Aurra | Health News Aggregator

For the invitation of Eric Glazer, I’ll tell my stories about global collaboration on clinical cases through social media today in a podcast. Please see the times below. I hope you register and will listen to our discussion.

Date and time: Thursday, February 9, 2012 4:30 pm
Europe Time (Berlin, GMT+01:00)
Change time zone Thursday, February 9, 2012 4:30 pm
Europe Time (Madrid, GMT+01:00) Thursday, February 9, 2012 7:30 am
Pacific Standard Time (San Francisco, GMT-08:00) Duration: 1 hour

Here is a new video showing the futuristic and innovative glass technologies. Can you imagine how it could be used in hospitals and in the healthcare system?

I’ve come across a flash educational application that lets you get a picture of the scale of the universe from blood cells and atoms to galaxies and planets. Give it a try!

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.

POCKET.MD is the first and only online directory specifically focused on mobile applications created by healthcare companies. It was launched by Fabio Gratton.

POCKET.MD is the world’s first and only online service focused exclusively on providing the most comprehensive directory of mobile applications created by phamaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies.

You all know the story of Jay Parkinson, MD who launched the first online GP service years ago in New York. After it became a “franchise”, he left and started a new company, The Future Well. A few months ago, I met him at Stanford, asked about his new projects and he mentioned the Sherpaa idea. Well, here is the official launch and the concept of Sherpaa.

To me it seems that Sherpaa tries to help patients when there are easier solutions for a health-related problem compared to using the traditional healthcare system. They give a specific example, what happens when you cut your finger:

• You call your Guide
• We ask you to snap a photo of the cut and email it to us
• We look at it and it looks like something that can be handled outside the ER
• We give instructions on what to do in the meantime as we schedule a stitch up
• We call Dr. Sung (our plastic surgeon)
• You are free to meet Dr. Sung in his office in an hour
• You are on the road to recovery

—without sherpaa
Cost in ER: $4000
Time in ER: 8 hrs

—with sherpaa

Cost in Dr. Sung’s office: $1000
Time with Dr. Sung: 30 min

I believe the idea is timely and the structure is well-designed knowing Jay’s enthusiasm and proficiency. The only concern is how the healthcare system will look at their machinery. What do you think?

It seems tweeting during work hours in order to give some insights about that specific job is quite trendy these days. A few days ago, I read a BBC report about the North West Ambulance Services that started to use Twitter while working so people could feel themselves closer to the crews.

Five North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) crews from Liverpool, Burnley, Kendal, Crewe and Manchester will take part in the week-long project.

NWAS Director of Emergency Services Derek Cartwright said each crew would tweet for one day.

He said the tweets would not reveal patient details, but would show “the human side of the service”.

Then a friend from the UK informed me on Twitter (where else?) that London Ambulane has been doing the same thing for some time.

As I think this is a great idea and locally it can have a huge impact, I would love to see other examples from other countries and I count on you in collecting these examples.

I’ve recently come across an amazing infographic dedicated to the use of mobiles/smartphones, video and social media by medical professionals. A few interesting snippets and questions I raised:

• 81% of physicians are expected to own a smartphone by 2012
• 73% search the web (only 73%?)
• More physicians watch videos on WebMD than on Youtube?
• 86% of physicians use Facebook (certainly not for professional but personal reasons)

What do you think of these and the rest of the data?

Dr. Jeff Benabio about reinventing physicians in the 21st century.

For over five years, Dr. Jeff Benabio has been using social media channels to help patients learn about skin health and disease and to help doctors learn about engaging patients more effectively. In his practice Dr. Benabio uses disruptive tools such as telemedicine and mobile devices to improve patient access and reduce medical costs. In his talk he’ll show us how we’re re-inventing medicine with Twitter and Facebook, and why it’s the best thing to happen to medicine since vaccines.

I have plenty of social media accounts with many contacts and friends. I have data stored in the cloud and have a lot of passwords and files online. Have you ever wondered what happens to your online life when you die?

Well, they say over 1.7 million Facebook users died in 2011. An Australian website collected all the information you need to know from digital preservation to digital waste you would leave behind.

Hans Rosling public health guru and data enthusiast shines again:

• Hospitals Text Patients To Remind Them Of Upcoming Treatments

Private hospitals in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, have adopted a tech-savvy way to remind patients of their next appointment. By sending out SMS reminders, outpatients were able to keep their scheduled hospital visits and reduce the number of nonattendance. This mobile method was especially helpful and effective for patients needing ongoing treatment, for example with dengue fever.

• Is 2012 The Year Of Online Patients?

• Some Thoughts On Getting Academic Types to Use Twitter

• Dave’s e-mazing bootcamp or why “e” also means experience!

• Object Breast Cancer: visualizing tumors through art

• Promoting Your Research Using Social Media

• The Bionic Bodyshop

Advanced medical devices are the tools that enable humans and robots to merge, perhaps signaling the dawn of a technological singularity. How close are we now? Take a tour and shop around — we’ve been cramming more intricate engineering into our bodies than you might think.

 

Do you remember when Google Flu Trends was launched and we were all amazed by the great idea behind that? And do you remember when a study from the University of Washington came up concluding that Google Flu Trends is not as accurate as CDC’s national surveillance programs? So it is social media, it’s trendy and innovative but useless in medicine and healthcare.

Here is the over-shined iPad2 which everyone loves and would like to use at hospitals and clinical practices and we see an amazing number of  apps designed for that. A new study now concluded that diagnostic imaging on iPads is twice as slow.

A study from the University of Maryland found that radiologists using iPad 2s to evaluate patients for tuberculosis (TB) took twice as long to make a diagnosis as they did when using a 27-inch LCD monitor. Still, the study of 200 negative and 40 positive TB cases that included five radiologists, found the two displays to yield no significant differences when it came to diagnostic decisions.

Whatever tool, device or service we use in medicine, we must stick to the evidence based approach.

Webicina’s new Hepatitis and Social Media collection features relevant and quality social media resources from blogs and podcasts to community sites, Youtube and Twitter accounts focusing on hepatitis.

Here is my top 10 social media selection for hepatitis:

1. HBV and HCV Advocate’s Hepatitis Blog (blog)
2. Hepatitis B Foundation – Podcast Directory (podcast)
3. Inspire – Hepatitis-C Community (community site)
4. HCV Support (community site)
5. Global Hepatitis Initiative (Facebook)
6. Hepatitis Central (Twitter)
7. Hepatitis Australia (Youtube)
8. Mayo Clinic – Hepatitis (information resource)
9. AnswersIn Medicine Hepatitis C (mobile app)
10. Hepatitis Foundation (Youtube)

And PeRSSonalized Hepatitis, the simplest, free, customizable, multi-lingual medical information aggregator will let you follow these resources easily in a personalized way.

Feel free to share any of these resources and let us know if you think others should be added.

The Sterile Eye blog came up with a very tough case in which the official poster for the the 19th Workshop of the International Society for the Study of Vascular Anomalies (ISSVA) was found to be quite disturbing and Øystein Horgmo raised important questions about the use of this image.

• Did the parents of this child agree to their child being used on a poster in this way?
• Did they know ISSVA would choose a photo were their child looks frightened?
• Did they know ISSVA would make the poster the shape of their child’s head?
• Did they know ISSVA would desaturate everything but their child’shemangiomas?
• Did they know ISSVA would put text all over their child’s face?
• Even if they knew and agreed to all of the above, why did ISSVA use the photo like this?

What do you think about this?

Last week, I gave a presentation about how people with mental conditions and their doctors use the web and social media at the Congress of Psychiatry and I saw a great idea when walking around after my talk. The comics book shown below (Microchip in the brain) is used for educating people dealing with schizophrenia. It guides the patient through a whole story describing the symptoms, issues at the doctor visit and other important topics.

As I checked it online, there are other great comic books focusing on different conditions. Such high quality educational materials can be a huge help both for patients and their relatives.

If you are looking for interesting articles and news on medicine 2.0 or health 2.0, find me on Twitter or on Friendfeed.

Internet in Medicine University Course: We are in the fourth semester of the first university course that focuses on web 2.0 and medicine for medical students.

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

Webicina.com is my service that curates medical content in social media for free fo 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.

Greg Matthews who is a Group Director in WCG’s interactive and social media team asked me to give him an interview about how I use social media in medicine and it is published now on WCG CommonSense. An excerpt:

When I started using twitter in 2008, I was amazed at how easy it was to connect with other folks who were beginning to think about the intersection of healthcare and social media.  I’m happy to say that I am still in touch with many of those folks – Mark Hawker, John Moore, Bob Coffield, Marty Trussell, Holly Potter and Dana Lewis, to name a few.  One of those twitter pioneers – and one of my first online friends – is a doctor who has inspired thousands with his groundbreaking work – Dr. Bertalan Mesko (more commonly known on the social web as “Berci”).  Every doctor in this program has the opportunity to choose the medium for their interview – and Berci chose a Q&A format.  So without further ado, meet one of the world’s leading thinkers on digital medicine.

 

 

I got access to the Robot Report written by Frank Tobe from the recent Consumer Electronics Show 2012. He featured many innovative and futuristic consumer robots out of which a few, I think, had real medical or health-related implications. You can download the document here. An excerpt:

Consumer robotics represented a very small part of CES but had the same combination of glitz, glamour, marvelous stuff, misrepresentation, uninspiring products and hidden gems, just like the rest of CES. Robotics Trends hosted a Robotics Tech Zone but the action was well beyond their purview because many of the companies wanted to emphasize their consumer orientation instead of highlighting the robotic.

Some examples:

• PerMMA, a personal mobility and manipulation appliance for power wheelchair users.

• Myomo, rehabilitation robotics and interactive gaming systems for stroke victim rehab.

• Mantaro telepresence robot, a mobile Skype platform using your own iPhone or iPad.

• Paro, the therapeutic furry seal-like bot for hospitals and eldercare.

A Facebook campaign was launched a few weeks ago in order to urge Mattel to produce a bald version of its Barbie doll that will help children with cancer and others who have lost their hair due to illness cope with their conditions while playing. An excerpt from a recent article:

“We hope it gets the message out that being bald is beautiful and is no big deal.  There’s no need to cover up,” she said.

Sypin’s own daughter is one of those children.  The 12-year-old, named Kin Inich, lost her hair after chemotherapy.

Even though her daughter isn’t a huge Barbie fan, Sypin said she is excited about the idea.

“She said if they make one, she would totally get it,” Sypin said.  “The first thing she said was if they make that doll, she would buy a bunch and take them to a children’s hospital and give them to children with cancer.”

Here is the Facebook page on which you can support this great idea!