Science Foo Camp 2009 by Nature Video September 7, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Scifoo, Video.add a comment
I attended this year’s Science Foo Camp in San Francisco and it was a one-in-a-lifetime experience. Of course, I covered the event in several posts. Now Nature Video published a video featuring the organizers and key participants.
PeRSSonalized Cardiology: News and Resources September 5, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, PeRSSonalized Medicine, Web 2.0, Webicina.Tags: cardiology
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I launched PeRSSonalized Medicine to help patients and doctors keep themselves up-to-date more easily, without any kind of IT knowledge. It is an easy-to-use, free medical information tracking tool that lets you select your favourite resources and read the latest news and articles about a medical specialty or a medical condition in one personalized place.
Now here is the newest category, PeRSSonalized Cardiology with all the quality news sites, blogs, peer-reviewed journals and web 2.0 tools. Many thanks to Dr. Ted Portnay for sharing so many useful links and suggestions.
Some reasons why it is unique:
- You can search in the database. It means you will find medical information only from a quality selected portion of the world wide web.
- You can personalize any of the sections.
- You can also receive the newest Pubmed articles focusing on your search term. Just insert your field of interest, a therapy, a condition, etc. and click Search. Then you can add the newly created box to your personalized medical “journal”.
- It’s meant to be a community-based project so we are open to suggestions. Please let us know which quality resources should be added to the database.
WolframAlpha Community: Medicine and Health September 4, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Bioinformatics, Biotechnology, Community Site, Medical Search, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0, WolframAlpha.1 comment so far
I use WolframAlpha because sometimes (if I know exactly what I want to find) it saves me plenty of time and clicks. If I want to calculate BMI, Google lists me several calculators. WolframAlpha calculates it itself. If I want to find information very fast about a clinical marker, Google gives me resources, WA gives me the best answer in one click. I also use it for ICD classification, as it’s more easily accessible than Wikipedia; for epidemiological data and other calculations.
To sum it up, I think WolframAlpha is for those who perfectly know what they want to find and want to save time and clicks. For other search queries, Google is still the best.
Now WolframAlpha launches communities and forums.
Some medicine-related forums and interesting discussions:
A national network of genetics educators September 4, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Education, genetics, Medicine, Web 2.0.add a comment
I’m glad to see such a great initiative as the GENIE from the University of Leicester. How can we expect patients and doctors to understand and use the results of genomic tests properly, if genetics isn’t included in basic and medical education as much as it should be.
GENIE (Genetics Education Networking for Innovation and Excellence) is based within the Department of Genetics which is internationally recognised for its pioneering, revolutionary research and dynamic teaching by academics at the cutting edge of their discipline.
GENIE will take a national lead in developing innovative approaches and resources for genetics education. The GENIE initiative will incorporate two networks, a real network of institutions engaged in genetics teaching and a virtual network in the form of a web-based Education Centre providing an internationally accessible database of resources and information. The GENIE networks will not only impact on genetics education locally, nationally and internationally, but will have wider implications through novel approaches to develop generic skills and through impact on outreach resources for promoting public awareness of science and widening participation in science education.
Don’t forget to check the Virtual Genetics Education Center out.
Mayo Clinic Talks About Twitter September 4, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Education, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Medicine 2.0 Course, twitter, Video, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
No matter how many useful web tools we have in medicine and healthcare as long as nobody teaches healthcare professionals how to use these. Mayo Clinic now informed doctors and medical librarians about how to get closer to social media through Twitter.
I also try to provide students and professionals with practical examples about medicine and health 2.0 during my credit course that runs at the University of Debrecen. The third semester will launch in 3 weeks.
NeuroTouch September 4, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medical Imaging, Medicine, Radiology.add a comment
Barbara Duck informed us about a new development, NeuroTouch, that will hopefully lead to a new era in neurosurgery.
NeuroTouch, the prototype simulator developed by Canada’s National Research Council (NRC) and several other research groups, gives surgeons a dry run in virtual reality before entering the operating room, potentially reducing mistakes.
First, patient data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is rendered into a 3-D, high-resolution model of an individual’s brain. After the model is loaded into the system, doctors can touch and manipulate tumors and other virtual objects on screens in real time using a physical instrument resembling a scalpel. The instrument has six degrees of freedom and re-creates the force-feedback of the real tool and the varying resistance of tissue in brain regions with differing toughness. Meanwhile, photo-realistic on-screen imagery shows the simulated surgery, including bleeding and pulsing gray matter.
Choose a genome to sequence! September 2, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Genome, science.add a comment
What Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist, did on the New York Times is called science journalism, I mean science journalism. A few excerpts of her recent article, The Fantasy Genome Project:
Here’s a game for a rainy afternoon. If you could pick any organism to have its whole genome sequenced — what would it be?
At the moment, our ability to interpret whole genomes is patchy: it’s like trying to read a foreign language with an incomplete dictionary and grammar. We don’t yet know what most genes do, or how they interact with each other.
But just because we don’t yet understand all the information that genomes contain doesn’t mean they aren’t useful. Consider, for example, the single-celled being Cryptosporidium parvum. This is an intestinal parasite of humans and other animals; it belongs to a group known as the apicomplexans, which includes a number of nasties such as Plasmodium, the bugs that cause malaria. The whole genome sequence of Cryptosporidium revealed that it is missing several of the genes that had been identified as potential drug targets in some of its apicomplexan relatives. Attacking Cryptosporidium will thus require a different strategy.
HealthBase and the Semantic Fail September 2, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medical Search, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Scienceroll Search, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
I wanted to write about Healthbase, a new medical search engine, but David Rothman was faster. He found some serious mistakes in the search itself.
Well, the concept to reduce the number of results to a definitive list of categories is a good one. But it leads to some mistakes. First, it searches in databases such as Wikipedia. You cannot find a bigger fan of Wikipedia than me, but still it’s not suitable for such a search engine.
Second, sometimes there are strange things in the results. Only one example below. It seems to suggest that a possible treatment for diabetes is mouse. Of course, it just found articles mentioning mouse models in the research of diabetes treatments, but it cannot deal with the information properly.
So there are a lot of things to do before becoming the ultimate engine. Until then, my suggestion is Scienceroll Search, the first personalized medical search engine:
Quality Medical Information: A Story September 2, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Blogging, Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, PeRSSonalized Medicine, Web 2.0, Webicina.3 comments
I launched PeRSSonalized Medicine to help patients and doctors keep themselves up-to-date more easily, without any kind of IT knowledge. Since the official launch, I’ve been receiving requests to add new blogs to the database, but as I must assure quality, I can only add resources that fits all the Webicina quality criteria.
The authors of TrustTheEvidence blog contacted me 2 months ago and I asked them to get a Health on the Net Foundation accreditation, because it’s important to have the HONcode badget in order to get into the list of PeRSSonalized Medicine. They understood the point, did everything to get the accreditation and now they just received it.
It’s a pleasure for me to improve the database with such a useful and accredited blog.
Please let me know if you know more resources in these categories.
More information: PeRSSonalized Medicine: Your Own Medical Journal
Personalized Genetics: DTC Genetic Tests Are Hype September 1, 2009
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in 23andMe, Genetic testing, genetics, Personalized medicine, Web 2.0.2 comments
- Seven Reasons Why Home DNA Tests Are Hype (Genetics and Health): Very valid points by Grace Ibay.
- Next Up – Navigenics (Genome Alberta)
Three weeks ago Medcan started offering the Navigenics direct-to-consumer test coupled with a family history and a follow-up once the results are in. If you order the test directly from Navigenics you also get access to counsellors, but in a clinical setting the options to really expand and act on the relevant information become much greater.
According to Jill Davies only about 20% of those direct to Navigenics customers actually take the opportunity to follow up with the company and I found that somewhat surprising.
- My ‘non-human’ DNA: a cautionary tale (New Scientist): Blaine Bettinger found an error in the DNA profile of the deCODEme service.
The false profile seems to be the fault of a software bug.
No harm was done, but the incident serves as a cautionary tale for personalised medicine. As we move towards a future in which readouts from our genomes will routinely be queried by computer systems to help doctors make important clinical decisions, similar glitches could cause prescribing errors – with patients being given drugs at the wrong dose, drugs that won’t work, or ones that could even trigger serious side effects in people with a particular genetic make-up.
- 23andMe (Moving Forward): Interesting arguments against 23andMe.
