The Google Story from the Medical Perspective: Prezi! April 7, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Google, Health 2.0, Medical Search, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, The Social MEDia Course, Web 2.0, Webicina.add a comment
Do you know how Google was launched? Do you know how many medical services they provide? Do you know what kind of criticism they got because of privacy concerns? Do you know how to search effectively in Google for medical purposes?
The Google Story prezi will answer all your questions and you can test your knowledge by taking the post test and earning your badge at the free Social MEDia Course!
The Social MEDia Course: Revolution in Medical Education NOW! March 22, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in e-patient, Education, Health, Health 2.0, Healthcare, Innovation, Medical education, Medical Search, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Prezi, twitter, Video, Web 2.0, Webicina.2 comments
Social media is changing how medicine is practiced and healthcare is delivered. Patients, doctors, communication or even time management, everything is changing, except one thing: medical education. We need a revolution!
When a UK physician wanted to visit Hungary every week just to attend my university course focusing on social media and medicine, I decided it’s time to make this course global.
Today, The Social MEDia Course goes live with 16 flash Prezis, exciting tests, badges and achievements. Enjoy and have fun while learning! Medical students, physicians and even patients, everyone is welcome to take the course which is, of course, for free.
Here is a video about the course (and also a Prezi).
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How to get better at searching online? February 25, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Google, Medical Search, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.1 comment so far
A medical professional (just like an e-patient) has to be proficient at searching online. I’ve been telling my students that they have to keep practicing. One of the ways to do so is a Chrome extension, A Google a Day.
- They provide a task every day.
- You try to find the answer. That’s it.
Let’s see one example:
If you key in international dialing code 40, how would you say “good morning” in the language of the country you’re calling?
Google Correlate shows what correlates with weight loss February 7, 2012
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Google, Medical Search, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.add a comment
Google Correlate is a tool on Google Trends which enables you to find queries with a similar pattern to a target data series. The target can either be a real-world trend that you provide (e.g., a data set of event counts over time) or a query that you enter. I found a slightly good correlation between weight loss and wedding checklist. Is it surprising?
Try other medical conditions as well.
NLMplus is Featured by the NLM October 26, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medical Search, Medicine, Web 2.0, Webicina.2 comments
The developer team that designed the semantic-like clustering search engine of Webicina.com created another engine that was featured in a competition initiated by the National Library of Medicine.
NLMplus ( http://nlmplus.com) is an innovative semantic search and discovery application, developed by WebLib LLC, a small business in Maryland, in response to a challenge contest by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make use of NLM’s vast collection of biomedical data and services for the benefit of the Library’s diverse worldwide user communities.
Webicina search: Interview about Semantic indexing August 30, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Health, Medical Search, Web 2.0, Medicine 2.0, Health 2.0, Webicina.add a comment
Now that Webicina.com has a new design and a brand new search engine, I thought it would be useful to show the basic features and I also publish an interview with Endre Jóföldi, CEO at WebLib LLC, the company behind the search engine of Webicina.com.
If you do a search for diabetes, you will see
- whether Webicina has a diabetes resource (a blog, podcast, Facebook group, Twitter user, etc), collection (Diabetes and Web 2.0) or sub-section (Diabetes Mobile Apps).
- You can narrow the search by “social media collection” (e.g. a diabetes resource in the asthma collection), “curated dynamic news category” (e.g. news categories featuring diabetes resources), “resource type” (RSS, resource, subsection or collection) or “languages”.
- Please tell us more about WebLib! What kind of projects are you famous for?
Generally we are building intelligent search solutions for our customers like the NIH or Vanderbilt University Biomedical Library. Behind the scenes we are also working on a semantic web knowledge base to improve our core search engine.
- What is the engine behind the Webicina search function like?
Our PolySearch enterprise search engine is a best-of-class domain independent semantic indexing and search solution built on top of the open source Solr/Lucene enterprise search platform. We have built several different search solutions based on this engine, which are all different in some sense based on the different needs of our customers.
PolySearch uses grammatical tools to find different forms of words and also uses our SearchComplete to offer health related search queries when the user typing his/her queries. It also utilize our medical spell checker to help correcting typos.
- How does clustering search help us find exactly what we need?
We face the problem of information overload after doing searches. For example if you search for cancer on Webicina you will get more then 40 thousand results. Our relevance algorithm floats up the most important Webicina resources, however if you want to look through the tons of RSS results, it definitely helps to filter it down to your area of interest. Like you will see only 479 results in the Nutrition category. This is a much more friendly number.
- How difficult was it to develop a search engine for Webicina.com?
We tried to make a very fast engine, what helps Webicina visitors to find all the information Webicina treasures. It is also handling the different resource types and languages so we think it can really improve the user experience. More than that we have still plans how to make it even better, so it is going to be a longer process, where we want to use the data how the visitors are going to use this search service.
From Patients on Facebook to WiFi Enabled Asthma Inhalers April 19, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Health, Health 2.0, Invention, Medical Search, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Ted Talks, Video, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.2 comments
- Facebook friend request from a patient? (The Lancet)
In the USA, birthplace of most of these technological advances, various associations of health-care professionals are starting to issue codes of conduct when dealing with new digital media. Other countries, such as the UK, Canada, and Australia, are also debating what rules should be set. But some doctors believe such codes will have to evolve and adapt as younger generations, used to living an online life from an early age, start to dominate health care and to teach subsequent waves of professionals.
- TEDxPugetSound – Stephen Friend, MD, PhD – True Crowd Sourcing of Medicine: Activating All of Us
But I find the element of human support to be important. For example, recently the FDA issued a black box warning for the concomitant use of Remicade and 6-MP. My representative visited to be sure that I was aware of the changes in the product insert. Sure the information was in my mailbox – along with 6 inches of pulp spam. It’s basic attenionomics: I’m more likely to hear a person than a letter.
If your asthma is acting up, you’re probably not the only one. But unless you’re standing next to someone who is also huffing his or her inhaler, you wouldn’t know it. That’s a problem for epidemiologists who do their best work when they’re buried in data, and it’s exactly the problem a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researcher aims to solve with a GPS- and WiFi-enabled inhaler.
For the past nine years, this column has presented medical mysteries that doctors eventually solve. Recently, we tried something different: posting a tough-to-diagnose case on well.blogs.nytimes.com and challenging readers to try to figure out what was wrong with the patient. More than 1,300 people responded with a lively combination of questions and answers. Now, you can try to crack the case and follow the crowd-sourced medical conversation.
- NeoTake: A great e-book search engine for medical books as well
FDA launches consumer-friendly Web search for consumers during recalls April 5, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in FDA, Health, Health 2.0, Medical Search, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Web 2.0.add a comment
Here is an interesting press release from FDA:
Beginning today, consumers can search for food and other product recalls easier and quicker on FDA’s website than previously. The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) signed into law in January by President Obama called for a more consumer-friendly recall search engine.
To provide greater ease of use for consumers, the search results provide data from news releases and other recall announcements in the form of a table. That table organizes information from news releases on recalls since 2009 by date, product brand name, product description, reason for the recall and the recalling firm.
For more information:
- FDA Web page: Recalls & Safety Alerts
- FDA Consumer Update Video: Identifying Recalled Products
- FDA photostream of recalled products on Flickr
- FDA Consumer Update: FDA 101: Product Recalls – From First Alert to Effectiveness Checks
- FDA Web Page: Food Safety Modernization Act
- FoodSafety.gov Web Page: Food Recalls and Alerts
Healthmash on iPhones March 23, 2011
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medical Search, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Web 2.0.add a comment
Healthmash, a Revolutionary Health Knowledge Base and Semantic Search Engine now has its iPhone version as well. Check it out and let us know what you think.
The HealthMash™ semantic health search engine combines universal search and discovery technology with Semantic Web concepts to find relevant health information (drugs, diseases, symptoms, treatments and alternative medicine approaches) from trusted sources on the Web.
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Health 2.0 News: From Mobile Search to Virtual Fluoroscopy December 22, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Facebook, Health 2.0, Medical Search, Medicine 2.0, Mobile, Video, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.add a comment
- Mobile application search on Mimvi.com
A ProPublica investigation found that more than a dozen of the school’s doctors were paid speakers in apparent violation of its policy—two of them earning six figures since last year.
- The VCL’s are software applications that simulate X-Ray Fluoroscopy equipment using a real-time interactive 3D Games engine (like the PlayStation or X Box).
- What to Get the Scientist in Your Life: Christmas presents
- Word Lens instantly translates printed words from one language to another using the video camera on your iPhone.
