• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

I am constantly trolling the blogosphere to find out what is going on. I find that the following blogs provide me my staple of information:

* HISTalk
* The Health Care Blog
* Health Populi
* Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review

I also follow the following out of personal technology interest:

* Matt Asay
* Nicholas Carr
* O’Reilly Radar

I have unwittingly adopted nearly the full Google platform, and so I use Google Reader and Google Alerts to constantly troll the net for stuff I am interested in. I also use Gmail, Google Chat, and love google analytics. However, I had switched over to WordPress to try it out which causes me some mild integration problems. I am going to stick it out for a year and then make a decision about which platform I like better.

• You’ve had several presentations, when will the next one take place? And do you plan to publish your slides?

Yeah, I am a big believer in the information theory that information becomes more valuable as you share it. I love the concept of the creative commons which provides the intellectual property ownership framework that allows this type of sharing to happen in a trusted fashion while preserving my rights. I love to share my presentations and if there are not online it is only because I have not taken the time to post it up. I will attempt to get some additional ones up.

• Do you think there is a difference between health 2.0 and medicine 2.0?

In my opinion, medicine 2.0 is more about education. I specifically chose the term “Health” versus Health Care versus Medicine versus other terms. Health felt the most comprehensive. I stand by my definition of Health 2.0 as both the enabling technologies and the reform movement that will catalyze the transition to next generation health care.

Seems that, given your orientation, that Medicine 2.0 is all about the medical student or health care student experience and how to use enabling technologies and curriculum reform to get to next generation medical education. You see how you need both things to get to the ultimate reality. You add all these wizbang online avatar computers that teach you biochemistry and molecular genetics that is great; but if you never change the fundamental stuff you are teaching you are not going to get the outcome you want. It was like when we implemented electronic medical records, we can’t just deploy the enabling technology without changing the business processes as well. It requires both to be successful.

• You also work on the Health 2.0 wiki. Have you ever heard about the Medicine 2.0 wiki?

Yes, I have. In fact, I have checked it out on a couple of occasions. I have always wondered how you have time to do all the stuff that you do – particularly during medical school. Pretty impressive.

There is so much more we could do with the Health 2.0 Wiki but I just don’t have time. I am hoping that Matthew and Indu can get some funding for what they are doing in order to get some staffing. I believe that if the organization could get some modest fund for a couple of staff members to more appropriately staff, catalogue, and aggregate the whole Health 2.0 thing the site could really add some value to the constantly growing community. More importantly, I would love to have a more vibrant way to capture all these innovative companies out there who are doing great things.

• Has your valuable work been recognized by medical journals or your colleagues?

Again, I have been approached by several journals and reporters and find that I just don’t have the time to sit down to write out all my ideas. I would love to have a volunteer author step forward and collaborate with me on the development and articulation of the ideas. Essentially, getting some help teasing out and developing the ideas, putting those ideas to paper, and then getting it in a format that could be distributed would be awesome.

• Do your colleagues appreciate your work and understand its importance?

It is unclear who my colleagues are at this point, but recent conferences like the September Health 2.0 and now the Spring Fling Health 20 conference are certainly validating that this is in fact transitioning into a relevant movement that will create disruptive change within the healthcare industry. While we are currently focused on the enabling technologies, I can assure you that health care reform will become an increasing important byproduct of all these efforts as well. That is why I have always opted for a more expansive definition and perspective.

I also don’t think we can understand its importance as the game has not yet been played. I hope to look back years from now and be able to say that I was able to recognize the trend early, and was able to bring disruptive innovation to the health care market that allows us to improve health care delivery.

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

Well, I enjoy blogging as a means to share ideas, collaborate with people I would otherwise never meet, and to think through my own ideas in a public way. My sense is that there is somewhat of a voyeuristic sense to my blog as people have become interested in not only WHAT I am thinking about, but WHY and HOW I am thinking about it as well. Again, I have no delusions that I have a very limited readership (~2,500/mo) compared to someone like your self but it is significant growth month over month. I have chosen not to monetize my blog as of yet – as I personally don’t like all the distracting ads – but I respect that as a choice of many bloggers to get paid for the value they are creating through their publication.

Thank you, Scott, for the nice answers, especially for expressing your thoughts about the difference between medicine 2.0 and health 2.0!

Check out his blog!

Behind-the-Scenes interviews so far:

• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Over My Med Body!
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Six Until Me
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: davidrothman.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Eye on DNA
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Kevin, MD
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: MicrobiologyBytes
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Healthbolt.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Neurophilosophy
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Code Blog
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Clinical Cases and Images
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Diabetes Mine

• You’ve been blogging for more than 3 years now. How can you maintain your blog? How much time does it take?

DiabetesMine.com has kind of taken over my life, for sure. I now post every weekday, and sometimes on weekends, too. It’s very time-consuming. But it’s also therapeutic, because the blogging has become intertwined with my diabetes care and my support community. I feel like I couldn’t stand the diabetes if I didn’t have that.

• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

Of course I peruse hundreds of blogs and medical sites. I’m a big fan of the Bloglines prescription service. Honestly, I could hire an assistant just for tracking all the health and diabetes-specific information on the web. But what I choose to write about is really mostly the stuff that just “catches my eye,” or that I believe will truly impact people’s lives.

• You got special mention in Medgadget’s Weblog Awards; you’ve been featured in several magazines. I’m pretty sure you are one of the most respected ambassadors of diabetes. What do you think about it?

That’s very kind of you. In fact, there’s a very rich community of patient bloggers out there. I think we all add value with our individual strengths and style, and together, we’ve created a new force: a Voice of the Patient Community that could never be heard before. This is the essence of the Health 2.0 movement that’s underway – a whole new model for consumer involvement in the healthcare system. I’m just delighted to be a part of it!

• The mission of patient blogs is to educate other patients, but do you learn from what you write about? Do your readers, other patients help you how to deal with diabetes?

OMG, you have no idea how much I’ve learned in the last three years writing DiabetesMine.com! In part from my own research, but also from the many, many wonderful people out there who comment and correspond with me. Remember, I’m a relative newbie to this disease. There are folks out there who’ve had it for DECADES. They keep us grounded on what’s really possible when we see all these sensational headlines about diabetes. The veterans give me tips, which I strive to share with the rest of the community. Some readers argue with me. Some say thank you. As sappy as it sounds, a few of them have actually made me cry. Let’s just say we need each other.

• What do you think about the patient-community sites focusing on diabetes ( Sugarstats.com ; TuDiabetes.com:, etc.)? How much can web 2.0 be helpful for patients?

The convergence of Web 2.0 and healthcare is huge. Relationships between patients and caregivers are changing, medicine is becoming more personalized, and healthcare itself is moving toward an open market model in this country. You can read more about my take on these changes at the Digital Influence 360˚blog.

Meanwhile, all of these new interactive web tools are fantastic for us PWDs (people with diabetes). We can learn, share, and reach out to other patients around the world 24/7 essentially for free. We can “beam” our glucose results to our doctors, search for healthy recipes, and “talk” to other real people living with this volatile disease. IMHO, the whole experience of being a patient is being transformed.

• At last, what are your future plans?

I view technology and social media as important factors in bridging the gap between “the system” and its consumers. A lot needs to be fixed in healthcare in the US – from the insurance reimbursement model to the design of medical devices for patients with long-term illness. I want to be an active part of the group that helps improve the situation through community involvement. I think of DiabetesMine.com not only as a news source, but also a gathering place to learn, share, laugh, and sometimes vent. I hope to keep building out that robust community.

Thank you, Amy, for the kind answers! Check out her blog and the other patient blogs out there!

Behind-the-Scenes interviews so far:

• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Over My Med Body!
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Six Until Me
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: davidrothman.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Eye on DNA
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Kevin, MD
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: MicrobiologyBytes
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Healthbolt.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Neurophilosophy
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Code Blog
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Clinical Cases and Images

• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

Google Reader is my “inbox for the web,” I subscribe to 650 feeds — journals, Pubmed searches, newspapers, blogs and other web sites. I post on the blog when I find something interesting and I use it as a personal archive and educational portfolio.

I subscribe to about 30-40 medical blogs and have 4-5 favorites that are always informative and well grounded. Bloglines was my favorite RSS reader for several years but Google Reader is faster and uses a Google account which allows seamless interoperability with other Google services such as Gmail, Blogger, Bookmarks, and Picasa Web.

• You are one of the first bloggers who started to write about web 2.0 and medicine. How did you find such a great topic?

Actually, I believe I was the first to write about “Web 2.0 in medicine” (in October 2005) and describe how these new tools can be used by health workers.

Soon after, Dean Giustini and I started to talk about the Web 2.0 possibilities and he wrote the landmark BMJ editorial How Google is changing medicine referring to some of my ideas.

I have been interested in information technology since middle school. After all, I was born in Bulgaria and the first computer was invented by a Bulgarian-American, John Atanasoff, in 1939. Web 2.0 offers an interesting blend between technology and medicine which can benefit both physicians and patients. As I was preparing for Grand Rounds on Web 2.0 in Medicine at Cleveland Clinic in 2005, I assembled a few ideas and published them on my blog and this is how my “formal involvement” started.

• We know well what a comprehensive database Clinical Cases and Images is, but what about the feedback of the medical journals and professionals? Do medical students and physicians use it?

The impact of Clinical Cases and Images has been well beyond my expectations. The project is an online case-based curriculum of clinical medicine with many contributors which has had more than 1.7 million page views since 2005. It has been featured in multiple scientific journals including British Medical Journal (3 times), Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology,BMC Medical Education, Medscape (2 times), Student BMJ, Medical Journal of Australia and Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Abstracts and posters about the use of Clinical Cases and Images for medical education in different subspecialties have been presented at multiple scientific meetings including but not limited to the annual sessions of American College of Cardiology, American Society of Nephrology, International Association of Medical Science Educators, Society of Hospital Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Annual Perioperative Medicine Summit, and Case Western Reserve University Research ShowCase.

ClinicalCases.org is hyperlinked in the web sites of 25 medical schools in the U.S., Canada and Europe and is integrated within the Intranet and Internet properties of Cleveland Clinic.

I often receive feedback by medical students and physicians mentioning how beneficial the web site was for their education. I could have never imagined such a worldwide impact when I started the project as a chief resident in 2004.

• How can it be possible that nearly all the real pioneers of medicine 2.0 are based in Cleveland? (AskDrWiki, Clinical Cases and Images, etc)?

Cleveland is a medical city and we have some of the best and brightest working and studying here. It is not very difficult to find people with similar interests especially if you work at Cleveland Clinic which is one of the largest medical institutions in the world with 30,000 employees. Cleveland Clinic Heart Center has been ranked number one in cardiology for 13 years in a row by the U.S. News World Report. Even our CEO has a blog.

• Do your colleagues know about your work and do they use the tools/services you share with them?

My colleagues, and the students and residents that I teach, are well aware of my Web 2.0 projects. I am a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic medical school and we often use ClinicalCases.org to pull sample cases for teaching sessions. In addition, it is easy to find the original reference of something we discuss — I just need to run a Google custom search on my blog which is also an archive/educational portfolio.

When the idea of using Web 2.0 in medicine was very new, I gave a series of lectures at several hospitals in Cleveland in attempt to popularize the concept starting in October 2005

I created several web sites for different projects and departments at Cleveland Clinic which were underpinned by a blogging platform at least initially:

- Web site of Department of Hospital Medicine at Cleveland Clinic

- Web site of the Annual Perioperative Medicine Summit at Cleveland Clinic

- Persistent search via RSS Feeds for Cleveland Clinic on the front page of the official web site

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

I would like to expand the coverage of Clinical Cases and Images to include more cases from different subspecialties, currently we have about 150. Also, there will be more educational tools like mind maps, mnemonics and clinical notes. Podcasts and Second Life projects are other interesting possibilities. I am planning to write a few short review articles about Web 2.0 tools for the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine which will feature ideas from the web site. At some point, we will probably combine the clinical cases in a book.

It was my honor to interview the real pioneer of medicine and web 2.0. Thank you, Ves Dimov, for the answers!

Behind-the-Scenes interviews so far:

• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Over My Med Body!
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Six Until Me
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: davidrothman.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Eye on DNA
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Kevin, MD
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: MicrobiologyBytes
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Healthbolt.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Neurophilosophy
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Code Blog

• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

I post about my own personal experience as a nurse. I also post submissions that readers send in. I’ve received submissions from EMT’s, other nurses, patients, and family members of patients.

I definitely use an RSS reader – I can’t imagine life without it! I follow almost 50 medical blogs and about 20 other blogs that aren’t medical.

• You’ve been blogging for 5 years now. Is it hard to blog as a nurse? How do you find time for this and how can you maintain your blog?

When I started blogging, there were only a handful of other medical blogs – I remember finding GruntDoc, RangelMD and Medpundit. I did a lot of searching, but was only able to find one other blog written by a nurse (“code: the web socket;,” which is no longer updated). I thought it would be great to start a blog dedicated to nursing and my experiences as a nurse. I was nervous about putting my experiences out there in the world and was afraid that I wouldn’t have enough material to keep up with it, which is why I added the submissions link.

I figured that I wouldn’t put too much pressure on myself to keep to a schedule. I usually only post a few times a month, and during my pregnancy I barely blogged at all. I don’t want it to feel like an obligation – I just want to enjoy it! And I do, so I don’t find it hard. Frankly I’m a bit surprised to be here almost 5 years later. I’m very proud of the fact that I am one of the first nurse bloggers and that I’ve kept with it this long.

• You have excellent images. Do you create those yourself? Are most of your posts based on your daily work experiences or you have to search for interesting/new content on the web?

I create the buttons on my sidebar by using images or color schemes from the blog I’m linking to. I really enjoy making them, but it isn’t as easy as adding a text link, so I do find that I’m usually a bit behind in adding new blogs. The little nurse in the upper right hand corner of my blog is a painting that I bought off of Ebay.

Most of my posts are based on work experiences, but occasionally I’ll find something in the news or on another blog that I want to comment on.

• Do your collegues and the physicians at your hospital know about your blog? Do they appreciate your work? Does your employer have to know about your blog?

My boss and colleagues do know about my blog. I don’t think the physicians do, but not because I’ve been keeping it a secret. When my blog was written about in Nurse Week, the cat was pretty much out of the bag at that point! I was excited to be included in the article and told a few coworkers and it went from there. They, and my boss, are very supportive and have left comments and submitted stories themselves!

• Tell us please what are the biggest problems with us, medical students?

There are no med students or interns/residents at the hospital I work at now. I did work with them when I first started out as a nurse. The med students never bothered me in the least unless they were hogging my patient’s chart. As for the interns and residents – well, I thought they were a godsend. Being new and inexperienced, I was often very nervous about calling physicians (especially in the middle of the night!) It was somehow easier to call the residents instead. I felt like they weren’t in a position to get mad at my calls. Not that I ever made frivolous calls, of course. But they were much less intimidating than the attendings and I was grateful to be able to bounce my concerns off of them first.

• You have a Submit your story section. Last time, I saw the same at Six Until Me, the best patient blog. Why do you have such a problematic section? I mean it must be hard to maintain and moderate it. Or am I wrong?

I don’t find it problematic at all! I enjoy reading the submissions that people send in. If I don’t feel that the story fits codeblog, I simply don’t publish it. My favorite submissions are from patients. I think it’s so important to always try to keep in mind what it’s like from the patient’s perspective, and one way to do that is by reading their stories. It also helps to have submissions to post when the well of ideas has run dry.

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

Hopefully a redesign!! I have had the same exact color scheme and layout since day 1, when there were very few other blogs to link to and almost no fun blog widgets! Otherwise, I plan on continuing to write posts and provide readers with the scoop on what it’s like to be a nurse.

It has been so enjoyable to read blogs by other nurses and I’m so glad that there are so many! I also love reading physician and patient blogs. What an awesome way to keep connected and continually be exposed to other perspectives. I really feel as though it has made me a better nurse.

Thank you, Geena, for the answers and to take us behind the scenes of nurse bloggers!

Behind-the-Scenes interviews so far:

• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Over My Med Body!
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Six Until Me
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: davidrothman.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Eye on DNA
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Kevin, MD
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: MicrobiologyBytes
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Healthbolt.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Neurophilosophy

• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS? How many blogs do you track?

I get my information mainly from the journals and the science stories in the mass media. It’s all aggregated in Google Reader, with which I’m subscribed to about 1,250 feeds (mostly blogs of all sorts). Of these, I only track about 100. The ones I read regularly are the science news feeds and my favourite blogs.

• You provide incredibly detailed posts and you write often. How much time does it take a day to be up-to-date and to maintain your blog?

When I started blogging in February of last year, I was spending 12 hours a day at a computer. I had very little else to do, so I had plenty of time to read and to write those detailed posts. But my routine has changed dramatically in recent months. Due to some major changes in my circumstances, I’ve got far less computer time at the moment. So I’ve reverted to the traditional methods – printing papers, reading them at work during the day and taking notes that I type up later. This has made me more focused on what I write. However, I’m nowhere near as prolific as I used to be, but I hope to have more time to devote to blogging in the near future.

• You always give attention to the references and sources of your writings. Do you think your readers click on those?

Only occasionally I think. At the old blog, I had a count of outgoing clicks on the stats page, and I did notice regular small numbers of clicks on the PDFs I linked to. The main reason I cited my sources so extensively was to make the blog seem as academic as possible.

• Recently, you moved to Scienceblogs.com. What are your first experiences? Is it a better place to be a neurophilosopher?

It’s been great joining ScienceBlogs (and actually I’ve just come back from a long weekend in New York, during which I met many of my new “colleagues”.) I think there are a number of advantages to blogging with the Seed Media Group. First, I feel like part of a wider community, whose other members have similar interests to mine. Secondly, the bloggers there are all outstanding, so to be accepted into the network is to be recognized. And finally, ScienceBlogs is an experiment in scientific writing/ publishing, and as such is something exciting to be involved in.

• What about the scientific journals? Have they discovered you and your blog? Do your colleagues know about your blog and your achievements?

I’m pretty sure that the journals haven’t discovered me and my blog. Then again, the old blog was on PostGenomic, which is maintained by Nature. And I’m not sure if “discovered” is even the right word, because I don’t think I’ve got anything to offer the journals. In fact, I see weblogs as a threat to the monopoly on the distribution of scientific information, so I don’t think the journals are going to accept them as legitimate any time soon. On the other hand, researchers sometimes send me PDFs of their newly-published papers, asking if I’d be interested in writing about their research on the blog. Several others have told me that they read my blog every now and then to see what’s going in other areas of neuroscience. As if I provide them some kind of news service.If, by “colleagues”, you mean other lab members, etc., the answer is no, the reason being that I’m not currently in academia. Seven years ago, I was doing a Ph.D. in Developmental Neurobiology at King’s College London. But I left without completing it, for various reasons. Next month (September 2007) I’ll be returning to UCL, where I read neuroscience as an undergraduate, to study for a M.Sc/ Ph.D in neuroscience. I mentioned on the application form that I have a neuroscience blog, but they didn’t ask me about it at the interview.

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

I just want to keep doing what I’m already doing. That is, to continue writing about things that interest me. It’s amazing how much I’ve learned in the past 18 months, just by writing the blog. Because of the blog, I’m doing the things that I enjoy most: reading, writing and learning. And I can’t foresee anything that will stop me from blogging.

Thank you, Moheb, for the great answers! For more about neuroscience, check out the Neurophilosophy blog!

Behind-the-Scenes interviews so far:

• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Over My Med Body!
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Six Until Me
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: davidrothman.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Eye on DNA
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Kevin, MD
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: MicrobiologyBytes
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Healthbolt.net

I’ve already presented some famous medical bloggers to you. My aim is to get my readers closer to these quality blogs and the bloggers as well. I’d like to convince more and more health professionals/people interested in medicine to create their own blogs by providing interesting “behind-the-scenes” interviews. The seventh blogger in this series is Sara Ost who runs the #1 health blog on the web, Healthbolt.net.

• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

I read Google News and BBC news along with all the major journals and press releases from the FDA, CDC and NIH. I check in on around 50 health and science blogs and I also follow roughly 100 other blogs (politics, web, tech, marketing, writing, philosophy, personal development, etc.).

• You’re not a medical specialist but you can cover a wide range of medical topics. How can you do it?

I am a sponge. Most of my inspiration comes from observation of everything around me. I tear stuff out of magazines, I go out with friends, I surf the web. While I’m not an “expert”, I have learned a lot about health. Beyond that I’m a very curious person, which helps.

• Was it hard to follow Wade Meredith’s job? (Actually, it seems you have no problem with that.)

Healthbolt is the house that Wade Meredith built. I followed the blog for Wade’s entire run and really dug it. I edit and write for a popular alternative health blog (www.marksdailyapple.com), and I’d had the itch to further satisfy my blog bug with my own digs, so it couldn’t have worked out better.

• Healthbolt is No. 1 on this list, and No. 8 on that one. It must be a little bit frustrating that so many people are watching! How can you handle it?

Hey, thanks for bringing that up! I’m just myself. If it works, it works!

• Are the most of your readers patients/laymen? Or medical specialists?

My readers are generally college-educated but not health professionals. They skew male, they’re Gen X-ers, they’re interested in entertainment, politics, psychology, sex, and science. They like learning about health and how the body works, but they aren’t really too nutty about it. That’s what the other blog is for!

• Do you plan to write more about web 2.0 or genetics? I personally miss these topics.

I am just as obsessed with Web 2.0 as any other blogger, and I follow all the major web and tech blogs, but that’s not really the purview of Healthbolt. Genetics? Duly noted!

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

Well, one goal is to continue to make Healthbolt very interactive. The first thing I did was to open up comments. Other than that, I’m just curious and focused on learning, so I appreciate that others take the time to learn along with me. And it’s a riot! 

Thank you, Sara, for the answers. Follow Healthbolt.net for many interesting posts on popular medicine and health!

Behind-the Scenes interviews so far:

• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Over My Med Body!
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Six Until Me
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: davidrothman.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Eye on DNA
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Kevin, MD
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: MicrobiologyBytes

• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

Since I started blogging, I read more than I have ever done. I couldn’t do it without RSS. I feel I need to convert people to the joy of RSS! To help with that, I’ve just written an online tutorial I hope will be helpful for people – and I hope people will give me lots of feedback on how it can be improved. Bloglines is my preferred RSS reader, but I’ve found that when I show people RSS, they have strong preferences which reader they prefer, so I always show people Bloglines, Google Reader and Pageflakes and let them choose which they like best. Since nearly half of the subscriptions to my RSS feed at MicrobiologyBytes are through email subscriptions to the feed rather than through feed readers, I also give them that option, although I try to persuade them not to use email for RSS!

I read around 180 feeds, but this varies from day to day. This is my current list. I have my core feeds that I’ve always read, but I try new feeds out frequently, dropping them if they don’t give me what I’m looking for. About half of them are preformed feeds from blogs, etc, and the rest are generated from keyword searches and tags on a wide variety of websites – that’s how I can rapidly scan so much information in one place.

• You provide excellent content. Moreover, you create podcasts. How much time does it take to maintain these?

Blush. The podcasts are much more labour-intensive than the blog. It takes between one and two hours a week to produce the podcast, which lasts around five minutes! Ironically, I started the blog as a front end for the podcast to allow search engine discovery, but now in many ways the podcast is a shop window for the blog! I currently have around 1,200 subscribers to the podcast feed and the podcast files get downloaded around 10,000 times a month. More people prefer to download the podcast files directly by clicking on links rather than by subscribing to the feed, but that’s fine.
Now that I feel that I know what I’m doing with the blog, it doesn’t take that long to maintain, a few hours spread across the week – less than when I was experimenting more in the early days. But it varies a lot throughout the year, depending on how busy I am with other work.

• You are a blogger at Science of the Invisible and you also work on microbiologybytes.com. I think there aren’t any better microbiology sources than microbiologybytes.com. Am I right?

There are other good microbiology blogs, such as Small Things Considered and Aetiology, but they tend not to post as frequently as I do on MicrobiologyBytes. The most important thing is to read as widely as possibly, and access your information from as many sources and as many points of view as you can.
I’d like to explain why I have two blogs. It’s not because I’m greedy! When I started, MicrobiologyBytes had a long format (for a blog) and the front end to the podcasts, and Science of the Invisible was a short format. Gradually, more and more education/technology content crept into SOTI, and so about six months ago I chose to separate them, giving MicrobiologyBytes all the microbiology content (“The latest news about microbiology in a form that everyone can understand”), and putting all the educational stuff into SOTI (“Education costs money. Ignorance costs more.”). At that point, both blogs really took off, so I guess the lesson is to target a particular audience. I don’t think many people regularly read both of my blogs, although a few wander in and out since I put links in the sidebars.
Actually, I’ve got lots of blogs – since I discovered how to use del.icio.us tags to create RSS feeds. I currently have about six: MicrobiologyBytes, SOTI, two del.icio.us miniblogs for the sidebars so I can post items quickly (one and an other), oh, and my Virtual Frogroom blog. I just started another miniblog to cover the UK foot and mouth disease outbreak.

• Does blogging help your career? Do your colleagues respect what you’ve done on the web?

I think it will do. It’s certainly helped me widen my horizons over the last year, and stay up to date – with technology as well as microbiology. I have a Why Blog? page on MicrobiologyBytes.com to try to encourage other people to think about blogging.

• What about the microbiology journals? Have they discovered you and your blogs?

Not the academic journals, since publishers still feel blogging is a threat to their income, but news media have discovered blogging, even if they don’t know what to do with it. MicrobiologyBytes is starting to get quoted quite often by journalists. Interestingly, when I started my microbiology website (now at microbiologybytes.com) in 1994, journalists would find out my phone number (which wasn’t on the site) and interrupt me with calls. Now they just quote the blog directly. I’m happy with that, as long as they link back.
I have a very good relationship with the Society of General Microbiology in the UK who have been generous enough to sponsor the podcasts.

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

Well first, to keep going as long as possible – or until a better technology comes along! SOTI is a platform which allows me to explore lots of different technologies which may or may not make it into my teaching eventually – after I’ve had chance to play with them online first. Beyond that, public responses to events such as people flying around the world with XDR-TB and the recent foot and mouth disease outbreak in the UK have started me thinking about how bloggers can contribute to the public good, beyond general education and awareness of science. I’m trying to think of what I might be able to do when the next influenza pandemic strikes – got any ideas?

Thank you, Alan, for the answers. Keep on informing the world about microbiology in several ways!

Behind-the Scenes interviews so far:

• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Over My Med Body!
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Six Until Me
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: davidrothman.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Eye on DNA
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Kevin, MD

• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

I start the day off reading the blogs on my feeds page, and linking to any pieces that I find interesting. For an RSS aggregator, I use Google Reader, and subscribe to about 50-75 sources. I also browse keyword searches (i.e. keywords like “health”, “doctor”, or “patient”) from Google’s Blogsearch which often leads me to relevant medical stories.

• Sometimes you have 10-15 posts a day. How can you maintain such a dynamically updated blog? How much time does it take?

I generally spend about 2-3 hours a day maintaining the blog and average between 10-25 posts daily. They are in 5 to 15 minute chunks in the morning, lunch and after everyone is sleeping at night. I generally find all my links in advance, then slowly publish them throughout the day.

• In most of the cases, you work like an aggregator, but you also comment on the news and your articles. How often do you have time to create own content?

I create much less content now than I used to. There simply isn’t enough time to both aggregate and write original pieces. Occasionally I’ll write an op-ed on topics that I feel are important (such as the recent one on Medicare payment cuts and defensive medicine.

I prefer to comment and link to articles that I find interesting. It could range from an unusual case to serious talk on health policy. I try to blog in a polarizing manner to incite discussion and debate. Taking a position down the middle makes for a boring blog.

• Do your colleagues know about your blog or comment on your articles? Do they appreciate your work? Do they know you’re considered a semi-professional blogger?

Yes, my colleagues are aware of my blog and support it. Most of them read my blog regularly, and it has been featured in several local newspapers.

• The best aggregators, after some time, get many e-mails so they don’t really have to search for new content. About how much percent of your articles are based on suggestions/links received by e-mails?

I receive about 10-20 tips a day from readers, which I truly appreciate. I would estimate that around 10 percent of my content comes from my readers who email me.

• I almost never see your articles in blog carnivals. Why don’t you want to participate more in the events of the medical blogosphere?

I link to Grand Rounds weekly and have hosted it 3 times. On many weeks, I simply don’t have the original content to warrant a submission, however I will still submit the op-eds that I write.

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

Right now, the blog has received some mainstream media attention and is one of the more well-trafficked health blogs. I think it is an ideal medium to discuss and express problems facing practicing physicians today. People not involved with healthcare really have no idea what goes on “behind the curtain”. My goal is to pull that curtain back and expose the frustrations that doctors deal with on a daily basis.

Many readers have strong opinions and often disagree with my views. I encourage these voices, and believe that the more attention we can bring to these problems, the closer we can come up with a resolution.

There is no question that American health care will undergo a revolution in the next decade. Unfortunately, a lot of these changes will happen without input from the physician community. My blog will be one way doctors can have a voice in this sea of change.

Thank you, Kevin, for the interesting answers and keep on informing us about all the fields of medicine!

Behind-the Scenes interviews so far:

• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Over My Med Body!
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Six Until Me
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: davidrothman.net
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Eye on DNA

• How do you find information for your blog? Do you read other blogs, journals or you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

I use a number of sources for Eye on DNA depending on the topic I’m developing. For news, I have Google Alerts set-up and also have a custom search term in Google News that scans for everything related to genetics and DNA. I subscribe to RSS feeds for PLoS journals and Medical News Today. I also read a number of magazines that often mention genetics, such as Scientific American, New Scientist, and The Atlantic. Books are a great resource as well and as expected, I have a growing collection related to genetics.

As for blogs, I always scan through The DNA Network and ScienceBlogs. I’m currently subscribed to over 300 RSS feeds in Google Reader but that’s a mix of everything, not just science.

• How do you find time to write such detailed posts and to host the most respected carnivals?

Blogging is a priority for me. It’s the way I stay motivated to continue learning more and processing my opinions on genetics and related topics. It’s also the way I build my personal brand, which is particularly important because I’m a self-employed biotech consultant. Also important, blogging makes it possible for me to have a conversation with likeminded people. Because I work from home, blogging is a key part of staying connected.

• Are you a semi-professional blogger?

I used to work for a blog network as a paid writer and editor, but I no longer consider myself a professional blogger. If ever I decide to put all my eggs in the blogging basket again, I’ll call myself a problogger but as of now, I’m trying to be what Chris Garret calls an “authority blogger.”

• Does blogging help your career?

Absolutely, writing a genetics blog has put me in touch with many of the movers and shakers in genetics and genomics. It’s how I met the people at DNA Direct and later joined them as a consultant. Through blogging, I can demonstrate my expertise and writing skills to a wider audience.

• You have a professional design and layout. You organize competitions. Do you work on it alone or you have a computer geek in the family?

I AM the computer geek in the family! I’m not so keen on the hardware and software aspects but I spend an unhealthy amount of time online so I know the Web pretty well. I also read TechCrunch and other tech blogs regularly to stay on top of the latest. I learned about website design and maintenance when I was working at b5media and continue to challenge myself as much as I can.

As for the competitions, it’s a way to thank my readers for taking the time to visit and leave comments. If there were an easier way to draw winners without there having to be tangible participation like commenting, I would do it. As it stands, comments are the only way I can keep a record of who has entered.

• You work as a consultant for DNA Direct. Does it cause any change in your topics?

Yes, working for DNA Direct means that I’m more careful about the topics I write about. It’s not because they’re censoring me, quite the contrary. I’m careful because I don’t want to present any conflict of interest. In any post touching on medical genetic testing or a potential competitor of DNA Direct, I always state clearly that I am currently a consultant for DNA Direct. Be forewarned that not all bloggers are so upfront with their affiliations.

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

I haven’t had much time lately to plan out the future of EyeOnDNA.com beyond a week or two. I can say, however, that I intend to stay at my own domain and avoid being assimilated into a network (unless the offer were mighty sweet). I’ve had that experience already and prefer staying independent.

In addition to writing more in-depth posts at Eye on DNA, I want to try writing beyond the blog. Maybe you’ll see my name in a magazine or book one of these days if I can push myself out of my comfort zone!

Behind-the Scenes interviews so far:

• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Over My Med Body!
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Six Until Me
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: davidrothman.net

• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

I use Google Reader and I’m currently subscribed to about 530 feeds. Offhand, I have no idea how many of those are blogs. I keep tabs on buzz in the biblioblogosphere and the medical blogsphere by using LibWorm and MedWorm.

• You have an incredible number of feedreaders (950)! How did you reach that awesome number? Could you loan me some?

I don’t think that’s really an incredible number of subscribers. After all, it is a tiny percentage of the total number of anglophonic medical libraryfolk (my target readership) and I’m a bit skeptical about how reliable FeedBurner numbers are. You’re welcome to borrow as many as you can carry with you, Berci.

• You’re a real web 2.0 geek. Tell us your opinion on web 2.0 and medicine! What kind of changes would you like to see in medicine?

I’m not really a “web 2.0 geek.” I am increasingly uncomfortable with the uses of the “2.0″ suffix, be it after “Web,” “Library,” or “Medicine.” I like to write about “social software” or “emerging Web technologies,” but I don’t think that the ” 2.0″ label is helpful and I think it’ll get even less helpful as time passes.

I think that the evolution of information technology could potentially have an incredible impact on medicine in the next 30 years, but I really don’t believe that the greatest benefits will come from blogs, wikis, social bookmarking or any of the other currently popular social technolgies. Certainly, these tools can be good and helpful, but I don’t expect they’ll revolutionize medicine.

What I get excited about is the way that new technologies can enable clinicians to keep up with the news, trends and literature of their specialties. I also think that the medical librarian will have a very different role to play in being the go-to person in a clinical setting to help a clinician make use of these technologies.

• A helpful and web 2.0 based medical librarian could be the right-hand of a physician. Don’t you plan to work in Debrecen?

Nah. The best right-hand for a physician is probably a Physician Assistant.

It is a very short train ride from Debrecen to Budapest, isn’t it? Very tempting. When you finish your training, be sure to let me the salary and relocation expenses you’re offering as incentives.

• What about the other medical librarians? Have they discovered you and your blog? Do they consider you as a “leader” regarding your topics?

Based on a poll, I’d estimate that about 60% of my blog’s readers are medical librarians or medical library paraprofessionals. I’m not really qualified to estimate how I am regarded among medical libraryfolk, though I’ve been invited to present to librarians at the Mayo Clinic and at MLA 2008 (the annual meeting of the professional association for U.S. Medical Librarians) – so those appear to be good signs that a handful of people think I’m speaking out of the correct orifice. Some individual medical librarians who I respect and admire have said some nice things about my blog, and that’s pretty exciting for someone who has only been working in this field for a couple of years.

• I’m pretty sure that you get plenty of mails about new tools/services. How often do you have to search for new content on the web?

Actually, I don’t get very much email about new tools and services. Thanks to the glory and wonder of RSS, most of the stuff I write about is discovered in the daily review of my Google Reader account. I do very little searching unless I’m researching for a post I’m already writing.

• Why don’t you start a medical librarian blog carnival?

Mostly because the adminstration of such a project would take a significant amount of time that I’m not really able to give right now. However, the number of medical librar* blogs isn’t yet very great. While the massive number of medical blogs makes a weekly “best of” very useful, it isn’t hard to follow most of the existing medical librar* blogs. I did, however, want to create a better sense of community among medical librar* blogs. To this end, I founded the MedLib Blog masterlist and created the MedLib Blog Badge. It has been gratifying to see these widely embraced by medical librar* bloggers.

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

I plan to keep writing it for as long as I continue to enjoy doing so. However, the frequency of my posts is going to dramatically decline soon as I start another geeky medical library endeavor that’ll take up a lot of my time.

Thank you, David,  for the kind answers and keep up this great work, inform the medical librarians about the new trends and tools of web 2.0.

Behind-the Scenes interviews so far:

• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Over My Med Body!
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Six Until Me

Source

• You’re the only patient blogger in this series, because no one could do it more professionally. Own design, own system. Do the other patients appreciate what you’ve done through your blog?

Producing the content for Six Until Me has been completely fun. Writing comes naturally to me. Designing and maintaining the website myself has been a bit more of a challenge. (Like when my blog ate it’s own archives and refused to allow me to access the blogging platform. I think I made up my own curse words that day.) Forcing my brain to think in terms of webdesign and coding is completely against my nature. If I could use crayons and draw directly on my computer screen, I would.

Other people living with diabetes have been wonderfully supportive of my efforts with Six Until Me. I started this blog because I felt I was the only diabetic for miles – blogging helped me connect with others and feel less alone with my disease. The impact on my health and my life in general has been tremendous. So when you ask, “Do other patients appreciate what you’ve done,” I can’t help but counter back with – “Do they know how much I appreciate them?”

• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

I am the biggest blog-hopper in town. I built my blogroll so I could click like a little rabbit all over the blogosphere. I usually check about 20 – 30 diabetes-related sites a day but often find myself over in a completely random, non-diabetes related corner of the internet. I network through a collection of over 250 diabetes-specific sites, touching any given number of them on any day.

As far as information for my blog goes, I subscribe to several diabetes newswires for my job at dLife, so I have access to much of the latest in diabetes news. Most of my blog material, however, comes straight from my daily life with diabetes. When you are living with a disease like diabetes, which requires daily maintenance and vigilance, you can’t help but stumble upon plenty of life experience to blog about.

• You maintain a Your Story section (web 2.0 rules!) where the readers can send you their stories. How often do you get a story? Do you have to moderate any?

I receive several Your Story segments a week – it’s truly an honor and a pleasure to be able to bring the experiences of other people onto my blog. I hear from the parents of kids with diabetes, people living with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, people who have a loved one with diabetes, and even just those who have stumbled across the blog and are just plain curious. The range of voices is incredible.

As far as editing, I don’t edit the stories (unless there is a glaring typo or something that is intended for my eyes only) and instead give the writers complete storytelling freedom. It is their story, after all.

• Do you know why some of the physicians are afraid of patient bloggers? Because they could write about or rate them. Do you write about your doctor?

The best part of being a blogger is that the only force editing me is me. Blogs, particularly patient-authored blogs, are some of the most honest accounts of health conditions on the internet. We are the faces of these diseases, the target markets for so many advertisers, and points of solace for people who are sharing our common bond. Write about a doctor? Sure. I’m honest, but fair.

• You maintain a great Flickr photo collection, you tell you readers about your fights with diabetes. Aren’t you afraid of making your life totally public?

Ah, but that’s the tricky part – my life isn’t totally public. There are so many parts of my life that never even whisper close to Six Until Me. I share so many of my experiences with diabetes, but my whole life isn’t diabetes. Some bits of my life are just for me.

• Do you get e-mails from companies working on diabetic tools/services?

I receive correspondence from several companies and focus groups working on diabetes-specific tools and services. I feel very lucky to have access to this burgeoning technology and I enjoy reviewing products, assisting design teams, and doing whatever I can to help soldier on towards a cure and contribute to a better life for people with diabetes.

• What do you think about the patient-community sites (Sugarstats.com ; MDjunction.com, etc.)? How much can web 2.0 be helpful for patients?

As a patient with a chronic illness, I am responsible for much of my disease management. Sure, my doctors offer tools and medical tests, but the day-to-day management of diabetes remains my responsibility. From tesing my blood sugar several times a day to priming my insulin pump, the maintenance tasks of diabetes require a lot of my attention. Web 2.0 – specifically HealthWeb 2.0 – gives a web-savvy patient access to disease management tools that can make diabetes daily management a bit easier. And I’m all for anything that makes diabetes a bit easier to deal with.

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

I started Six Until Me in May of 2005 because I was tired of Googling “diabetes” and coming up with little more than a list of complications and frightening stories. Where were all the people who were living with this disease, like I have been since I was a little girl? Was I the only diabetic out there who felt alone?

Blogging helped me find the others out there who were living with diabetes, just like me.

I’m excited to expand the blog to include more voices from the diabetes community, raising awareness and sharing their stories. Blogging, for me, is about connecting with other people, finding hope and inspiration within our own diabetes lives.

Thank you Kerri for being so kind and helpful during the interview. You’re one of, if not the best example for patient bloggers. Check out Six Until Me for more infos on diabetes!

Interviews so far:

• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Over My Med Body!
• Behind the Scenes of Medical Blogs: Six Until Me

• How do you find information for your blog? You certainly read other blogs, journals but do you use RSS reader? How many blogs do you track?

Oh boy. Yeah, I use bloglines–otherwise I’d have no way to keep up.

My main sources for my blog:
1) My own thoughts/issues/ideas that come up while in the process of seeing patients or discussing their care;
2) Discussions with classmates about being a doctor/caring for patients
3) Other medical blogs
4) The New York Times
5) Medical Journals and other magazines
6) Other blogs that happen to post health-related stories

I track probably about 20ish medical blogs, but then also read many, many more in other areas: web design/development, humor/weird internet stuff, news sites.

• You’re a medical student just like me. I know how hard it is to find time to maintain your blog. How can you handle it?

It’s actually often therapeutic for me–releasing all the thoughts I’ve had built up for a while–often this is why I’ll go for a week or two without posting much, and then write a ton all at once. On busy rotations, I will often have a TON to post about but just not the time to do so–or I have so much reading to do and things to learn about that I don’t get to it, either.

• You’re in your third year, so you surely know what kind of medical specialty you’re most interested in. Tell us please!

I’m actually in my 5th year (I need to update that about me page!) of med school. At Stanford we’re kind of weird in that most of us take an extra year to do research. So I’m in my final clinical year–and I’m going into Emergency Medicine. Currently preparing my residency application.

• Why don’t you publish your name on your blog?

I’ve posted it on occasion–and it was printed in the US News article, so I’m not particularly anonymous. If you google my name, my site is usually the first or 2nd link–so it’s no secret where I am or who I am–it just takes a little more work, I guess.

• You have a unique Single-payer tutorial/description on your blog. Did you create it yourself?

Yeah, I put that together summer after my first year of medical school.

• Do your fellow medstudents know about your blog? I’m often asked whether my professors like my blog. I always say I’m pretty sure they don’t even know about it. So do your professors appreciate the work you’ve done through your blog?

My classmates will read from time to time, and mention a particular post in passing. I’m sure an attending or two has seen my blog, but I don’t really know what they thought of it. The usual reaction is just a fairly passive, “Oh, interesting.”

• In Second Life, in the Ann Myers Medical Center, a medical student can participate in training exercises, case presentations. Would you be interested to learn from physicians and with medical students from around the world? Do you think it can have an impact on the future of medical education?

I don’t know–I’m not as excited as others may be–I could see it perhaps being useful for clinicians around the world to communicate or interact, but I have so much learning and knowledge to acquire in the real world (and I personally acquire it much better with actual patients than with case presentations) that I wouldn’t be too interested. But for other students that don’t have as much access to quality teaching and education, I can see how it might be very useful!

• At last, what are your future plans with your blog?

That’s a great question. Residency is going to suck, and be super time-consuming, so we’ll just have to see what happens. And I’ll officially be a hospital employee, instead of a medical student, so I’m not sure what my future residency director will think. For right now, I’m thinking that it may disappear, or at least go into hibernation–I may start focusing more of the site on my photography. Who knows.

Thank you, Graham, for the kind answers! Check out his blog for more!