Health 2.0 News: From Radiation Charts to Data Visualization March 25, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.add a comment
XKCD created this exceptionally helpful chart showing exactly how much radiation exposure you might encounter by doing something like flying from LA to NYC, getting a chest x-ray, hanging out at Chernobyl, living near the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, or sleeping next to another human being.
I worked without gloves. It was hard to see. The mirror helps, but it also hinders — after all, it’s showing things backwards. I work mainly by touch. The bleeding is quite heavy, but I take my time — I try to work surely. Opening the peritoneum, I injured the blind gut and had to sew it up. Suddenly it flashed through my mind: there are more injuries here and I didn’t notice them … I grow weaker and weaker, my head starts to spin. Every 4-5 minutes I rest for 20-25 seconds. Finally, here it is, the cursed appendage! With horror I notice the dark stain at its base. That means just a day longer and it would have burst and …
The report, by WhiteHat Security, a provider of website risk management solutions, found the average website falls into the “always” and “frequently” vulnerable categories – meaning they were exposed more than 270 days of the year. When looking at “window of exposure” across industries, researchers said it becomes apparent there’s a vast difference in the approach to website security.
Healthmash on iPhones March 23, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medical Search, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Web 2.0.add a comment
Healthmash, a Revolutionary Health Knowledge Base and Semantic Search Engine now has its iPhone version as well. Check it out and let us know what you think.
The HealthMash™ semantic health search engine combines universal search and discovery technology with Semantic Web concepts to find relevant health information (drugs, diseases, symptoms, treatments and alternative medicine approaches) from trusted sources on the Web.
Webicina iPhone App: Feedback March 22, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Web 2.0, Webicina.2 comments
Last week, I happily announced that the free iPhone application of Webicina.com is now available in iTunes. Basically we wanted to let you access the curated social media resources we feature on mobile and also provide an interesting and educational game that discusses issues related to quality medical information online and the health 2.0 field. Enjoy and reach the highest score!
The feedback has been amazing.
Webicina iPhone App Helps Navigate Medical Social Media (Medgadget)
Our good friend Dr. Berci Meskó who writes at ScienceRoll and curates Webicina, has a new iPhone app that brings a lot of the medical social media resources into one place. Both patients and clinicians can find sites that are relevant to their specific topics of interest.
Webicina Goes Mobile with a Free iPhone App. (Laika’s MedLobLog)
Webicina has greatly evolved, since I’ve reviewed it 2 years ago in “PeRSSonalized Medicine – and its alternatives“: it covers 80 topics, 3000 resources and 17 languages. Most importantly patients and doctors find it extremely useful to keep up-to-date via this customizable aggregator of quality medical resources in social media (Medical Journals, Blogs, News and Web 2.0 tools). I often see it mentioned on Twitter.
Webicina smartphone app (Ivor Kovic, MD)
I have been testing the app on my iPhone, however it will soon also be available for other mobile platforms as well. For now you can download it for free in the iTunes store. The app is very nicely designed, and the cool thing is that you can browse through all the listed resources inside the app, without the need to go back and forward between your web browser. In just a few minutes of playing around with it, I found some great new resources and reminded myself of all the great content inside the Emergency Medicine category in which this blog is also featured. I can already see that I will be spending many hours exploring valuable new content on my phone using Webicina app, and if you want to stay on top of your game in your field, I strongly suggest you do the same.
Webicina Mobile – iPhone now, Android Later
I think the best value of Webicina may be that it is a central place to direct healthcare professionals who are looking to get their feet wet with social media/Web 2.0 or alternately, it is a good initial place to direct patients who are a bit overwhelmed from trying to dive into the pool of health information online. The next best thing about Webicina? If you think there is a great resource missing from the list, just click on the link to Webicina.com in the app and type it into the ‘suggest a site’ box for possible inclusion!
Webicina goes mobile with a great free iPhone app!
The Webicina iPhone app offers a selection of medical social media resources for medical professionals and for empowered patients. Navigation through the app is smooth and pleasant, offering a great dive through a list of medical specialties and topics.
Push Baby, Push March 22, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Web 2.0.2 comments
The author of one of my favourite science microblogs shared this link with me. The site’s name is Push Baby, Push. Pregnant women can text their due date for free weekly advice during pregnancy. Physicians can sign up, edit the text messages, add new ones and invite patients via their mobile numbers. There is no information available about the business model if there is any.
Gene expression profiles in peripheral blood for the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases March 21, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in DNA, genetics, science.6 comments
It’s a pleasure to share the great news that we just published our review in Trends in Molecular Medicine under the title, Gene expression profiles in peripheral blood for the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases. We looked at the literature and wrote about whether peripheral blood can be used for the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases or the prediction of the effectiveness of therapies. We also came up with a decision tree and a set of proposed guides in order to facilitate inter-disciplinary collaborations.
The paper is not publicly available, but if you are interested, I’d be happy to send it to you via e-mail.
Gene expression profiling in clinical genomics has yet to deliver robust and reliable approaches for developing diagnostics and contributing to personalized medicine. Owing to technological developments and the recent accumulation of expression profiles, it is a timely and relevant question whether peripheral blood gene expression profiling can be used routinely in clinical decision making. Here, we review the available gene expression profiling data of peripheral blood in autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases and suggest that peripheral blood mononuclear cells are suitable for descriptive and comparative gene expression analyses. A gene-disease interaction network in chronic inflammatory diseases, a general protocol for future studies and a decision tree for researchers are presented to facilitate standardization and adoption of this approach.
Funny Surgery Stories: Launched March 21, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Fun, Surgery, Video, Web 2.0.add a comment
Last week I wrote about a new site, Funny Surgery Stories, where medical professionals and patients are encouraged to share stories, upload videos or music focusing on funny stories from the OR. The site is now live and features some real pearls as shown below.
Survey: Expert barriers to Wikipedia March 20, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Web 2.0, Wikipedia.4 comments
As a big fan of Wikipedia, I always try to encourage experts to contribute to this fantastic project. A new survey initiated by the Wikimedia Research Committee and run by Dario Taraborelli, Daniel Mietchen and Panagiota Alevizou aims at investigating this important question. Please complete the survey if you have a few minutes.
Wikipedia is now widely regarded as a mature project and is consulted by a large fraction of internet users, including academics and other experts. However, many of them are still reluctant to contribute to it. The aim of this survey is to understand why scientists, academics and other experts do (or do not) contribute to an open collaborative project such as Wikipedia, and whether individual motivation aligns with shared perceptions of Wikipedia within expert communities. We hope this may help us identify ways around barriers to expert participation.
The survey is anonymous and should take about 10 min to complete. It consists of a short introduction, followed by two main sections in which we contrast shared perceptions and personal motivation, and a final section where you can tell us more about yourself. At the end of the survey, you will find a link to follow the results and the ensuing conversation.
Peer-to-peer Healthcare: Pew Internet Research March 18, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Video, Web 2.0.add a comment
Susannah Fox at Pew Internet Research has recently published a new study focusing on peer-to-peer healthcare.
Many Americans turn to friends and family for support and advice when they have a health problem. This report shows how people’s networks are expanding to include online peers, particularly in the crucible of rare disease.
The most striking finding of the national survey is the extent of peer-to-peer help among people living with chronic conditions. One in four internet users living with high blood pressure, diabetes, heart conditions, lung conditions, cancer, or some other chronic ailment (23%) say they have gone online to find others with similar health concerns. By contrast, 15% of internet users who report no chronic conditions have sought such help online.
Feel free to join the discussion on E-patients.net. Susannah Fox describes it on a new video:
Health 2.0 News: From Wheelmap to Tablets March 17, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Video, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.add a comment
Philip Rice posted the photo of his son, Ted, on the social networking site after putting him to bed with a rash.
A family friend, Dr. Sara Barton, recognized it as a symptom of acute lymphocytic leukemia and sent a message saying Ted needed to go to the hospital straight away. He has now started a three-year course of chemotherapy.
Large numbers of non-English-speaking patients receive care on a daily basis in the United States, and the accompanying barriers to communication often negatively impact the level of care these patients receive. Live translators or translating services are available at most health care facilities, but even when accessible, can be expensive, challenging to use, and often delay care.
The Future of Education: Online and Quantified March 16, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Education, Ted Talks, Video.2 comments
Khan Academy seems to be very promising regarding the future of education. A recent TED video describes it all.
Khan spoke at the most recent TED conference about his project to create a series of free online videos and detailed self-assessments to educate anyone in the world. The audience gave him a long standing ovation, and I got chills watching it at home. Here’s the video, and my own Khan Academy experience below it.
