One of the best reasons to be actively following Twitter and connecting with other smart people around professional and social networks is that you often will come across lots of great links to the newest studies or fascinating blog posts.

Thanks to a great Edelman Digital team (most hat-tip worthy: a great Community Manager who loves to share), I find myself with stacks of of articles about new developments in online health and communication. So many of them are fascinating, but they may not be enough for a full, focused Check-Up. But, as a midday reading list, this collection is quite useful.

In the nature of sharing, here are five links related to Digital Health from the last few weeks worth a bit of your time today. What links, stories, blog posts or new networks have you seen recently?

The Health Tweeder

As we keep learning about the way people discuss diseases in social networks, an interesting tool to check out is The Health Tweeder. It is a nifty visualization of the content on Twitter that discusses different disease states.

The 1st Canadian Pharma Ad on Facebook?

A great catch by the folks over at Marketing 4 Health: an ad for a Canadian pharmaceutical company (King Pharmaceuticals) was spotted in the sidebar for some Facebook users. Of course, every country faces different regulations for direct-to-consumer marketing, but the author is right to give credit to the organization for innovating within its governments guidelines.

Future of Health: Heart Powered Tech

Could your heartbeat be used to provide power to run other electronic devices in your body? For the answer, check out this great story shared by PSFK.

The (Questionable) Link Between Health and Wealth

I’m a sucker for a good infographic, and I’ll be darned if this isn’t a great one shared by GOOD. The question at hand: is there really a link between the wealth of a country and its population’s health? The math says there is, but that’s only when looked at via life expectancies; the author of this post goes beyond the generalized to share a few more insights to consider.

Hello Health

In the past, we’ve mentioned the divide that exists between patients and physicians online. Hello Health is trying to change that, making a shared network where the two groups can co-exist and connect. The group also presented at the recent Health 2.0 conference in DC – a perfect fit for the patient-empowerment movement.