12 Predictions in Healthcare, Technology and Innovation for 2012 December 31, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in e-patient, eHealth, Facebook, Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Hospital, Innovation, List, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Pharma, Slideshow, Video, Web 2.0, Wikipedia.9 comments
Last year, I published a list of my predictions for 2011 in the areas of healthcare, innovation and technology. Now after a year, I checked these items and actually many of them proved to be right (year of tablets, Prezi.com skyrocketing, Siri leading the way for voice controlled apps, etc.), but now it’s time to come up with the predictions for 2012. Here are my 12 predictions, please feel free to add yours in the comment section.
1) Digital only class in social media for medical professionals and e-patients. Well, that’s quite an easy prediction, as I will launch the global form of my social media in medicine university course this February.
2) Social media policy everywhere. Now that we have an open access social media guide for and about pharma; it’s time for the FDA to come up with their own detailed instructions; also universities, healthcare institutions and medical practices, everyone must have its own as almost everyone is using social media intensively.
3) Augmented reality in radiology. Augmented reality has been a major issue for some time, but seeing the video below made it clear for me, this is where we are going to head in 2012. Doctors can see through patients.
4) Health-fitness gadgets will rock 2012. Myself, I’ve been using Striiv as a fitness motivation tool which also logs my data and visualizes my exercises making it easier for me to make plans and see how I’m doing. Other examples include Jawbone, but you can find even more if you follow the Quantified Self project.
5) Innovations in screen technologies. The form, material and functions of the screens we know now will change dramatically in 2012. Imagine paper screen, holographic screens or flexible screens on your wrist.
6) Internet TV and the operating room. The news sites are full of Apple TV and Google TV, so it’s obvious really innovative internet TVs will be launched in 2012 which brings up the idea of watching operations live on your TV at home. Just check OR-live.com.
7) Pharma will be using social media more intensively. I’m not saying all the pharma companies will have properly designed and managed social media presence, but many brands will use social media more intensively as we should be over now the so-called learing phase and they are getting braver by time.
8) More and more tablet-specific apps. I know the number of medicine/health-related mobile apps is growing rapidly, but now it’s time to turn to tablet-specific clinical apps that could be used in radiology, clinical trials or just for grand rounds.
9) Tablets in healthcare institutions. Whenever I talked to professors and colleagues about how I use my tablet in medicine and healthcare, in a few weeks, many of them had their own tablets and started using those apps. This is contagious. In 2012, a lot of hospitals, clinics and departments will hand out iPad or Galaxy Tabs to their employees in order to facilitate teamwork and make the work processes more efficient.
10) Wikipedia will have more medical featured articles, less medical errors. We recently published a paper describing how Wikipedia can be used for global public health promotion. After years of focus on creating new medical entries in Wikipedia, now we the editors focus on including proper references into medical articles. It is going to lead to a huge improvement in quality.
11) More health bloggers turn to microblogging due to lack of time. Although I believe my blog is still my major platform online even if Twitter is the fastest channel and Facebook is the most interactive. But I understand those health bloggers who leave their blogs and turn to Posterious, Tumblr or Twitter exclusively. It takes less time to post a message or entry therefore they will use these with a bigger chance.
12) Google+ health pages on the rise. I like Google+ and I think it could be used in medical communication successfully. As Google+ has only been letting companies or institutions have G+ pages, we are going to see a rise in their number soon. Even Ed Bennett who maintains a list of hospital social media accounts will include these as well.
Let’s finish my list with a great presentation about the trends in healthcare for 2012.
Top Medical Social Media Stories of 2011: Month by Month December 30, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Cancer, e-patient, Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, List, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Pharma, Slideshow, twitter, Video, Web 2.0, Webicina, Wikipedia.5 comments
2011 was a very intense and exciting year regarding the developments and new insights of the relationship between medicine/healthcare and social media. Here are my favourite stories from 2011 selected and featured month by month.
January
I had the honour to be included in the Advisory Board of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media; I wrote about how a Samsung Galaxy Tab changed totally my online activities, how Google Translate can be used in medicine and featured HealCam, a medical alternative of ChatRoulette.
February
Facebook diagnosis by surgeon saved a friend; there was a lively discussion whether pharma companies can edit Wikipedia entries about their own products, it turned out Wikipedia can be a key tool for global public health promotion; and Scienceroll won the Best Medical Technology/Informatics Blog category for the third time in a row in the Medgadget’s Weblog Awards.
March
The new semester of the Internet in Medicine social media university course was launched, pregnant women could text their due date for free weekly advice during pregnancy on Push, Baby Push; Webicina was featured by the Kairos Society on Wall Street, UCSF Medical Center installed a robotic pharmacy in order to remove medication errors from the system; and here is my video message for Stanford about the importance of digital literacy in medical education.
April
Jay Parkinson summarized his story of being the first online doc, the Webicina iPhone app won the 2011 Medical App Awards; Al Jazeera called me Dr. Twitter after I described how Twitter can be used for medical crowdsourcing, and in the fight against AIDS a time lapse video of a woman with HIV/AIDS was published.
May
Blogger announced own death after battle with cancer which shocked people, then a woman managed to find a kidney donor through Twitter, The Social Life of Health Information Pew Internet report was released, and top doctors described how a medical professional should start using social media.
June
I co-authored a medical textbook about medical communication in social media; Google Health was announced to be closed, a cancer patient who blogged about his hospital treatment was threatened with legal action by an NHS trust; Doctors 2.0 and You was the event of the year; and here are some disasters in social media and what we should learn from them.
July
ePatient Dave rocked TED; Mayo Clinic launched an online community in a perfect way, Pfizer’s Facebook page got hacked and they reacted badly, I listed the reasons why I like Google+ even in medicine; mobile apps got regulated by the FDA; and it turned out iPhones can be used for obtaining ECG.
August
I published a story about how Twitter can be used to predict epidemics; even waiting rooms can be redesigned to improve healthcare; I described why I’m happy that patients use the web; started managing the social media presence of a huge medical portal; I stated what you write only is forever; and pharma had hard days because of comments on Facebook.
September
Using hashtags is crucial in medical communication on Twitter; I talked about the future of health 2.0 in Europe; organized a virtual medical consultation in the virtual world on World Heart Day; this is how creativity can be used in healthcare; and I presented the best apps of a physician at the Doctors 2.0 and You conference.
October
Nobel winner died days before award announced; I shared a social media love story about a bone marrow donor; an app let us run figures on maps; Google+ was used for case presentations; and Mayo Clinic launched the Know Your Numbers campaign.
November
I published the 7 Features of the New Generation of Physicians; my open access success story; a summary about the Games for Health conference; hardcore campaigns about men’s health; and revealed why the most viewed medical video on Youtube got millions of hits.
December
Winners of the Webicina social media story contest were announced; WHO featured Webicina; the launch of a global medial social media course was announced; I described my time management tools and tips in medicine; the open access set of social media guidelines for and about pharma was published; and finally found the cutest story of 2011, parents got insulin-pump tattoos to support diabetic child.
I’m going to post my predictions for 2012 tomorrow and I hope you will stay with Scienceroll.com next year as well!
Cutest Story of 2011: Parents Get Insulin-Pump Tattoos To Support Diabetic Child December 28, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in e-patient, Fun, Medicine.3 comments
I was just making preparations for the top 2011 posts I’m planning to write in the upcoming days when I bumped into this cute story about a diabetic kid who felt ashamed to wear the insulin pump so his parents got insulin pump tattoos.
Some parents get tattoos of their child’s name, but Philippe Aumond and Camille Boivin went one better.
In a show of solidarity, they each have an image of an insulin pump tattooed on their abdomens, declaring that they are “forever linked” to their son Jacob.
“It is a great thing for him, and we were thrilled just to see his smile when he saw those pumps. It made our day, that’s for sure,” said Boivin, 36, from the family’s home in La Sarre, Que.
Pharma companies editing Wikipedia? Weigh in! December 22, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Pharma, Web 2.0, Wikipedia.1 comment so far
A certain pharmaceutical company contacted me and asked how they can edit Wikipedia entries focusing on their own products. They wish to make corrections as those entries contained misinformation.
This is a tricky issue and while the open access pharma social media guide features a page about Wikipedia, I wanted to ask the community of editors what they think about it.
Please take a look at the discussion and weigh in!
Kerri Morrone Sparling: Why an e-patient should blog! December 18, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Blogging, e-patient, Health 2.0, Video, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
Kerri Morrone Sparling has been a world-famous, influental diabetes blogger for years with many blog awards and many many readers day by day. She has been honest about her condition sharing tips and tricks with fellow patients. I recently asked her to send me a video in which she describes why an e-patient should write a blog and why it could be beneficial, how it can make a difference. Here it is:
Scienceroll.com: Weekly Introduction December 17, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine.add a comment
If you are looking for interesting articles and news on medicine 2.0 or health 2.0, find me on Twitter or on Friendfeed.
Internet in Medicine University Course: We are in the fourth semester of the first university course that focuses on web 2.0 and medicine for medical students.
Medicine 2.0 Collection: I maintain the biggest collection of links and posts focusing on web 2.0 and medicine.
Webicina.com is my service that curates medical content in social media for free fo medical professionals and e-patients.
PeRSSonalized Medicine is the simplest, free, customizable medical information aggregator covering over 80 medical specialties and conditions in 17 languages!
Scienceroll Search is a personalized medical search engine powered by PolyMeta search and clustering engine. You can choose which databases to search in and which one to exclude from your list. It works with well-known medical search engines and databases and we’re totally open to add new ones or remove those you don’t really like.
List of biomedical and scientific community sites: More than 30 communities with links, descriptions and screenshots.
List of Biomedical video sites: Almost 40 sites featuring scientific or medical videos and videocasts.
Open Access Social Media Guide for Pharma on Webicina.com! December 15, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Pharma, Web 2.0, Webicina.3 comments
After months of hard, collaborative work, Webicina.com just published the first version of the open access guide for pharma about using social media. While drug companies, healthcare professionals and e-patients wait for FDA guidelines on social media, with an expert crowd (with special thanks to Dr. Felix Jackson from MedDigital), we created our own guidelines to serve as a basis for more detailed, extended guides.
You can download the PDF (14 pages) here! And see it on Slideshare:
Please feel free to download it, share it with your colleagues and join us to create an even more sophisticated second version which we can submit to the FDA. Give us feedback on Twitter through #pharmaSMguide!
The original Google Docs document contains more details, negative and positive social media-related pharma case studies as well.
Here are the Q&As about the project.
Pharma and the Super Mobile Revolution December 15, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Mobile, Pharma.add a comment
I was asked to contribute to the Pharma and Super Mobile Dossier of Firstworldplus.com. I wrote about the pros and cons of using a Samsung Galaxy Tab in medicine and healthcare.
Our latest report, iPad and Smartphone: Pharma and the Super Mobile Revolution examines the rapid changes in mobile and tablet technology, including the trend by HCPs and the industry to use multiple devices to positively impact work flow and business operations. The report tracks how the industry is addressing training, security, consumerization of IT within organizations and advances such as HTML5-Flash and apps.
As a bonus, we’re also offering The Impact of iPads on Pharma: a Primer, which offers a complete examination of what the industry has learned about tablets and how the post-PC tablet is changing internal productivity, growth and sales.
You can buy the report here.
Social Media in Medicine course: The Announcement! December 14, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medical education, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Medicine 2.0 Course, Web 2.0.10 comments
I launched a course at the University of Debrecen, Medical and Health Science Center in 2008 in order to help medical and public health students learn more about social media. Now, after several semesters, the course developed a lot and I still teach students about the basics of social media, through blogging, Twitter, Facebook, searching and many other topics. Here are the weekly summaries of this semester. This was the last semester in Debrecen and I’ve got two announcements to make.
1) From February, I will teach the course at Semmelweis University of Budapest, the oldest medical school in Hungary (1769) with even more students (hundreds of them) and through 14 weeks instead of 10.
2) I will make the course totally online in February! It means any students, medical professionals or even patients could watch the Prezis, take the course and get the certification that they know what they have to know about social media and medicine. More details later!
I’m very excited about these and I hope you are also looking forward to seeing the site online!
