H1N1 Pandemic Maps and Science June 14, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Microbiology, Web 2.0, Wiki.4 comments
I just came back from Spain where there are more than 480 confirmed H1N1 cases, but no one seemed to be worried about it. I’ve already covered this important issue:
Now here is a collection of online maps focusing on H1N1 cases. And an interesting article on Discover:
Last month I scrambled to write a story about the evolution of swine flu for the New York Times.
All of the scientists were completely open with me. They didn’t wave me off because they had to wait until their results were published in a big journal. In fact, they were open with the whole world, posting all their results in real-time on a wiki. So everyone who wanted to peruse their analysis could see how it developed as more data emerged and as they used different methods to analyze it.
Webicina e-Guide: How to keep yourself up-to-date in medicine? June 12, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, RSS, Web 2.0, Webicina.add a comment
Webicina, the medical web 2.0 guidance service, published a free e-course, How to keep yourself up-to-date in medicine. Practical pieces of advice about how to follow the medical literature easily or how to get notified when someone mentions your name online. Step-by-step tutorials and guides.
Take a look at the table of contents:
- How to keep yourself up-to-date? (Pubmed, RSS and tags)
- Step 1: Tools that help you keep yourself up-to-date (Trend Trackers)
- Step 2: What is RSS about? (RSS and web feeds)
- Step 3: Aggregators I., Desktop-based feed readers
- Step 4: Aggregators II., How to use your browser?
- Step 5: Aggregators III., Bloglines, Netvibes or Google Reader?
- Step 6: How to follow a medical journal?
- Step 7: Where should you start?
In a few days, Webicina will release a new e-course about how to give a remarkable slideshow.
Illumina: Newest Member of the Personalized Genetics Market June 11, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Genetic testing, genetics, Personalized medicine.2 comments
After Navigenics, 23andMe, DecodeMe, Knome or the recently described Pathway Genomics, Illumine joins the direct-to-consumer genetic testing market.
Illumina, Inc. today unveiled a service program to provide high-quality personal genome sequencing for consumers. This is the first service to offer complete coverage of the human genome sequence for under $50,000. The offering includes sequencing of an individual’s DNA to 30 times depth, providing information on SNP variation and other structural characteristics of the genome such as insertions, deletions and rearrangements.
“Rapidly decreasing costs have made sequencing a pervasive technology that can begin to be accessed at the consumer level,” said Jay Flatley, CEO and president of Illumina. “We are entering a new era in genomic health, where information from an individual’s genome will begin to inform lifestyle decisions and ultimately assist with health management. We believe that in the long-run personal genome sequencing will become a routine practice and the information generated will enable physicians to make better healthcare decisions for the consumer. By providing this service now, Illumina can help catalyze the development of the infrastructure and physician education that will be necessary as genomic information becomes medically more meaningful.”
Illumina intends to create a social community for the education and exchange of information for those who have had their genomes sequenced. As more information becomes available, participants will be in a position to mine their personal genome sequence data to understand their identity in ways which have never been possible.
Teen diagnoses her own disease: Being Empowered! June 11, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in e-patient, eHealth, Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Pathology, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
Elizabeth Cohen published a fantastic article on CNN’s Empowered Patient column about a teenager who diagnosed her own Crohn’s disease.
Her doctors, no matter how hard they tried, couldn’t figure out the cause of Jessica’s abdominal distress.
In her Advanced Placement high school science class, she was looking under the microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue — slides her pathologist had said were completely normal — and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohn’s disease.
Although Terry was relieved to finally get a diagnosis, it was also tough for her to hear that she has such a serious disease.
Being empowered is a more than positive attitude, no matter what the majority of doctors think about it. I’ve been creating and designing resources and packages for empowered patients for a long time now. It’s hard to find them, but it’s really worth it. They can become equal partners in the treatment. And that’s what is important.
iCPR Lite: Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Training on iPhone June 11, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Education, eHealth, Health, Health 2.0, Innovation, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Web 2.0.4 comments
Federico Semeraro shared iCPR Lite, a great iPhone application, with me. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is a crucial procedure and everyone, I mean everyone, should be trained to be able to perform CPR any time when needed. This iPhone application helps you how to do it.
More about it on D-Sign…
Imperial College London in Second Life: Virtual Patients June 11, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medical education, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Second Life, Video, Virtuality, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
A few months ago, I wrote about the e-Learning Faculty of Imperial College London that created a spectacular and useful Second Life tool in medical education. Now they came up with something innovative again: a score system by which medical students can see what they are doing right or wrong while examining a virtual patient.
Further reading:
- Top 10: Virtual Medical Sites in Second Life!
- How and Why to use Second Life for Education?
- Scientific Events in Second Life?
- 23andMe in Second Life: LIVE
- Nature’s role in e-Science: Second Life conference LIVE
- Famous Scientific Bloggers in Second Life: LIVE
- SciFoo lives on in Second Life: Web 2.0 and Medicine
- Live Blogging Today: First Medical Simulation in Second Life!
- Unique Medical Simulation in Second Life!
- Everything about Second Life and Medical Education
- New Educational Tools in Second Life
- Genetics in Second Life
- Virtual Medical Center: the Future of Medical Education
- NHS London in Second Life
- Interview about the genetic revolution of Second Life
- Electronic Medical Records in a Virtual Hospital: Interview!
Health 2.0 Conference in Bilbao, Spain June 9, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in About me, Conference, Health 2.0, Web 2.0.8 comments
Tomorrow, I will travel to Bilbao, Spain to attend a great Health 2.0 event where I will give a slideshow focusing on the implications of web 2.0 for medical professionals.
Hopefully, I will tweet and blog live about the whole conference on Thursday.
See you soon!
Twitter’s psychic experiment June 6, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in twitter, Web 2.0.3 comments
I can’t really comment on this:
In the first scientific experiment to be conducted via the social messaging service, experts will investigate “remote viewing” – the psychic ability to identify distant locations.
Members of the public will be asked to “tweet” their impressions of a randomly chosen spot in the UK visited by one of the researchers.
Then they will vote for which of five photographs on a website shows where the visitor was standing.
The trial will be repeated with visually different locations four times.
If at the end of the experiment the votes correctly identify at least three targets, it will support the existence of extra-sensory perception.
Seriously. What’s next?
FDA Transparency Blog June 6, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Blogging, Pharma, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
Here is a new blog that will certainly get some serious attention. The FDA Transparency Blog is a promising project:
The purpose of this Transparency Blog is to discuss various ways in which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could provide information to the public about what FDA is doing, the bases for FDA’s decisions, and the processes used to make agency decisions. The blog is expected to run for the next six months (June through November 2009). We will provide blog posts and updates over the coming weeks asking for your feedback on these topics. The first blog post is to inform you of this process and our policy. Thereafter, we will be asking for your feedback on specific topics.
And I also have to mention the other side and its relationship with social media. Have you ever wondered why drug companies don’t use Twitter? Here is the answer:
To their credit, the blog over at GlaxoSmithKline responded to the story, saying “the FDA’s recent communications on sponsored links raises questions about how Twitter can be used to communicate about prescription drug products. For example, FDA has made clear that the short 100 or so character ad copy used in sponsored links cannot be used for anything deemed to represent what the product is used for, without also including the safety information about the product in the sponsored link – a difficult challenge in such limited space.”
Better Health Network: Newest Member is Scienceroll June 6, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in About me, Blogging, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
I’m very thankful to Val Jones, MD who gave me the opportunity to become the newest member of the unique blog network of Better Health where you will find a Scienceroll post once a week from now.
Better Health is a network of popular health bloggers, brought together by Dr. Val Jones, founder and CEO. Participating bloggers maintain their own individual blog sites, but offer a portion of their content to Better Health for syndication purposes. Better Health maintains a blog feed that is featured on participating blogger, partner, and supporter websites. Our network reaches approximately 10 million unique users per month and is growing.
Better Health’s mission is to support and promote healthcare professional bloggers, provide insightful and trustworthy health commentary, and help to inform health policy makers about the provider point of view on healthcare reform, science, research, and patient care.
