• The increasing use of social media to recruit patients for clinical trials (Pharma Strategy Blog): There are more and more news ways for patients to find ongoing clinical trials and also for pharma companies to find interested patients.

• ResearchGATE and Its Savvy Use of the Web (BusinessWeek): The world’s biggest scientific community site has over 200,000 members and an official blog which I’m a co-author of.

• Buzzwords in Academic Papers (Flowing Data)

• 20 People Who Make Healthcare Better (Health Leaders Media)

• FDA Social Media Guidelines Best Done in Baby Steps (Pharma Marketing Blog)

• Are any of these the Web’s next big thing? (CNN)

• Hacked Wiimote Makes Super Scientific Sensor (Wired Science)

To gamers, $40 may seem like a steep price to replace a Wii remote controller, but to scientists, a hacked Wiimote is a steal compared to the pricey sensors needed for a lot of field research.

Inspired by videos of renowned hacker Johnny Chung Lee turning the Wiimote into a finger-tracking device and a touchscreen white board, physicist Rolf Hut of Delft University of Technology built a Wiimote wind sensor.

• The Cost of Getting Sick (Flowing Data): Click here to see the costs of different medical conditions in different ages.

• Data, data, data (Pharma 2.0)

Over 102 million people are using the Web to research prescription drug information.

The average physician now spends a full work day (eight hours) using the Internet for professional reasons – a substantial jump from only 2.5 hours in 2002.

• 10 Web trends to watch in 2010 (CNN)

• Health Hashtags: A Microsyntax for People and Machines (The Quantified Self)

• Medpedia Project Expands Platform Platform to Include Q&A, News & Analysis and Alerts

• Online pharmaceutical advertising: The FDA makes a move (Advertising and Health)

• ePatient2009: Voice of the Patient. (SixUntilMe): Kerri Morrone Sparling has recently talked at an epatient conference.

• An Interview of @EndreJofoldi of HealthMash (Phil Baumann)

• FDA regulations for e-marketing of Drugs

• First Keas DiabetesMine Health Plan Goes Live (!) on D-Blog Day (Diabetes Mine)

Today, I’ve got butterflies in my stomach, which usually only happens when I sit in the back seat of a moving vehicle. That’s not because it’s D-Blog day today, either, although I want to start out by sending lots of love to all my fellow diabetes bloggers, and you wonderful people who read our words and interact with us regularly. You have changed my life, for the better. So thank you all!

• The Future of Health Care Is Social

Health care is a personal issue that has become wholly public–as the national debate over reforming our system makes painfully clear. But what’s often lost in the gun-toting Town Hall debates about the issue is a clear vision about how medicine could work in the future. In this feature article, frog design uses its people-centered design discipline to show how elegant health and life science technology solutions will one day become a natural part of our behavior and lifestyle. What you see here is the result of frog’s ongoing collaboration with health-care providers, insurers, employers, consumers, governments, and technology companies.

• HIPAA’s Broken Promise (e-Patients.net)

• Self-Tracking Wins at the Mayo Clinic (The Quantified Self)

• Physicians Using Twitter (iCons in Medicine)

• The latest Parkinson’s treatment: Wii-hab (Times Online)

Could a real hope of improving the lives of people with Parkinson’s disease — here, now, in their own homes — lie in a computer game? With major drug breakthroughs still tantalisingly out of reach, many health professionals and people with Parkinson’s are suddenly excited by the dramatic improvements in function and wellbeing being brought by simply playing the Nintendo Wii — a games system available on every high street that simulates sports and other activities by transferring your movements to the computer screen.

• Digital tools let doctors see patients via Internet (The Baltimore Sun)

But Broomell, 35, of Rising Sun, never set foot in the specialist’s Baltimore office. Instead, she met him several times by videoconference while she was at an Elkton hospital, saving her the trip down Interstate 95.

• A Student’s Guide to the Medical Literature

• Social Media’s Promise for Public Health (e-Patients.net)

• Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text (Wired Science)

Starting this fall, you’ll have a new reason to trust the information you find on Wikipedia: An optional feature called “WikiTrust” will color code every word of the encyclopedia based on the reliability of its author and the length of time it has persisted on the page.

• Wikitude Breaks From the Pack; Releases Augmented Reality Browser API (Read Write Web)

• Doctors, Patients and Social Networks (Law.com) If you participate on a personal social network site, make it private. Keep professional relationships professional and personal relationships personal.

• Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens

Conventional contact lenses are polymers formed in specific shapes to correct faulty vision. To turn such a lens into a functional system, we integrate control circuits, communication circuits, and miniature antennas into the lens using custom-built optoelectronic components. Those components will eventually include hundreds of LEDs, which will form images in front of the eye, such as words, charts, and photographs. Much of the hardware is semitransparent so that wearers can navigate their surroundings without crashing into them or becoming disoriented. In all likelihood, a separate, portable device will relay displayable information to the lens’s control circuit, which will operate the optoelectronics in the lens.

• 20 ways Surgeons should use Evernote (AppleQuack): And here is a screencast about how to use the new version.

• Attending a virtual conference—and what it tells us about the future of scientific communication. (SEED)

• Web 2.0 revolution underway in healthcare (eHealthInsider)

Titled ‘Web 2.0 in the Health Sector: Industry Review with a UK perspective’ the report concludes that new applications based on social health networks and content generated by health service users themselves – such as reviews of doctors and hospitals – will rapidly evolve to challenge existing healthcare systems and create new ways of delivering our healthcare.

• Medical Uses of Wolfram|Alpha (Brian Ahier): I shared my thoughts with Brian on the medical uses of WolframAlpha:

He said “I use WolframAlpha because sometimes (if I know exactly what I want to find) it saves me plenty of time and clicks. If I want to calculate BMI, Google lists me several calculator. WolframAlpha calculates it itself.” He continued, “If I want to find information very fast about a clinical marker, Google gives me resources, WA gives me the best answer in one click. I also use it for ICD classification, as it’s more easily accessible than Wikipedia; for epidemiological data and other calculations.

To sum it up, I think WA is for those who perfectly know what they want to find and want to save time and clicks. For other search queries, Google still is the best.”

• Bioinformatics Tutorials

• AccessDNA has a new website:

• Genetics & Medicine Online – ScienceRoll.WordPress.com (Killer Startups)

One of the main ideas that originated this blog’s creation is to introduce medical professionals to the 21st century so they can get ready to get in touch with their patients online. In fact, patients could be called e-patients and it is very possible that they change the way medicine is actually being provided and practiced. No matter what you want to find in relation to medicine and health, this is a scientific blog where you will accomplish that goal.

• Your Genome: There’s an App for That (Med Tech): How personal genome computing can detect genome-friendly and genome-supportive products, from foods to cosmetics to building materials.

• Is Wikipedia in Decline? Scientists Search for Answers in Wikipedia’s Numbers (Fast Company)

• The new Marketing in the era of information society

• 9 Killer Telemedicine Apps That Will Revolutionize Healthcare (Soliant Health): Including Skype, mobile microscopes and WebCam MD.

• Innovation: Is the future of healthcare online? (New Scientist): Including telemedicine, Twitter, Facebook

• The Wonderful World of Big Science (Neatorama): From genomes to the space.

• Patients should store health records with Google or Microsoft (Guardian)

• Hand Powered DNA Separation System for Remote Point of Care (Medgadget)

In order to aid with disease diagnosis in remote places, researchers at Boston University have built a prototype pump device to separate DNA out of a sample of blood. The SNAP (System for Nucleic Acid Preparation) is powered by a bicycle-like pump and may one day make it easy for local clinicians to separate, bottle, and ship a sample to a clinic with sequencing technology for analysis.

• 200+ Health and Medical Accounts Worth Following on Twitter

• 10 Stunning (And Useful) Stats About Twitter

Have you seen the Open Medicine wiki?

This project explores the use of a wiki as an online collaborative tool for improving and updating peer-reviewed systematic reviews. Readers are invited to edit the article either by adding, deleting or modifying its contents. The effort has been supported by the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technology in Health (CADTH) and Open Medicine. The scoping reviews found on the Open Medicine website and the wiki are derivations of an original systematic review funded by CADTH and completed by Foresights Links.

• Medical 2.0 Index: Medical 2.0 is offering you the largest and the most comprehensive database regarding the Health 2.0 arena.

• An Open Letter To Patients Regarding Health Reform (Dr. Wes)

It has come to my attention that in order for you to enjoy success as patients in the new era of health care reform, you must start working now to prevent illnesses that might befall you. Do not, under any circumstances, eat or drink too much. Fast food might as well be considered illegal. Exercise three, four, five times a day, even if it means take time off from work. It goes without saying that you should not smoke. The government has data that demonstrates how you have become fat, lazy, and a huge burden on our health care system.

• Unpublished Data, No Pictures Please (Next Generation Science)

• A selection of Grand Rounds video presentations by Mayo Clinic staff members.

• What would science look like if it were invented today?

• Top 20 Websites Every Scientist (or engineer) ought to know

• Medical Patients Consult the Internet (eMarketer)
  

• PubMed: What’s New and What’s Ahead: Shamsha Damani, M.D from the Anderson Cancer Center collected what’s new about Pubmed, the biomedical database.

• Digital Disease Detection — Harnessing the Web for Public Health Surveillance: New England Journal of Medicine opened up some space for web 2.0.

• Wikipedia: 5000 pages, fully printed

• Interview with Lee Aase (Ivor Kovic, MD): Lee Aase controls the online projects of Mayo Clinic.

• Keynote: Harnessing the Power of Social Networks

• More to Second Life than just sex

Jennifer Keelan, the Principal Investigator on the project, suggests that a major feature for users is the “relative anonymity where patients can seek out information and share health experiences in a safe environment. There is also a great potential for patients to “practice being patients” by virtually experiencing a mammogram or navigating a hospital’s virtual ward—they can gain insight into medical procedures and processes to become more informed.”

• Gummi Bear Surgery (BoingBoing)

• Docs look to Wikipedia for condition info: Manhattan Research

Nearly 50% of US physicians going online for professional purposes are visiting Wikipedia for health and medical information, especially condition information, according to a Manhattan Research study.

• Beyond Wikipedia (The Health Care Blog)

• 100 Publications Every Graduate Student Should Read (Epistasis Blog)

• The 2009 DiabetesMine Design Challenge Winners Announced (Medgadget)

• Local Doctors ‘Tweet’ During Kidney Transplant

Children’s Medical Center of Dallas and UT Southwestern made history Monday. For the first-time ever, the hospital used the popular networking site Twitter to ‘Tweet’ during a kidney transplant. The hospital staff took note of every aspect of the labor-intensive procedure and blogged about it for the world.

• Asthma TV News Spot (Doctor Anonymous)

• IBM and Danish Hospital Pioneer Smarter Patient Records to Improve Patient Care

• Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance: “The Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance is an organization founded to create and promote an ongoing and expanding dialogue around the many opportunities to use wireless technologies to advance the delivery of healthcare.”

• Mayo turns to social media to reach out to potential patients (Startribune.com)

• What if Scientists Didn’t Compete? (The New York Times):

Instead of competing with my competitors, I invited them to contribute data to my paper so that no one got scooped. I figured out who might have data relating to my work (and who could get scooped) using public resources and then sent them an email. Now that I have done this, I am thinking: Why the hell isn’t everyone doing this? Why do we waste taxpayer money on ego battles between rival scientists?

• Research article: Inside the Health Blogosphere: Quality, Governance and the New Innovation Leaders (Health Blogs Observatory)
• 5 Innovative Ways Cell Phones Are Being Used To Save Lives (Cell Phones.org)

• Physicians Should Contribute to Wikipedia, Researchers Say (ihealthbeat)

• Health 2.0: Patients as Partners (Business Week)

• Grand rounds, the blog carnival of the best of the medical blogosphere is up at Sixuntilme.com.

• Twitter Telepathy: Researchers Turn Thoughts Into Tweets (Wired)

• Four Steps In Using Twitter for Research (Heidi Allen)

• Medical Crowdsourcing on Twitter (33 charts)

There are 60,000 Fellows in the American Academy of Pediatrics, for example. Assuming all maintained Twitter accounts, at any given time there would be a boatload of babydocs available for dialogue. Then consider the case of a solo doc the Texas Panhandle who finds himself with a simple dilemma or question that needs immediate feedback. Depending on the human filter tailored by that pediatrician, consensus would be close at hand.

• Mayo Clinic Health Manager Website Launched (Medgadget)

• Purdue creates first virtual clean room for training pharmacists (Lafayette Online)

• What is the Physician’s Role in a Web-based World? (The Health Care Blog): Jay Parkinson, the founder of Hello Health, expressed his views.

• Worst Jobs in Science 2009 (Popsci.com)

• SHITTER: The social messaging service for IBS patients (Placebo Journal): What I can say now is OMG…

• Doctor, I’ve got a problem with my genome… (Times Online)

• Is Twitter Making You a Cold, Heartless Being? (Medgadget): Of course, it is not…

• X PRIZE for Healthcare Overview – Initial Design and Prize Guidelines (Crossover health)

• Social Networking, Semantic Searching and Science (Dennis’ Blog)

• Using eBay to set up a molecular biology lab: costs less than $1000! (The World’s Fair)

• 11 Excellent Twitter Improvement Ideas (Six Revisions)

• Serious Gaming With 3D Life Science (Future-Making Serious Games)

• Scammers Alive And Well In The Health Blogosphere (Better Health)

• Genomics and Silverlight from Microsoft working together for Great Visual Enhancement– BioMashUps (Medical Quack)

• Engaging Patients in Medical Decisions (Mayo Clinic)

• A wonderful story of participatory medicine (E-patients.net)

• E-visits turn computer into medical exam room

“It’s not meant to replace a traditional doctor’s visit, but it’s a nice option for people who don’t want to take time off of work or just want to stay in bed. I think the patients who appreciate it the most are the ones who get sick when they’re out of town.”

Online house calls can be used to diagnose and treat minor illnesses, such as a urinary tract infection, a sinus infection or a sprained knee. Dr. Susan Andrews, with Family Practice Partners in Murfreesboro, said the online program asks patients detailed questions and allows them to post any additional information they think would be relevant.

• Web Science: Studying the Internet to Protect Our Future (Scientific American): Studying the Web will reveal better ways to exploit information, prevent identity theft, revolutionize industry, and manage our ever-growing online lives

• Science Blogging: The Future of Science Communication & Why You Should be a Part of it (Biochemical Soul)

• Pills, Marketing and Web 2.0 (Med 2.0)

• HOW TO: Use Social Media for Better Health

• Take Two Aspirin And Tweet Me In The Morning: How Twitter, Facebook, And Other Social Media Are Reshaping Health Care

If you want a glimpse of what health care could look like a few years from now, consider “Hello Health,” the Brooklyn-based primary care practice that is fast becoming an emblem of modern medicine. A paperless, concierge practice that eschews the limitations of insurance-based medicine, Hello Health is popular and successful, largely because of the powerful and cost-effective communication tools it employs: Web-based social media. Indeed, across the health care industry, from large hospital networks to patient support groups, new media tools like weblogs, instant messaging platforms, video chat, and social networks are reengineering the way doctors and patients interact.

• Image about the branches of science on Plos Journal

• The most interesting Pubmed articles about social media research (Emerging Technologies Librarian)

• Where Do We Go from Here? A Health 2.0 Progress Report (mdng New Media):

By the same token, it is Meskó’s experience that many doctors would not be able (even unwilling) to hold up their end of the conversation even if a patient broached the subject. “Hungarian doctors always tell me they don’t have time for these Web things,” Meskó recalls. “This is quite ironic. When I tell them I have at least 180 medical blogs, websites, and journals in my RSS feed reader, they don’t believe me. For me, it means it will still take a few more years and a lot of additional work to persuade them to use these tools and to help them understand the main concept of Web 2.0.”

• Michael J. Fox Foundation Joins Effort to Recruit 10,000 People with Parkinson’s Disease to New Web-based PD Research Community

• Advanced Neuritis in PubMed (Laika’s MedLiblog)

• CBC Radio Interview on Twitter (Open Thinking)

• Natalie Jeremijenko: Environment Design (Seed Magazine)

• A great TED talk about the future of radiology (AcuteZorg.nl)

• ScienceRoll Medical Search : new federated search tool (DigiCMB)

• Video: Interview with Co-Founder of 23AndMe Personal Genomics Company (Clinical Cases and Images)

• DNA-Images: personalized DNA art.

• Ted Eytan, MD, “Twitterviewed” by Diario Médico

Ted Eytan, MD, shared views about Health Information Technology, patient involvement in care, and other key topics in a “Twitterview” with leading Spanish health care journal Diario Médico.

• TwitterPassion: If you are passionate about social media, specifically Twitter, then this is the site for you! We are here to help you learn more about Twitter and how you can use it to grow your business, meet new friends, and network with like minded people!

• OutWit Images: The Newest Release From OutWit Technologies:

OutWit Technologies announces the release of OutWit Images the newest extension based on its powerful data collection engine. OutWit Images is a free Firefox 3 add-on compatible with Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

OutWit Images has picked up where other software left off and surpassed the functionality of alternate image browsers. It distinguishes itself by allowing users to save countless images directly onto their hard disk. OutWit Images does the searching automatically and users can scroll through the images, catch the ones they like, and save them all with a simple click. The program also offers a variety of additional features including full-screen slideshows, multiple criteria for image filtering, and source information for easy traceability.