ScienceRoll » Web 2.0

RateADrug.com and How to Check Side Effects Online

Dr. Bertalan Meskó — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:44:33 +0000

David Rothman has recently linked to RateADrug.com and said:

I’ve seen stupid applications of social media in healthcare, but this may take the cake as the dumbest I’ve seen in a good while.

I believe the concept that patients know better which drugs work the best is good, but you just cannot make sure those patients reviews are not coming from pharma representatives or companies. That’s why you can never trust the information on that site.

Mashable also has a review about RateADrug.com.

If I have to show a site to my patient that focuses on drug interactions and side effects, I would say Pharmasurveyor.com is the best one to use.

I’ve come across the third example on the BioCS blog. SIDER seems to be quite useful as well.

After using side effects to predict drug targets, we now created a public database of side effects with a total of 62269 side effects for 888 drugs. The database was created by doing text-mining on labels from various different public sources like the FDA. Furthermore, I developed rules to extract frequency information from the labels, this worked for about one third of the drug–side effect pairs.

E-patients will shape the future of medicine: Slideshow

Dr. Bertalan Meskó — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:54:40 +0000

Here is the slideshow I presented at the AcuteZorg.nl Health 2.0 event in Nijmegen, The Netherlands on the 24th of March, 2009.

PeRSSonalized Medicine: A free tool to track medical information

Dr. Bertalan Meskó — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:35:07 +0000

We’ve recently had a long discussion on Twitter about why many doctors are not open to these web 2.0 tools. There is no question, they don’t have enough time to use these even if they were designed to help them save time and effort.

That’s why we’ve been working hard on Webicina.com to come up with a free tool that helps those users who cannot spend much time online (e.g. medical professionals). PeRSSonalized Medicine helps them track medical journals, blogs, news and web 2.0 services really easily and creates one personalized place where they can follow international medical content without having a clue what RSS is about.

Being up-to-date is crucial for medical professionals, but it takes time and effort. Sitting in a library with a few medical papers is not a proper solution any more. Learning to use an RSS reader is not that easy for those who don’t spend much time online.

PeRSSonalized Medicine is a free tool that lets you select your favourite resources and read the latest news and articles in one personalized place. You can create your own “medical journal” and as we are totally open to suggestions, let us add the journals, blogs and websites that you would like to follow.

Click on “Personalize It” to hide the resources you don’t want to follow.

You don’t have to register to use it, but if you want to make sure it will save your settings, you can register in a few seconds here.

Now you can follow:

Medical journals
Medical blogs
Medical news
Medical Media including Youtube channels, Friendfeed rooms or Del.icio.us tags

One more thing. The developer behind PeRSSonalized Medicine and the whole Webicina platform is Gergő Vargyai. Many thanks to him for his ownderful job!

As always, we are open to suggestions so please let us know which resources to add to the database.

Medicine 2.0 Carnival #35: Twitterity

Dr. Bertalan Meskó — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:46:05 +0000

Medicine 2.0 is a blog carnival aiming to analyze and describe the impact of web 2.0 on medicine and healthcare. We, bloggers, believe web 2.0 can change the way medicine is practiced and healthcare is delivered.

Let’s launch the carnival with articles on medical search.

Medical Search:

On Walter Jessen’s Highlight HEALTH 2.0 blog, Hope Leman had a guest post: Mednar Search … and Hope said, “It is good.“

AltSearchEngines reviewed the Health 2.0 Conference – Day 2.

Googling for Life Scientists – Patricia F. Anderson, Librarian (UBC Academic Search – Google Scholar Blog)

Twitter:

Top U.S. Hospitals Are On Twitter (Clinical Cases and Images)

Twitterview: The Future of Medicine in 140 Characters (Scienceroll)

Twitter a Healthcare Marketing Tool? Maybe. (Health Leaders Media)

Top 10 Twitter Apps (Read Write Web)

Construct your own ‘Top 10 Must Follow’ List as it relates to your own Niche (TwiTip): The link leads to the top 10 medical twitterers.

Omnee: An organic directory of Twitter users (Scienceroll)

Telemedicine:

Telehealth and EMRs – How can Physicians Use these Tools? (Canadian EMR)

Convergence of Health 2.0 and medical home? (HealthBlawg)

OpenECGproject: Open Source for Electrocardiography (Scienceroll)

Blog:

10 blogging myths debunked from a medical blogger perspective (Clinical Cases and Images)

Work for Nature, Go to SciFoo (Nascent)

Health 2.0:

Video: Dr. Jay Parkinson’s presentation about HelloHealth (Clinical Cases and Images)

Top Physician Recommended Health Sites on the Web (Chris Pirillo)

The “Last Mile“ (The Last Mile of healthcare Consumerism)

Health 2.0: Are We On The Same Page? (Mark My Words)

From search to transactions: Americans move along the eHealth continuum (Health Populi)

The Doctor Will E-Mail You Now (Newsweek)

Health 2.0: Patients on Social Networks (BusinessWeek)

The New Examined Life (WSJ)

OrganizedWisdom Interview with Health 2.0 Conference Co-founder Indu Subaiya (Health 2.0)

Medicine and health 2.0:

The Bridge: Do you want to change healthcare? (Scienceroll)

United Health Jumps Into Consumer Fray (Chilmark Research)

Healthcare Goes Mobile:

Practice Fusion: a growing Electronic Medical Records community.

If you want to host an issue of Medicine 2.0 in 2009, let me know (berci.mesko [at] gmail.com). Don’t forget to submit your articles (berci.mesko [at] gmail.com).

You can also follow me on Twitter or follow the room of Microcarnival room of Medicine 2.0 where all the posts are published.

The Bridge: Do you want to change healthcare?

Dr. Bertalan Meskó — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 22:55:54 +0000

Webicina.com is my service that aims to help medical professionals and patients enter the web 2.0 era by providing e-courses, consulting and personalized packages. Why did I launch Webicina?

I envisioned a bridge. On one side of the river, there are patients who don’t know how to use the web, how to find health information online. I think NextHealth will be their best tool to use.

On the other side of the bridge, there are physicians. Their best guide is Jay Parkinson and his Hello Health practice as he was the first really web-savvy doctor.

Who will connect the two sides? Who can become an efficient and valuable bridge?

Yes, I hope Webicina will close this gap…

When I talked with Jen McCabe Gorman, a prominent blogger at Health Management Rx, she envisioned this:

Now I’m happy to announce Webicina is starting to co-operate with more and more organizations and communities. Just three examples, CureTogether, CareFlash and Ozmosis.

And it seems it’s getting a serious coverage from the blogosphere as well.

Let’s start educating physicians about how to use the web efficiently, let’s help patients how to find information online. Let’s reform healthcare! What is your view on this?

Web 2.0 timeline and future: Slideshow

Dr. Bertalan Meskó — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:26:42 +0000

Richard Akerman from Science Library Pad published this interesting slideshow about history leading up to Web 2.0, characteristics of Web 2.0, Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed.