On Webicina.com, the first medical web 2.0 guidance service, I keep creating free e-guides for doctors in order to help them get closer to the web 2.0 world and make their online presence as efficient as possible. The newest free guide is How to give a remarkable slideshow? in which I provide positive and negative examples as well as new methods about creating unique presentations not just in medicine.

Please take a look at the table of contents:

• How to give a remarkable slideshow?
• The Methods
• And the positive examples

Free Webicina content:

• How to keep yourself up-to-date in medicine?
• How to write a quality medical blog?
• How to give a remarkable slideshow?
• Neurology 2.0
• Rheumatology 2.0
• Diabetes 2.0
• Depression 2.0
• Cancer 2.0
• Pregnancy 2.0

I’ve presented almost 80 slideshows so far and have been using Powerpoint for years. I tried to redesign the newest slideshows by reading outstanding books like Presentation Zen or Slide:ology. But the real change was due to Prezi.com, a unique slideshow making tool developed in Hungary. I decided to create all the presentations for the next semester of my Medicine 2.0 credit course with it.

Click here to see the Prezi slideshow I presented at Scifoo 2009.

I co-organized a session at this year’s Scifoo with Andrew Lang. We focused on virtual worlds and how they can be used in medicine and science.

Andrew published his slides:

I described what I’ve been doing in Second Life regarding medical case presentations and presented a new virtual world, Visuland.com,  which I will feature on Scienceroll for several times in the next few weeks. It’s still in beta, but will be improved constantly and is created by 3 talented Hungarian developers. Click here to see my presentation:

I met Jorge Cham at Scifoo this weekend. He is a great guy and the author of PhD Comics, a fun site for PhD students and scientists. He has also published scientific comic books. His latest post features hilarious imaginary tweets from scientists. My favourite one:

Are you more science-savvy than the average American? 12 not-that-hard questions about science and medicine from the Pew Research Center. I did it myself.

Demographic breakdowns by question as of July, 14, 2009:

I’ve come across a great collection of 7 useful iPhone medical application on Mashable. But my favourite new app of the week is the SoundAMP which I found on Medgadget.

A new application for the Apple iPhone has been designed to aid people with poor hearing, featuring abilities that not even a hearing aid can boast of. Essentially a volume booster, the app amplifies everything that is being heard by the microphone and allows the user to set which frequencies to boost and which to filter. Additionally, the application continuously keeps a recorded buffer of what it hears, allowing you to quickly replay the last five to thirty seconds of a misheard conversation.

Springer Images lets you use thousands of biomedical, quality images for your presentations and slideshows.

Anyone can create an account and search the free and Open Access images indexed by SpringerImages. Access to the complete collection is available via subscription to libraries, research institutions and individuals. Images obtained from SpringerImages can be used for almost all noncommercial purposes, including integration into presentations and PDF documents.

Yesterday, I attended the session of George Church that focused on personalized genomics. He mentioned one of his new projects, Bioweathermap, an experiment in collaborative environmental surveillance and discovery.

The BioWeatherMap initiative is a global, grassroots, distributed environmental sensing effort aimed at answering some very basic questions about the geographic and temporal distribution patterns of microbial life. Utilizing the power of high-throughput, low cost DNA sequencing and harnessing the drive of an enlightened public we propose a new collaborative research approach aimed at generating a steady stream of environmental samples from many geographic locations to produce high quality data for ongoing discovery and surveillance. Our approach will provide a unique opportunity to engage the public in the scientific research process while we address fundamental questions such as “How diverse is the microbial life around us?” and “How do microbial communities in different habitats change over time?” and “How can advanced sequencing technologies best be utilized to address issues in biodiversity, public health, and biosurveillance?”

George Church will also be featured in the Silverstein Lecture Series: Personal Genomes and Web 2.0 Volunteerism (May 11th and 12th, 2009).

You may remember the post about Twittering with thought.  Now here is a Toyota development, a thought-controlled wheelchair.

(Via Curious Cat Science)

After Scifoo, I will write many posts about my experiences, but let’s start with some fun.

(Via BoingBoing)

In the past few days, I’ve been covering the International Congress of Gerontology in Paris, but tomorrow I will fly to San Francisco to attend the Scifoo event which is one of the most unique events in each year’s calendar.

Sci Foo is an annual, interdisciplinary, invitation-only scientific ‘unconference’ organized by Nature Publishing Group, Google and O’Reilly Media.

Sci Foo ‘09 will be held on July 10th-12th, 2009 at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California.

I plan to participate in 3 sessions.

1) Compu-doc: Doctors and web 2.0 (I have plenty of material about it)

2) Virtual Worlds: I will present a newly developed totally free virtual world created for quick meetings and conferences.

3) I would like to discuss the results of my Medicine 2.0 credit course.

I thought this announcement will be interesting for many Scienceroll users.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is currently running a consultation on Medical profiling and online medicine: the ethics of ‘personalised’ healthcare in a consumer age. The paper provides background information and asks questions on a number of different issues relating to medical profiling and online medicine. We are seeking the views of people including those who have used medical profiling and online medicine services, people working in the area and other stakeholders, academics, policy makers and members of the public.

The deadline for responses is 31^st July 2009. The Working Party will consider all the consultation responses received and use them to inform its deliberations. A report with conclusions and recommendations is expected to be published in Spring 2010, and a copy of the final report will be sent to all consultation respondents.

You can complete it online.

There is a new article published in the International Journal of Medical Informatics about Junior physician’s use of Web 2.0 for information seeking and medical education: A qualitative study.

Web 2.0 internet tools and methods have attracted considerable attention as a means to improve health care delivery. Despite evidence demonstrating their use by medical professionals, there is no detailed research describing how Web 2.0 influences physicians’ daily clinical practice. Hence this study examines Web 2.0 use by 35 junior physicians in clinical settings to further understand their impact on medical practice.

CONCLUSION: Web 2.0 use represents a profound departure from previous learning and decision processes which were normally controlled by senior medical staff or medical schools. There is widespread concern with the risk of poor quality information with Web 2.0 use, and the manner in which physicians are using it suggest effective use derives from the mitigating actions by the individual physician. Three alternative policy options are identified to manage this risk and improve efficiency in Web 2.0’s use.

I launched the world’s first university course focusing on web 2.0 and medicine for medical and dentistry students. The third semester will begin this September. I asked all of my students to fill a survey before and after the course so then I could somehow see how their attitude changed during the course.

I have a lot of data, but much less time and I have never written a publication in such a field. If you want to join, let’s make it a collaborative project. Please drop me a line (berci.mesko at gmail.com) if you are interested.

PS: How could we expect physicians to be web-savvy or to meet the expectations of e-patients if they are not educated properly to do so? That is where my course is meant to enter the process…

Just a short note about HealthMash, the health knowledge base, that is being developed by my friends at Polymeta.com and that was showcased at the MLA (Medical Library Association Annual Meeting and Exhibition) in Honolulu.

HealthMash™ combines sophisticated Web 2.0 universal search and discovery technology with Semantic Web Concepts in a simple yet highly informative user interface.

Here is an exclusive screenshot as this is the first time you can see the service from inside.

• 10 + 1 PubMed Tips for Residents (and their Instructors) (Laikas MedLiblog): One of the best list of instructions ever.

• NIH State-of-the-Science Conference: Family History and Improving Health:

• Twitter: Growing Virally But Can It Stop Viruses?: This link is from Chris Thorman, who normally blogs about EMR softwares.

Imagine this. Doctors around the world are conducting their rounds and examining patients on electronic medical records, which document diagnosis codes. As the physician makes a diagnosis or documents symptoms, he has the option to “tweet” that observation. This allows other doctors to follow that feed and observe trends. Even better, epidemiology-specific analytics can be layered on top of the feeds to recognize patterns as they develop.

• Twitter Better: 20 Ways to Filter Your Tweets (Mashable)

• First twitter photo-consult in the world? Zorg 2.0? Make 2.0? (AcuteZorg.nl)

• How to extract your DNA at home

Carrot² is an Open Source Search Results Clustering Engine. It can automatically organize small collections of documents, e.g. search results, into thematic categories. I gave it a try and searched for cancer via Pubmed.com, the biomedical database. It helps you visualize the first search results and also make categories out of them.

From this Sunday (4th of July), I will cover the World Congress of Gerontology & Geriatrics 2009 through my blog and Twitter account for 4 days. I will mostly focus on the genetics-related presentations.

Held every four years, the IAGG (International Association of Gerontology & Geriatrics) World Congress of Gerontology & Geriatrics is attended by teams of experts from around the world, who will discuss the latest findings in the fields of ageing. An attractive program was created by its International Scientific Committee and will feature four main investigation areas:

- Health and geriatric sciences
- Social gerontology
- Behavioural and psychological sciences
- Biology of ageing.

The new site that will aggregate posts, tweets, images and videos, is up.

Bob Coffield shared a fantastic slideshow with us on his Healthcare Law Blog.

A few months ago, we created PeRSSonalized Medicine on Webicina.com, a free service, to help medical professionals keep up with the huge amount of new medical information. Without having a clue what RSS is, you can follow your favourite resources, medical news sites and Pubmed updates in one place with just one click. You can also personalize it according to your needs.

Now here is Clinical Reader that seems to be useful for those professionals who spend some more time on the web. It looks great though you can’t personalize it now and for me it takes many clicks to get to my favourite resources.

Welcome to Clinical Reader, a truly quality collection of accessible clinical, scientific and health literature aiming to ease information delivery to the medical community. Focus your time, discover new links, fine-tune your online experience in a bid to effectively manage online clinical browsing.

Let me know your suggestions and if you want to add a new resource to PeRSSonalized Medicine, just leave a comment.

Today is the last day of the Nursing Informatics Congress taking place in Helsinki, Finland. You can check the Twitter updates of the congress. And here is the panel presentation of Scott Erdley and Peter Murray. Scott also mentioned Scienceroll.com, many thanks for that!