40th Blog Carnival

Hello and welcome to the newest and latest edition of the Blog Carnival. In this edition, we are going to catch glimpses of how web 2.0 is modifying the health system.

In this post Bertalan Mesko over at Scienceroll discusses how e-patients are going to be the future of medicine. Focussing on using the web 2.0 tools and how they can create the platform for interaction between the patient and the doctor, Bertalan paints a convincing picture showing how e-way is the way now. However, one question which perturbes me at this point is that whether the face-to-face doctor patient meets can be replaced in totality by web interfaces!

On a similar note, the Medical Quack discusses the availability of Video Conferencing for doctors and the implications of the same in this post of his.

Amidst all this, over at sterena.com Carey discusses the implications of the e-way in this post which brings up several thoyught provoking nuggets of thought!

Talking of web interfaces, Daneel Ariantho’s Laboratory discusses an interesting experiment. Over at the Imperial College, the students are getting a taste of diagnosing Respiratory Medicine patients on Second Life. In an online template that very closely mimics the real life situation. Second Life has now long been a tool to practice real life skills in an onine virtual setting. The fact that it is now adopted by a Medical School means that this might go onto become  something more than just a “fad” as KevinMD believes in this post at his blog!

While on the topic of uing Web 2.0 tools, the Intelligent Medicine Blogger believes that the time is now ripe for the move from health 2.0 - individual-focused online health empowerment and collaboration – to health 3.0 – direct, automated connection between an individual’s sensed physiology and his Health 2.0 tools and communities. He discusses the use of inserted medical devices (NOT implanted ones) for diagnostic aid as a focus point to drive this point home!

With regards to the Health 2.0 platform, however, one must keep in mind the fact that it is not just benefiting the health system or the medicine practitioner. It is also a platform for the patients to share, care and become better patients! In this post Kerry catches this point and makes a powerful case for patients to come up and instead of Googling their ailments, try to crate a forum which, simultaneously supports and informs the new entrees into the disease world!

While on this matter, I think its time to discuss the fact that discusing health has gone beyond the realms of just bloging. In this post at the Medgadget blog, the news of Google health activating its PHR Sharing facilities (at a single click!) is posted. A tremendously debated issue, read this post to know about the hornet’s nest Google has stirred up!

On the same note, the Geekdoctor goes on to discuss his experience with PHR and his e-patient Dave, in this post in his blog.

The Efficient MD discusses an algorithm, basically a mind mapping diagram, to try to elucidate how doctors learn. Though personally, I believe that it is difficult to quantify the learning process in this manner, because learning is not a linear phenomenon (at least not for doctors), and more so now, with the advent of the virtual world, tools and web 2.0 platforms. However, the first commenter on the page sums up his post admirably when he/she says: “simple or not, very cool schematic.”

Moving from fun and cool stuff to some rather disturbing news. JOVE, the Journal of Visual Explanations, has closed shop as an Open Access journal. When what people thought was a bizarre April Fool’s joke turned true, David Crotty at Bench Marks was not surprised. A really innovative endeavor goes the subscription way…

No discussion on Web 2.o is complete without the mention of the ever burgeoning Twitter! Here the Clinical Cases blog reports that the top U.S. hospitals go twittering off. And here, we see how the Medical Museion is putting up all of its collections on Twitter, challenging the 140-character limit! And finally, Medgadget talks of how Twitter might become the making of cold, heartless souls of its physician as it reports and discusses on a study which found the same!

Well, that was all there was for the fortieth edition of the Carnival. The forty first will be held over at Medical 2.0. Since this was ym first attempt at hosting the carnival, I would like to stress the fact that I woud love some feedback on how this went. Just go over to Contact Nerdoc and go crazy!

Cheers!