Actually, there is now an iOS app of Starfall (just the alphabet portion)

In fact, she's not a fan of computers that have those old clunky "mice" anymore... Here's the best of the apps we've found:

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monkey-preschool-lunchbox/id328205875?mt=8

Of course, the "Cut the Rope" and "Fruit Ninja" games are good in there "can't lose" modes.

Starfall app (same as the website)

PBS.org (warning - essentially streaming video - you need to moderate use of this one!)

Possibly, although I'm less pessimistic about their potential. I could see sites like WebMD and others revived a bit with this kind of "premier" EMR-interpretation service, although it would be entirely optional. As with other subscription services, customers will only pay if they feel the content is worthwhile, and a brand gets damaged if this is abused. For instance, use of TurboTax doesn't result in an influx of spam for dubious financial investments.

There are some obvious benefits, and a number of potential drawbacks to this trend. I personally would like to have electronic access to my medical records, however I'm concerned about what the implications would be for health care quality and costs. I work in a sector that is involved in standardization of medical records, so take this with 2 grains of semi-informed salt, and call me in the morning:

Benefits

• Some patients may have the interest, background, and temperament to actually improve their health by exploring their records and trends
• Physicians will be held to a high level of scrutiny (by the patients) on the quality of their EMR entries

Drawbacks

• Some patients may be confused or upset by what is in their records, costing more either in clarification or (in extreme cases) legal challenges
• Physicians may feel compelled to either "dumb down" or "soften" established clinical terminology (e.g. obese), making it less efficient (and more error-prone) for medical professionals to interchange information about the patient through the EMR

• In the longer run, assuming that patient portals to EMR data allow users access to the standardized EMR formats (a myriad of standards, really), I expect to see some new companies developing software to help patients interpret and track their healthcare (beyond what the portal provides). These sites would require patient approval, but would be free to analyze and recommend the EMR outside of the constraints of the "healthcare entity" policies. That is, the EMR is the raw "spreadsheet" of health statistics, and I would expect to see Intuit (Quicken) or Mint-like companies and services come along to make more sense of it.

Surely we can inject Red Bull instead of water, and get all our daily energy needs met!

I suspect my 8 year old, low-functioning ASD son would also not keep on a wrist bracelet, but I'm intrigued enough in this article that I'm going to buy him a cheap watch and see what he does. The form-factor may be an issue. Given my son's level of functioning (barely verbal), if there was a safe implant tech available (and affordable) that would let me track him within ~1/2 mile, and had a failsafe to start transmitting a locator signal to authorities once he exceeded the range of one of the families smartphones (or some device), I'd buy it, and I suspect many other parents of low-functioning ASD kids would as well.

but shouldn't it really be at number 0?

OK - as a parent of a six-year old with "primary" autism (e.g. low-functioning), I'd like to clear the air on a few points:

• "Most" of the parents of autistic kids don't buy into the vaccine-causes-autism bunk - only a very vocal minority, which unfortunately our media amplifies
• The mechanism behind autism is, as you undoubtedly know, not well-understood. In the absence of a good understanding, this kind of uninformed speculation thrives.
• Lives have been lost as a result due to botched "Chelation" therapies, and money is being made by the self-styled DAN doctors who tell desperate parents what they want to hear

I have met a number of other parents of autistic kids. Those that are desperate enough to by into these theories are (often) otherwise rational, intelligent people. They are desperate for hope, and feel they owe it to their child to attempt some kind of cure. Whether this is due to denial (of the permanent disability) or unrelenting hope and a moral code that says "anything is better than nothing", I don't know. I do know I can relate to this, to a point, and was frustrated at the limited medical treatments available for my own son. Please have some sympathy for these misguided parents, as the real culprits are the alt-medicine charlatans who claimed to have found the cure, and the DAN doctors who really ought to know better.