Medical

Have a cold or a fever? Mess up your knee playing basketball? You don't have to hassle with dragging yourself to your doctor's office. Just grab your cellphone.

Georgia scored an "F" on its reporting of health care costs, according to a report released this week. We're one of 29 states that flunked on the health care price transparency report from the Catalyst for Payment Reform, a nonprofit group that works to improve how businesses and individuals pay for health care.

Earlier this month, when the federal agency that runs Medicare released a database of hospital prices, it felt as though closely held secrets had been unveiled. But soon, there were just more questions: Who charges the most or the least? Why are some costs so high? And if you have insurance, does it matter?

Did you get your flu shot yet? Before you head to your doctor's office or the local pharmacy to get poked in the arm, you should know your flu vaccine options are mighty plentiful this year. Dr. Michael Jhung of the CDC explains the flu vaccine smorgasbord.

The typical cancer patient has to travel an average of 140 miles to get treatment. That can mean a lot of expensive hotel stays for the patient and his or her family as they await care.

Sometimes called it breast cancer's "dirty little secret," lymphedema is a painful and chronic swelling of the lymphatic system that often affects women after breast cancer surgery or radiation.The National Institutes of Health just awarded Georgia Tech a $2 million research grant to study the condition.

Helping cancer research is about a lot more than donating money. The Atlanta-based American Cancer Society is in the final stages of the enrollment drive for its third Cancer Prevention Study, CPS-3. The call is out for up to 5,000 metro area men and women 30-65 who have never been diagnosed with cancer. The purpose of the study is to better understand the lifestyle, environmental, and genetic factors that affect a person's risk of developing or dying of cancer.

The Center for Biotechnology and Genomic Medicine at Georgia Regents University in Augusta recently received $10 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health to continue research studying how genetics and environment might impact type 1 diabetes. The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study started in 2003 as an international collaboration by six clinical centers in the United States and Europe.