressure, take a pulse, and conduct blood and urine tests, sending the information to hospital personnel for review. Robots could also be used to monitor home-bound elderly patients who can’t make it to hospitals for checkups.

@RosabethKanter steered me to this one over at Twitter. It's kind of hard for me to imagine letting a robot draw blood.