• Guiding Principles for Physician Use of Social Media my Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media
• A 12-Word Social Media Policy

Having noted this, among the most common concerns that seem to limit participation are those regarding professionalism.  So let’s make this as easy as possible, with 12 words to light your way:

• Don’t Lie, Don’t Pry
• Don’t Cheat, Can’t Delete
• Don’t Steal, Don’t Reveal

• Doctors warned not to use social media with patients
• When it comes to doctors and social media, hospitals fail miserably

• Social Media Guidelines for Nurses

• Model Policy Guidelines for the Appropriate Use of Social Media and Social Networking in Medical Practice (PDF)

This project is getting more and more attention and hopefully this movement will result in a very useful list of European medical professionals being active on Twitter.

Now over 60 medical professionals are listed and the list is getting bigger and more detailed every day.

This was one of my crowdsourcing examples in my keynote at the recent Doctors 2.0 and You.

In our first project, the Thesys Group analyzed the network of discussions focusing on one of the most popular medical Twitter hashtags, MD_chat. In the figure below, a dot represents a Twitter user, lines connecting the dots represent their relationship. The bigger the dot is, the more tweets the Twitter user had. The thicker the line is, the more tweets the two users had with each other. Based on this, here is the network graph (click on the image below to access the interactive graph):

Dots in the middle account for active users, while dots in the periphery did not participate that often in these discussions. Graph includes only tweets including user names, therefore representing discussions.  Here is a zoomed version of this graph just to show you how the dots are connected to each other on a smaller scale with @doctor_v and @jodyms in the focus.

A few numbers and facts:

• Tweets are dated between October, 2010 and October, 2011 (4815 messages).
• Data tables were obtained from a public Scridb database containing all the MD_chat discussions and can be downloaded in doc or PDF formats.
• 282 users are represented in the graph with 1972 connecting them to each other.
• Graph was visualized with the Gephi open-source platform.

The top 10 most active Twitter user using the MD_chat hashtag in discussions (largest dots in the graph):

The aim of this short study was to point out the importance of medicine related hashtags and the growing popularity of these. The dynamic growth of MD_chat is a good example for the changes that we can see now in the everyday communication among peers. Therapeutic experience, news and opinions spread without geographical or linguistic limitations.

Please let us know what you think of this analysis and feel free to contact me or the Thesys Group for more details.

For 2013, we return to San Diego, where “Medicine Meets Virtual Reality” began in June 1992. Participants can look forward to a special gathering that acknowledges two decades of vision and innovation.

The Call for Presentations has opened: the Organizing Committee invites researchers to give paper and poster presentations, and organize independent sessions such as workshops and panels. The materials submission deadline is Sunday, July 15.

Leap represents an entirely new way to interact with your computers. It’s more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen. For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements.

The Social MEDia Course: The global format of my university course focusing on medicine and social media for medical students, physicians and also patients with Prezis, tests and gamification.

Webicina.com is my service that curates medical content in social media for free for medical professionals and e-patients.

PeRSSonalized Medicine is the simplest, free, customizable medical information aggregator covering over 80 medical specialties and conditions in 17 languages!

Scienceroll Search is a personalized medical search engine powered by PolyMeta search and clustering engine. You can choose which databases to search in and which one to exclude from your list. It works with well-known medical search engines and databases and we’re totally open to add new ones or remove those you don’t really like.

List of biomedical and scientific community sites: More than 30 communities with links, descriptions and screenshots.

List of Biomedical video sites: Almost 40 sites featuring scientific or medical videos and videocasts.

Medicine 2.0 Collection: I maintain the biggest collection of links and posts focusing on web 2.0 and medicine.

“If we can trust doctors with scalpels and lives, we can trust them with Twitter or Facebook”

“This [social media] is not an addition to your job, this is a part of your job!”

The reason why I’m showing this to you now is that next week, I’m going to publish here a very detailed and thorough analysis of a particular medical Twitter hashtag and also visualize the results. Stay tuned!

Now it looks like a playground for the search engine Bing.com, but nothing more. According to Technorati:

Microsoft’s So.cl, pronounced “Social” is a product of Microsoft’s research lab Fuselabs. The site offers enhanced features such as Explore, Feed, Post, Video Parties and the ability to share any web content.

It looks like Microsoft has indeed created its own social network to compete with the likes of Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest. The timing of the launch is perfect, since Microsoft silently launched So.cl two days after Facebook became a public company.

Do you think it has a momentum in the healthcare space?

iDoo gives you the flexibility to perform the perfect training, anywhere, anytime. The app is based on a patent pending algorithm that uses several sensors of the smartphone to compare the movement of the user with the perfect motion desired by the exercise. The app features several exercises, targeting different muscles and body parts.

We are looking for testers to try out the first 15 warm-up exercises! Apply for the test following the link here, and be among the first users to try this revolutionary fitness app ever.

On Wednesday, I will be the moderator in the session about big data in healthcare.

And on Thursday, I will speak about how crowdsourcing helped my way through medical school as a real geek.

Here is a great summary about what’s coming up in Paris. Until my keynote is published online, here is my speech from last year when I talked about the favorite social media tools of a physician.

See you in Paris!

Pregnancy is a joyous occasion but the road is not always smooth. A variety of medical conditions can occur along the way – which are all too easily missed.

Prognosis for Moms gives you an in-depth understanding of these issues, via real-world stories presented in a cartoon format.

Sign the petition to require free access over the Internet to journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research. This will require you to create an account at the White House petition website, confirm the account by clicking on a link in your email, and then sign the petition itself.

Please sign the petition and follow the movement on Facebook.

In order to show you the similarities and differences between medical schools in Europe, I proudly present the video of the medical school from which I graduated in 2009 and where I also do my PhD now. Here is the University of Debrecen, Medical School and Health Science Center:

 In Dream New Dreams, Jai Pausch shares her own story for the first time: her emotional journey from wife and mother to full-time caregiver, shuttling between her three young children and Randy’s bedside as he sought treatment far from home; and then to widow and single parent, fighting to preserve a sense of stability for her family, while coping with her own grief and the challenges of running a household without a partner.

And here is his last lecture before dying of the complications of pancreatic cancer just to remind everyone what a great person he was:

The Mayo Clinic Patient app is an easy-to-use tool for navigating your visit while at a Mayo Clinic campus. The app also provides community information, including directions to local restaurants, entertainment, and much more.

Some of the features include:

• Access to request an appointment
• Navigation to amenities on the Mayo Clinic campus as well as in the community
• Up-to-date appointment schedule
• 24/7 access to your lab results and medical record
• Notifications regarding important information
• Up-to-date Mayo Clinic news, publications, and videos