Is Your Facebook Account Safe? May 19, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Facebook, Medicine, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
As Facebook has over 400 millions users now and as I’ve been writing about the issue of safety in the medical segments of social media for a long time, the following question is becoming more and more relevant. Are your Facebook account settings safe? First, did you know you can search in Facebook updates? Well let’s reveal the potential safety issues in your accounts by using ReclaimPrivacy.
- Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
- Go to your Facebook privacy settings and then click that bookmark once you are on Facebook.
- You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.
- Follow us on Facebook to hear about the latest updates.
(Hat Tip: Webisztan)
Organ donation on Web 2.0 May 18, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Video, Web 2.0.16 comments
A new paper just came out in Health Communication authored by Tian:
This study examines the content of and audience response to organ donation videos on YouTube, a Web 2.0 platform, with framing theory. Positive frames were identified in both video content and audience comments. Analysis revealed a reciprocity relationship between media frames and audience frames. Videos covered content categories such as kidney, liver, organ donation registration process, and youth. Videos were favorably rated.
No significant differences were found between videos produced by organizations and individuals in the United States and those produced in other countries.
The findings provide insight into how new communication technologies are shaping health communication in ways that differ from traditional media. The implications of Web 2.0, characterized by user-generated content and interactivity, for health communication and health campaign practice are discussed.
Just to share an example how social media can raise attention to the organ donor problem, last year I described the Half the Men project:
Personal Genomics Comes to US Drugstores May 18, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Genetic testing, genetics, Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Personalized medicine, Web 2.0.7 comments
I’ve been writing about personal genomics for years. The standard concept of it is that you can order such genetic tests online, send your saliva or buccal swab to the lab where they analyze your DNA, then you can check online what kind of diseases you have elevated or lowered risk for. That’s how Navigenics, 23andMe or Pathway Genomics works. Now Pathway had a major announcement:
San Diego based startup Pathway Genomics announced today that it will begin selling its DNA collection kits at Walgreens drugstores beginning in mid-May, for about $20 to $30. Unlike a pregnancy test, users won’t be able to get results immediately. They will have to send in their saliva sample and then go to Pathway’s website to select the particular test they want. Users choose from drug response ($79), which assesses how well an individual can metabolize certain drugs, predicting the best dosage for that person or whether they will be susceptible to certain side effects; pre-pregnancy planning ($179), which determines whether parents carry mutations for serious genetic diseases; health conditions ($179), which assesses risk for a number of conditions, including diabetes, Alzheimer’s, prostate cancer and more; or a combination of all three ($249). The kits won’t be sold in New York because the state’s laws require medical professionals to be involved in this type of testing.
As you may know, I’m not totally against direct-to-consumer genetic testing, but I really would like to see doctors and genetic counselors in this process. I think selling such kits through drugstores can only happen in the US right now.
Well the Genomics Law Report blog has an extended and very detailed review about this important topic. An excerpt:
What has changed is their visibility. It is just possible that one of the safest strategies for avoiding regulation – out-of-sight, out-of-mind – played a significant role in the regulation (or lack thereof) of DTC genetic testing. Tests once predominantly available only to early adopters capable of seeking them out online will now begin to appear on the shelves of thousands of neighborhood drugstores nationwide. To a greater degree than ever before, genetic testing will soon be available to mainstream America (and subject to the impulse buy). And that, for better or for worse, may be all that it takes to convince some regulators that the time for action is finally at hand.
Introducing the Webicina Advisory Board May 17, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0, Webicina.1 comment so far
I’ve been working hard to make Webicina.com a credible repository of selected medical social media resources and I’ve always wanted to set an Advisory Board up that will help make Webicina more transparent and more efficient by getting comments from the key opinion leaders of health 2.0, participatory healthcare, pharma, nursing 2.0 and the e-patient movement.
Now it’s an honor to present the Webicina Advisory Board (in alphabetical order):
- Phil Baumann, founder of the first real-time conversation of nurses on Twitter
- Dr Mike Cadogan, author of Life In The Fast Lane
- Alexandra Carmichael, co-founder of CureTogether
- e-Patient Dave deBronkart from E-patients.net
- Dr. Vesselin Dimov from Clinical Cases and Images, pioneer of medicine 2.0
- Lucien Engelen, Dutch health 2.0 ambassador, curator of TEDxMaastricht
- Susannah Fox from Pew Internet Research
- Kerri Morrone Sparling from Sixuntilme.com
- Mark Senak from Eye on FDA
- Denise Silber, the French e-health guru
With such experts, I believe Webicina can reach its goal: to make quality medical social media resources easily accessible for everyone for free.
Do you know how much sugar you eat? May 17, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Medicine.5 comments
It’s not that obvious even if you read the labels of food and drinks. Well, Sugar Stacks will help you with this by not just sharing information but also visualizing the sugar content. A few examples such as cola, ice cream and chocolate shake.
TEDx Maastricht May 12, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Conference, Medicine, Medicine 2.0.1 comment so far
Just a short reminder that you should mark this date: April 4th, 2011! TEDx Maastricht will certainly be one to the best events next year, and with a curator like Lucien Engelen, I’m sure medicine and social media will have a top spot.
We will be bringing together a huge diversity of individuals of different expertise that have incredible passion for what they do and are profound in its practice. The theme of this TEDxMaastricht will be “Fueling the next revolution in Medicine & Health”
This year TEDxMaastricht will be holding an event in the spirit of the current innovation and incredible growth within the medical sector. With the growth, emergence and “need” for the sharing of information (for example by means of the internet), no longer does the paradigm exist of the large gap of information that exists between the mainstream individual and the professional. The possibilities have become endless when it comes to either sharing of and retrospectively to the finding of information.
Semantic Web on Video May 11, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine.4 comments
There is no question that the semantic concept will rule the future of web. This video really summarizes what has to be known about this topic:
Student Kate Ray interviewed a flock of researchers, entrepreneurs and other innovators for her 14-minute documentary, Web 3.0. Ray is a journalism/psych major at NYU who has done extensive research on the semantic web. Her subjects include World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee, Hunch.com CEO and inventor Chris Dixon, and a host of other semantic web experts.
Digital IQ Index in Pharma: Which Brand Rules Social Media? May 11, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Pharma, Web 2.0.2 comments
L2 Digital IQ Index for the pharmaceutical industry authored by NYU Stern professor of Marketing, Scott Galloway, ranks 51 of the top U.S. pharma brands according to their digital competence. The list was created by using four criteria:
- Platform (40 percent, including site effectiveness and brand translation);
- Off-Platform Messaging (25 percent, covering digital marketing efforts such as online and mobile advertising);
- Search Engine Optimization (20 percent, based on visibility on top search engines);
- and Social Media (15 percent, defined by presence on popular 2.0 platforms).
You can download the report in PDF.
“Our analysis shows that, despite the challenges inherent in an ambiguous regulatory environment, some brands are innovating online and building a foundation for digital growth once a clearer path is illuminated,” says L2 founder and NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway. “However,” Galloway continues, “the industry as a whole disappoints as most brands offer obsolete technology, anemic content and scant social media programs.”
First Step in a PhD: Peripheral Blood Genomics May 10, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in About me, Medicine, Open Access, science.12 comments
After graduating from medical school last year, I started PhD in the field of clinical genomics in October of 2009. My first paper (Peripheral blood gene expression patterns discriminate among chronic inflammatory diseases and healthy controls and identify novel targets) just came out in BMC Medical Genomics. Publishing our results in an open access journal was a real priority for me. The provisional pdf is now available. The hardest task was to visualize the findings.
Your comments, as always, are most welcome!
Background
Chronic inflammatory diseases including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD; Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis), psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) afflict millions of people worldwide, but their pathogenesis is still not well understood. It is also not well known if distinct changes in gene expression characterize these diseases and if these patterns can discriminate between diseased and control patients and/or stratify the disease. The main focus of our work was the identification of novel markers that overlap among the 3 diseases or discriminate them from each other.
Methods
Diseased (n=13, n=15 and n=12 in IBD, psoriasis and RA respectively) and healthy patients (n=18) were recruited based on strict inclusion and exclusion criteria; peripheral blood samples were collected by clinicians (30 ml) in Venous Blood Vacuum Collection Tubes containing EDTA and peripheral blood mononuclear cells were separated by Ficoll gradient centrifugation. RNA was extracted using Trizol reagent. Gene expression data was obtained using TaqMan Low Density Array (TLDA) containing 96 genes that were selected by an algorithm and the statistical analyses were performed in Prism by using non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test (P-values < 0.05).
Results
Here we show that using a panel of 96 disease associated genes and measuring mRNA expression levels in peripheral blood derived mononuclear cells; we could identify disease-specific gene panels that separate each disease from healthy controls. In addition, a panel of five genes such as ADM, AQP9, CXCL2, IL10 and NAMPT discriminates between all samples from patients with chronic inflammation and healthy controls. We also found genes that stratify the diseases and separate different subtypes or different states of prognosis in each condition.
Conclusions
These findings and the identification of five universal markers of chronic inflammation suggest that these diseases have a common background in pathomechanism, but still can be separated by peripheral blood gene expression. Importantly, the identified genes can be associated with overlapping biological processes including changed inflammatory response. Gene panels based on such markers can play a major role in the development of personalized medicine, in monitoring disease progression and can lead to the identification of new potential drug targets in chronic inflammation.
Medical Community in China May 7, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.7 comments
In the medical blogosphere, we talk a lot about medical community sites such as Sermo.com, Ozmosis.com or Doctors.net.uk and we always mention these as huge communities. Well while Sermo has over 110,000 physician members, the Chinese dxy.cn has over 1.4 million professionals on its site. It has a blog, a conference site, a pharmacy channel, biomedical business information platform, it covers more than a 100 specialties and offers thousands of jobs. I tried to translate the mission statement with Google Translate:
Lilac Garden Biomedical Science and Technology Network ( DXY.CN ) was established in July 23, 2000, since its inception has been committed for the majority of medical professionals to provide specialized life science platform. With professionalism and strong accumulation, the deepening and development of professional exchange, lilac garden from the first day only a few people see the message board, has grown into the largest and most popular pharmaceutical industry professionals to network media platforms.
Now I’m looking for Chinese doctors who would help us create a Chinese section for PeRSSonalized Medicine, the easiest medical information aggregator that features only selected resources. If you know someone, please let me know.
