The gates have opened. The big ride is here.

This next generation of communities and capacities in the internet was officially defined in 2004 as Web 2.0. One example is a blog service such as this which enables a user in one part of the world wishing to share or obtain information to do so with infinitive options and clicks available. Another example are these so-called variety of social networking sites as means to connect and possibly exchange information with again, the rest of the world. Like pointing another to an open source web-based encyclopedia called the Wikipedia. Thus, as a consequence, elementarily facilitates this faster flow of information from one part of the world to another in exponential fashion.

It is aptly so that the scientific community, including of course the medical community broaden its expanse to the ideas of improved access to information, giving value to the spread of knowledge through open source, and consider these avenues to be part of our available call and reach.

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Medicine 2.0 then is a better use of technology in healthcare. It is an evolution in means of sharing the knowledge base vital to everyone concerned. And with this base, information is allowed to continue to evolve, borderless, and with less time within one’s reach to read, learn from, apply, pass on.

Victor Castilla’s blog, Web 2.0: A Read/Write Web simply states this wonder for us.

“…do not be afraid to use your computer

and express your ideas.

Take advantage of all the information

and all the people you can find on the web.“

He captured and simplified the essence of our blogs and the processes of our expressions in these. And, in an earlier entry, he explains for us what our business (as physicians/nurses/students,etc.) is, including a must-see slide show below.

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In solidarity with the spirit of opening the gates to better access to knowledge, I would like to share the following sites which provide for us solutions and alternatives in obtaining information and research as they are available without unnecessary borders:

• A medical records program called WorldVistA.

This is entirely different from the new Windows software. The smart and hip Wired Magazine has a cool article about this endeavor and its founders.

• A peer-reviewed open access journal published by the Public Library of Science called PLoS Biology.

The Public Library of Science is “a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource.”
Wired Magazine’s Adam L. Penenberg writes about
academic journals being open to change.

• Two blog sites which I referred to about Medicine 2.0 and continue to refer to for other interesting shares they might post, Victor Castilla, MD’s Web 2.0 and Medicine and Bertalan Mesko’s Scienceroll.

 

• Not entirely unrelated to today’s noise on 2.0 is a vast resource library of free books, Wowio.

David Rothman briefly scribbles about it at Teleread. While Michael Banks quite comprehensively tells of it more in his blog page. I’ve found links to commentary threads discussing readers’ concern on extending the good site’s welcome to other countries outside of the United States. Much like the conversations I had with some friends who live in the Philippines for one. At present the copyright laws limit access to their free books to those who live in the U.S.

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2.0 is quite a cute name for it, really, and we have been hyping about it even before the conference in 2004. And thanks to these guys we now have a better perspective about the breadth of this number. In Medicine more importantly, because of the free cycle that the 2.0 has afforded us, beyond mere concepts, we definitely could ride this super train and maybe see for ourselves that it could leap and even fly!