Switch2Health: Get Rewards for Being Active August 18, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Innovation, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
Switch2Health initiated a great challenge in which health is being used as a currency. If you have the S2H Replay and are physically active, you’ll earn reward points and get gift cards or buy other things.
Switch2Health (S2H) believes that one of the most powerful tools in promoting healthy and active lifestyles is personal motivation. S2H improves Health & Wellness by integrating products based on patent pending technology with a scalable rewards platform to motivate and reward customers and employees for physical activity.
Semantic MEDLINE Prototype August 17, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medical Search, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, pubmed, Semantic Web, Web 2.0, Web 3.0.8 comments
I have to use Pubmed several times every day and in most cases I have to switch to Google Scholar as I think that is really user-friendly and I can customize my search queries more easily. Although, I would love to do the same with Pubmed. Well, the Semantic MEDLINE Prototype which is a research and development project of the Cognitive Science Branch, Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, U.S. National Library of Medicine might solve my problems in the near future:
Semantic MEDLINE is a prototype Web application that summarizes MEDLINE citations returned by a PubMed search. Natural language processing is used to analyze salient content in titles and abstracts. This information is then presented in a graph that has links to the MEDLINE text processed.
Currently, the results from 35 PubMed searches (including a variety of disorders and drugs) are available to be processed. The 500 most recent citations (from the date of the search) are available for further processing by Semantic MEDLINE.
I just did a search for “Breast Cancer (clinicaltrials.gov), top 500 recruiting studies”:
DNA Dilemma on Newsweek August 17, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Genetic testing, genetics.1 comment so far
Mary Carmichael at Newsweek had a great series of articles focusing on direct-to-consumer genetic testing. An excerpt:
I’ve been following DTC genetics since 2007, when wide scanning first became available to the public. Since then, a number of writers have gotten wide-scale genetic tests and expounded on the results. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if I’m the last science reporter on earth with virgin genes. (Technical virgin: My doctor gave me a cystic fibrosis carrier test when I was pregnant.) Initially, I put off getting a full-genome scan because I wasn’t sure how useful such a test would be. I had no particular reason to take one, save curiosity. I wouldn’t expect to find anything serious and potentially life-altering like the Huntington’s disease gene in my results, because my family medical history is thankfully rather boring. The data most likely to be medically relevant to me would concern the genetics of common diseases, and at the time, many comprehensive and well-designed studies of those were still getting underway. I decided to wait a few years and see how research progressed. But here I am, three years later, still unsure.
- DNA Dilemma: The Full Interview With the FDA on DTC Genetic Tests
- DNA Dilemma, Day Four: Should Genetic Tests Be on the Market?
- DNA Dilemma, Day Three: How Reliable Are At-Home DNA Tests?
- DNA Dilemma Part Two: What Do Genetic Tests Show?
- DNA Dilemma: Recommended Reading
- DNA Dilemma: Should I Take a Genetic Test?
- DNA Dilemma: The FAQs
2010 startup success, Siri: Healthcare Implications? August 16, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Video, Web 2.0.2 comments
Back in February Robert Scoble said: if you miss Siri you’ll miss the future of the Web. Well, he must be right, and after checking Siri, you’ll probably think the same. Let’s watch the demo:
Just imagine:
“Make an appointment at Mayo Clinic”
“Find a gastroenterologist around New Haven”
“Connect me to a cardiologist”
And many more…
If you’re interested in the startup aspects of Siri, watch this video:
The illustrated guide to a Ph.D. August 16, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Infographics, science.add a comment
I started PhD in clinical genomics last year and sometimes it really feels like what is shown in the figure. Click for the full series of pictures:
DoSurgery: Community Site for Surgeons August 13, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Community Site, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Surgery, Web 2.0.add a comment
Do-Surgery.com is intended as an e-learning and e-sharing resource for orthopaedic surgeons and it is now added to my huge list of community sites for scientists and physicians which features 49 community sites. You have to register on Do-Surgery in order to access the content.
Friendfeed for Scientific Collaboration August 12, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Collaboration, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, science, Web 2.0.2 comments
Almost two years ago, I asked my Friendfeed community a question:
“What is your favourite blog story (that happened to you because you’re blogging)? I would like to share the best stories with students at the Medicince 2.0 credit course.”
I received plenty of answers and later this open Google Document was created for a similar purpose: how Friendfeed helped your career. A few examples:
- Advice on new lab material purchase
- Request for other Life Scientists to review an NIH grant prior to submission.
- Extraction of the information about the proteins in wikipedia. Potential paper to come.
- Andy started an entry on Wikipedia for Open Notebook Science and several people added content and support to have it accepted by editors
Feel free to share Your story!
PeRSSonalized Medicine: Russian Social Media Resources August 11, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, PeRSSonalized Medicine, Web 2.0, Webicina.5 comments
We launched PeRSSonalized Medicine to help patients and doctors keep themselves up-to-date easily, without any kind of IT knowledge. It is an easy-to-use, free medical information aggregator that lets you select your favourite resources and read the latest news about a medical specialty or condition in one personalized place. We already have 12 national versions.
The newest one is the Russian version! The platform is in Russian and the blogs, news, Twitter users and journals are also the best ones in that language. Please let us know if you want to see PeRSSonalized Medicine in your language.
Some reasons why PeRSSonalized Medicine 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 is a community-based project. Please let us know which quality resources should be added to the database.
Health 2.0 News: Centrifuge for Labor and Behind Healthcare.gov August 11, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Genetic testing, Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Statistics, Visualization, Web 2.0, What's on the web?, Wikipedia.add a comment
- Measuring Hospital Quality: The data presented is from The Joint Commission’s 2009 Annual Report on Quality and Safety
- Centrifuge for Helping Women in Labor: An unbelievable patent
At the moment the sensitivity and specificity of a lot of genetic tests for complex, polygenic disorders (for which we haven’t yet identified all the genetic variants that increase risk) are unlikely to match those of standard diagnostic or screening tests. What’s likely is that the predictive capacity of these tests will improve as more variants are identified, and/or if additional non-genetic information is included in the test.
- Statistical analysis is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for people who love stats. It’s 100% free, no registration required.
Drugs and Pills: Best Apps and Tools Online August 11, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in e-patient, Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Pharma, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
Last week I shared two applications that let users check potential side effects and drug interactions, and based on the comments, here are some more.
The first is Surveyor Health:
The second is WorstPills:
Pillbox is the result of a partnership between the National Library of Medicine and the Food and Drug Administration. It helps you identify unknown pills and tablets by parameters such as form, color, size or imprint.
Epocrates free mobile drug reference:
MedScape Drug Interaction Checker:
If you know more, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
