6 Cool Things People Have Done Inside MRI Scanners April 27, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in List, Medicine, Music, Radiology.add a comment
There is a very interesting article in The Atlantic about things people have done in the MRI scanner. Here is the list, enjoy!
- Playing jazz
- Giving birth
- Reading T.S. Eliot
- Playing video games
- Unleashing animals into the room
- Having sex
Charles Limb, a Johns Hopkins otolaryngologist, tried to find out what it is like brain-wise to listen to music and used MRI scans in his research.
Which docs you should follow online? March 12, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in List, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.add a comment
MedPage Today published a list of doctors you should follow through social media. It’s an honor for me to be included in the list in such a great company. Just to mention, I’m the only one in the list outside the USA or UK.
Patients may have been quicker to flock to social media sites like Inspire and PatientsLikeMe to share their stories about living with disease, but more clinicians are catching the social media bug.
No doubt the term ‘social media’ encompasses a range of electronic community outreach opportunities, from personal blogs to Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. Clinicians use these media for a range of reasons, from sharing ideas with their colleagues to better connecting with their patients.
Directory of European Doctors on Twitter March 3, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in List, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, twitter, Web 2.0.4 comments
Yesterday, I tweeted that I’m the only European doctor in the top 25 of the global list of doctors on Twitter, but I know there are many European doctors using Twitter quite massively. Responding to my tweet, Andrew Spong launched a self-edited database or directory of European doctors (actually all healthcare professionals) on Twitter. Feel free to add yourself.
For what do I use Twitter with 10,000 followers? February 27, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in List, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, twitter, Web 2.0.6 comments
Yesterday, I passed the 10,000 follower milestone on Twitter. A follower asked me to share the reasons why I use Twitter and the also the ways how I use it. I would say there are 5 major reasons why I’ve been using it for long years.
- Crowdsourcing: Usually I have very specific and complicated questions either about a clinical problem or about social media. What do you do when you have such a question, but do not know who might have the answer? You spend time and efforts building a network and, build trust with the members of this network and then when you have a question, drop it into the network. My experience is that generally in a few minutes, I get my answer. That is how I use Twitter for crowdsourcing and how I used it once for crowdsourcing a diagnosis that generated an Al Jazeera interview and a New York Times report.
- Let the community filter news for me: That is another reason why I have been building this network for years. When I check my Twitter stream and also a few hashtags such as #hcsm #meded or #hitsm, I know I will come across that day’s most important news probably relevant and interesting for me. I don’t have to scroll over all my favourite sites, just check the Twitter stream.
- Share news: I myself post quite often about the news and articles related to social media and medicine. I help the community in this filtering process and try to find the best pieces of information for them. Otherwise, how could I expect them to do the same for me?
- Get in touch: Getting in touch with people from around the world takes time when you have many contacts and friends. Moreover, I believe the easiest way nowadays to contact conference organizers or editors of medical journals and companies is Twitter, this is a fast, but still very personal channel.
- Get feedback: I work on many projects so I need feedback. And as I know I have people in my network from a lot of areas with expertise and broad perspectives, I love getting feedback from them and fortunately I do get a lot.
Further reading:
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.12 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!
7 Features of the New Generation of Physicians November 21, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, List, Medical education, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.19 comments
For the last 4 years, I’ve been teaching medical and public health students about the use of social media and generally digital technologies in medicine and healthcare and I got a good picture of what kind of medical professionals they would become soon. They represent the new generation of physicians.
Here are my points and observations:
- They are technophile. I remember the time when there was no internet, I remember the first website I first saw online. They were born into the technology and internet-based world. For them, websites, Facebook, Twitter and blogs represent the basics. They love gadgets and devices.
- They are fast. They use smartphones, read news online, follow blogs and know what RSS is, they are familiar with multi-tasking. They are much faster than the previous generations therefore they need different tools and solutions in their work.
- But they use the technology for non-professional purposes. Even if they know a lot about social media, they use it like everyone else outside medicine. As long as they don’t have professional motivation regarding the use of social media, they keep on using it for personal reasons. We must help them find the way to use the web in an optimal and efficient way.
- They like balance. They don’t want to become “Gods’ for the patients even if they are trained like that and hate hierarchy. They soon realized common hierarchies are missing in the online world and what matters is the quality of work you do (just see Wikipedia). They need informed patients and want to work with e-patients. They are not afraid of them as they see such patients day by day in the circles of their families, friends and relatives. For them, the concept of being an empowered and enabled patient is absolutely not new.
- They live on the internet. They not only accept the dominance of the online world in almost all processess and activities, but it’s so natural for them. They have been doing banking, messaging, reading, studying and even shopping online in their entire life. It’s obvious they want to use the internet when practicing medicine and they don’t really understand why they cannot use it right now in many areas of medicine.
- They are mobile. They don’t feel they should stay in one place and they are not afraid of moving to new places or even countries. They are also mobile because of their smartphones through which they are connected all the time to those who are important to them and to the information they need.
- They are the future. And as it strikes me, they don’t even know it (fortunately). They just want to use the online word in medicine and healthcare as well.
I’m trying to help them become better doctors who can meet the specific needs of e-patients, the new generation of patients. In this long process, I will make my course totally online this January. So then any students, medical professionals or e-patients could take and finish my course and know more about the medical segments of social media and the entire world wide web.
More details later!
2011 Predictions in Medicine, Healthcare, Technology and Innovation January 4, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Healthcare, Innovation, List, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.19 comments
I hope everyone survived New Year’s Eve and the first days of work, so it’s just time to share my predictions for 2011 in medicine, healthcare, technology and innovation. I would love to get feedback about any of these points so please tell us what you think!
- This is going to be the year of tablets, and I’m not only talking about the iPad, but also Samsung Galaxy Tab (which I will write about in details soon) and others. New medical and media apps designed only for these tablets will appear.
- As the number of medical websites and the number of people searching for medical resources are both increasing, online medical content curation will become crucially important. See Webicina.com.
- Prezi will keep on developing into a collaborative brainstorm platform besides being the best presentation tool out there. Although there will be an increase in the no slides zone.
- The number of medical mobile apps will increase rapidly (with Android becoming the dominant platform).
- Social media policies about using SM as a medical professional, patient or pharma will be published by authorities and organizations (I’ll try to initiate this process a bit in the next couple of weeks).
- Voice will be a critical interface for mobile and tablet apps. See Siri and Vlingo.
- Second Life has no future as free virtual worlds will become apparent. See Visuland.com.
- Social media analytical services focusing on medicine and healthcare will rise. See Newistic.
- At least one medical school (my prediction is Stanford) will implement digital-only classes without real medical books or materials on paper. Everything (without an exception) will be shared on mobiles or tablets.
- Personalized medicine will almost be there with microlabors, at-home DTC tests, etc. DTC genomic companies such as Pathway Genomics, Navigenics or 23andMe will publish more papers focusing on results obtained from crowdsourcing.
- Force feedback will appear in virtual worlds and telemedical solutions. Imagine apps describing skin conditions which you can touch and feel through the surface of the tool with force feedback. See examples from the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference.
- Empowered patients will keep on developing their own applications and tools for better health management. As it strikes me they don’t want to wait any more for healthcare developers to create useful and relevant apps for them so they will do it themselves. Believe me, a diabetic e-patient can design better apps for diabetes management than any endocrinologists.
- Impact factor will keep on losing its power and importance compared to article level metrics although that is not the solution for measuring scientific value of a particular paper (citation number excluding self-citations should be enough, IMHO).
- All pharma companies will have proper social media presence by the end of 2011 not because it’s good for anyone but because they will think they have to.
- By the end of the year 2011, we will all realize that improving technology and providing the stakeholders of healthcare with proper technology won’t be enough as there must be a balance between the number/complexity of technological solutions we use and the benefits they provide (e.g. having an iPhone itself in a medical practice doesn’t mean it will lead to any kind of benefits).
Like this:
Health 2.0 News: From WHO to Medical Songs December 15, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Cancer, Health, Health 2.0, List, Medicine 2.0, Music, twitter, Video, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.1 comment so far
AIDS Drugs Lower the Risk of HIV Infection
Synthetic Cell
Blood Test for Alzheimer’s
FDA Approves Botox for Migraines
Taking the Resuscitation Out of CPR
The FDA Restricts Avandia
Blood Test for Heart Attack
Predicting IVF Success
Artificial Ovary
Creating iPS Cells Safer and Faster
If it’s the latter, it may be time to find another doctor. With nearly 90% of online Americans searching the Internet for health resources, it’s likely you and your friends and family already use the Internet to research health issues. It’s true that the web has a jumble of health information, and engaging online takes time, which most health experts don’t have. The good news, however, is that the increasing number of health professionals now embracing the Internet as an important and useful tool for health and wellness is beginning to change your options as a consumer.
Research suggests that regardless of cultural differences, doctors around the world now view the internet as essential to how they practice. And around a fifth can be identified as highly ‘e-reliant’. One of the measures of this is where they get their clinical information, and more than 75% are saying they are getting that information online.
The Hospital Social Network List October 27, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health 2.0, Hospital, List, Web 2.0.2 comments
Ed Bennett has been managed a huge and comprehensive list of US hospitals using social media. In the newest update, Hospital LinkedIn accounts are now also tracked in addition to Twitter, Youtube, Facebbok and Blogs.
Current Stats:
871 Hospitals total
- 421 YouTube Channels
- 679 Facebook pages
- 648 Twitter Accounts
- 417 LinkedIn Accounts
- 94 Blogs
You can also browse by state. The number of hospitals using each account is below:
