RateADrug.com and How to Check Side Effects Online April 29, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in eHealth, Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.Tags: drug, side effect, Web 2.0
7 comments
David Rothman has recently linked to RateADrug.com and said:
I’ve seen stupid applications of social media in healthcare, but this may take the cake as the dumbest I’ve seen in a good while.
I believe the concept that patients know better which drugs work the best is good, but you just cannot make sure those patients reviews are not coming from pharma representatives or companies. That’s why you can never trust the information on that site.
Mashable also has a review about RateADrug.com.
If I have to show a site to my patient that focuses on drug interactions and side effects, I would say Pharmasurveyor.com is the best one to use.
I’ve come across the third example on the BioCS blog. SIDER seems to be quite useful as well.
After using side effects to predict drug targets, we now created a public database of side effects with a total of 62269 side effects for 888 drugs. The database was created by doing text-mining on labels from various different public sources like the FDA. Furthermore, I developed rules to extract frequency information from the labels, this worked for about one third of the drug–side effect pairs.
Medicine 2.0 Congress in Toronto in 2009 April 29, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Conference, Medicine 2.0, Medicine 2.0 Congress, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
Last September, I attended one of the best medical events, the Medicine 2.0 Congress where I met a lot of unique, innovative people. The conference will rock again in 2009. Unfortunately, I cannot make it this time, because I will get my medical license and diplome on that very day.
Medicine 2.0 is the annual open, international conference on Web 2.0 applications in health and medicine, also known as the World Congress on Social Networking and Web 2.0 Applications in Medicine, Health, Health Care, and Biomedical Research.
The congress is organized and co-sponsored by the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the International Medical Informatics Association, the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, CHIRAD, and a number of other sponsoring organizations.
The deadline for abstract/panel proposal submissions is May 15, 2009.
What’s on the web? (29 April 2009) April 29, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in twitter, Video, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.1 comment so far
- Grand rounds, the blog carnival of the best of the medical blogosphere is up at Sixuntilme.com.
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Four Steps In Using Twitter for Research (Heidi Allen)
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Medical Crowdsourcing on Twitter (33 charts)
There are 60,000 Fellows in the American Academy of Pediatrics, for example. Assuming all maintained Twitter accounts, at any given time there would be a boatload of babydocs available for dialogue. Then consider the case of a solo doc the Texas Panhandle who finds himself with a simple dilemma or question that needs immediate feedback. Depending on the human filter tailored by that pediatrician, consensus would be close at hand.
- Mayo Clinic Health Manager Website Launched (Medgadget)
- Purdue creates first virtual clean room for training pharmacists (Lafayette Online)
Swine Flu: Follow Online! April 27, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in eHealth, Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Microbiology, Visualization, Web 2.0.16 comments
As swine flu sparks global concern, we can follow the cases and the news online quite easily. Maybe swine flu will be the first global disease that we can really follow minute by minute online. I’m not even surprised there is a swine flu kit you can already buy on Amazon.com:
Twitterers such as CDC Emergency and Healthmap informs us about new cases minute by minute:
HealthMap is one of the best public health tools:
The websites of CDC and WHO are updated often:
Seeking health information online: does Wikipedia matter? April 26, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Medicine 2.0, science, Web 2.0, Wikipedia.5 comments
Laurent MR and Vickers TJ from the Faculty of Medicine, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium published an article about Wikipedia and its health information database.
OBJECTIVE To determine the significance of the English Wikipedia as a source of online health information.
DESIGN We measured Wikipedia’s ranking on general Internet search engines by entering keywords from MedlinePlus, NHS Direct Online and the National Organization of Rare Diseases as queries into search engine optimization software.
RESULTS Wikipedia ranked among the first ten results in 71-85 % of search engines and keywords tested. Wikipedia surpassed MedlinePlus and NHS Direct Online (except for queries from the latter on Google UK), and ranked higher with quality articles.
CONCLUSION Based on its search engine ranking and page view statistics, the English Wikipedia is a prominent source of online health information compared to the other online health information providers studied.
Believe me, I’m one of the biggest fans of Wikipedia. I’ve been working on medical articles in Wikipedia since 2004!
We are working hard and trying to put proper references into the medical entries there, though it will still take a lot of time to create a really comprehensive and medically reliable encyclopaedia.
But do the authors think pageviews and search engine rankings can indicate the real quality of a medical article? Is that a joke?
If I can manage to make my article climb up on search engine result pages by using SEO tricks and direct people to my site, it means my content is medically appropriate?
I tell you the answer, it is not!
As Wikipedians say, Wikipedia is a fantastic resource, but should never be the last one you finish your research with…
Further reading:
- Medical wikis: the future of medicine?
- Launching MedPedia: From the perspective of a Wikipedia administrator
- Google vs Wikipedia? No!
- Medicine in Wikipedia: Reliable Information?
- Wikipedia: Reliable Sources and Gene Wiki
- Why to work in Wikipedia: I’ve been mentioned in Nature Medicine
- Ask Dr Wiki vs medicine in Wikipedia
- Medicine in Wikipedia and Citizendum
- Why to use Wikipedia: answer for Eye on DNA
UPDATE: Michael Laurent, one of the authors of the article, shared the full text with me and it turned out it’s quite easy to misinterpret the core points of the publication by reading only the abstract. I made that mistake myself as well. Here is what Michael had to say:
Wikipedia should not be ignored when it comes to online health information. It ranks high on Google and now we’ve determined exactly how high. That’s something that you read in almost any article on Wikipedia, but nobody had proven so far.
New England Journal of Medicine: Facebook applications April 26, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medical journalism, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.4 comments
New England Journal of Medicine has always been one of those medical journals that are really open to the web 2.0 world. Almost 2 years ago, I wrote about a few of their projects:
- Google Gadgets
- NEJM Full-Screen Video Player
- Audio Interview Feed with Article PDF
- Most popular at NEJM.org: list of the most blogged/cited articles
- Image Challenge
Now they also created some Facebook applications. Though, I believe they should focus on Twitter instead of Facebook.
Launch Your Career with LinkedIn April 26, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Online image, Video, Web 2.0.4 comments
Building an online reputation/profile/image is crucial for professionals and for students as well. When I talk about online reputation, the example I always mention first is LinkedIn, the best professional network globally. Now LinkedIn launched a ’09 Grad Guide:
Your LinkedIn profile is your connection to over 35 million professionals in the business world. Use it to show the world who you are. To help the world find you. This network will not just help you find a job, but GET a job.
I’ve already covered the topic:
DNA Day 2009 April 26, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Blogging, DNA, genetics, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
April, 25 is officially the DNA Day when we write about DNA-relates issues. Yesterday, I was offline but now I would like to mention a few articles that focused on DNA on this important day.
In recognition of National DNA Day on April 25, the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) will be participating in several community outreach iniciatíva to promote the importance of knowing one’s family health history and consulting with a genetic counselor who can help answer questions about genetic testing.
Blogs about the DNA Day:
Collaborative Research with Patients: Migraine Treatments April 20, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Collaboration, Community Site, eHealth, Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Innovation, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.2 comments
Do you remember the research Patientslikeme.com did on lithium and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis by using the data uploaded by patients?
Now CureTogether has a similar approach but in migraine treatments.You can check how many users tried those treatments and how many of them had positive or negative results. Very interesting concept. Actually this is a live collaborative research project.
