Internet in Medicine Course Week 9: Google Story and Medical Search Engines

I launched the world’s first elective course at a medical university focusing on web 2.0 and medicine for medical students in 2008. Now this is the 4th semester and the 9th week was dedicated to the Google story and medical search engines. Here is the outline of my presentations.

First slideshow: The Google phenomenon

• The first Google search engine in 1998
• The founders, the basic concept, the workplace
• Presenting the best Google applications: News, Groups, Docs, GMail, Images, Google Ads, Scholar, Talk, Youtube, Google Earth, Maps, Calendar, Trends (Flu Trends), Reader, Alerts, Translate, Google Fight

• Also some of the dead ones: Google Lively and Knol
• Talking about 23andme and how our genomic profiles will affect the future of healthcare

Take-home message: Google can make our lives easier. The question is how close we should let it come to us.

Second slideshow: Medical Search Engines

• How to search on the web (Google tricks)

• E-patients search at imedix.com, webmd.com, medgle.com
• Pubmed tricks

• Pubmed Faceoff
• Sciencerollsearch.com
• Biowizard, trend trackers
• Image search (Bing.com), video search
• Semantic concept, chacha.com?

Take-home message: Search like a professional and help your patients search properly online.

Next week I will give the last slideshows this semester in which I will present the results of the surveys students filled.