Friday, December 5, 2008

Businessweek is covering Health 2.0

Businessweek published yesterday an interesting article about Health 2.0 and the concept of "Patient empowerment".
For consumers, Its a great 3 pages article with very interestings samples and real life stories. Its called : "Patients as Partners."
Enjoy and share it with your colleagues and patients.

You even can watch an additional slideshow on Businessweek with so many examples of Health 2.0 ventures ( some of them are not clear cut Health 2.0 but more Medicine 2.0- like sermo).

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Txtalert- An efficient Health mobile application

Txtalert is an example of truely positive use of mobile phones in the Healthcare sector.

The concept is to help patients and physicians to handle with the obstacles concerning long term treatments in HIV positive patients.

Txtalert uses text message reminders to improve the health of HIV positive people, by reminding them when they need to go for their next visit to the clinic. Apart from notifying patients of their upcoming appointments, TxtAlert also requests that they reschedule if they are unable to attend.

Seems simple but for my opinion simple and smart . This is an example how we can use the technology that is actually in our hands for accelerating "Advanced Medicine" and empower the "Patient- Physician" connection.Thats what Health 2.0 is about, or mostly about.

Txtalerts is just an example for being simple, creative and thinking usability in the aspect of technology and Healthcare.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Podcasts about Chron's Disease

Abbot released lately a new series of podcast about issues concerning Chron's disease.
Its about knowledge, clinical experience and tips at variety of subcontents like : nutrition, emotional impact etc.
Each Crohn’s Cast also includes a first-hand account from a person living with Crohn’s disease

Its their way to contribute some knowledge with their consumers - those who are using Humira (adalimumab), as a treatment for their illness ( of course, its an open source for eveyone who is interesting with these issues).
This is an example of the new equation on the web (Health 2.0 equation) - Pharmas dont just commercialize and making P.R. on the web. They are also serving their consumers with knowledge on medical/health topics.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

FitBit- Track your fitness online

Hello

I want to introduce you with a consumer health device called FitBit
Fitbit is a wireless consumer device which tracks fitness and sleep.
Everyone can wear this small device easily all over the day and even at night while sleeping.
The parameters regarding the holder are transmitted to Fitbit website automatically by wireless technology.
The holder can watch and investigate his own parameters constantly on the web.On the device itself there is ability to watch calories, walking distance through the day and steps.
As an Health 2.0 tool there are community and social networking features on the website beside the personal detailed parameters .
The current price for the tracker (device) is 99$ .

Some interesting quotes from the company site :

"The Fitbit Tracker contains a motion sensor like the ones found in the Nintendo Wii. The Tracker senses your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities. The Tracker measures the intensity and duration of your physical activities, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, how long it took you to fall asleep, the number of times you woke up throughout the night and how long you were actually asleep vs just lying in bed. You can wear the Tracker loosely in your pocket or clipped to your clothing, even bras"

"The Fitbit is optimized for walking, running and general household/lifestyle activities and gives you a good general 24 hour picture of your day."

Friday, September 5, 2008

Asklepois- Exclusive Canadian network for physicians

We are hearing about so many social networking in the health 2.0 sector.
The competition is seems to be too hard to survive for the long run.
Maybe there will be a chance for a social networking that will focus on a specific geographic area or country. Still, most of the physicians, although its an international profession, prefer to know their closer mates before others who are practicing and working in other countries.
Its not our vision for the near future ( international collaboration) but it can give nice and practical solutions by side to the future expectations.
Sklepois is a new Canadian social networking for physicians ( and Med students as well) that is supported by the Canadian Medical Association and its provided exclusivley for canadian.
The platform is Bi- Lingual (English and French) and its including, among others:

1.Personalised profile pages
2.Discussion groups
3.Lives chats

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Possible uses in Health via the mobile

Here's a link from Alfred J. Fortin'S( PhD) blog. He gives us a long list with a variety of thoughts and ideas how to use the mobile phone and interaction in the healthcare sector. Its written shortly but I assume that these ideas can lead some of us for deeper thought and brain storming concerning this part of Health 2.0.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Pubget- save time while searching on Pubmed

Pubget is aiming to give you the ability of searching the same as in pubmed with an extra value such as getting the articles in a PDF's version immediatley without time consuming clicks and passing through several linkages for reaching the desired content or download it.

Of course , some of the content, especially the newer one, is avialable only after registration to the content resource but still there are a lot of resources which are free of charge and others can be reached via pubget after formal registration.

There will be probably more advanced apllications through Pubget in the future.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Google's Health - Is it going to be the leader in this sector?

Yesterday I read an interesting article published at Economist.com.
Its abouts Lively, Google's virtual world which turned to be so far a flop.
Mark Evans wrote in his blog about some other misses and swings of Google in other web sectors such as Orkut for example, in the social communities sector.

Others as me wrote about the leading power of google's project in the health 2.0 world. Im not changing my view.Im still thinking that Google will have a tremendous influence in the E-Health sector, but still, this article just explain us that probably many others, already here and yet to come, firms and start-ups, are going to bring and create enormous positive competition on the Health 2.0 sector.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Taking notes Applications

Every physician or researcher who is looking for and gathering information from the web can get some help by "Taking notes" applications.
Mashable gives us an excellent summary that covers 10 applications of this kind.
Even here, in this section, you can find a Googles variation but there are others which are helpful and fulfill their task.
Enjoy.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

E-Anatomy Atlas

Attached here an excellent imaging/anatomy E-Tool.

Its a free interactive anatomy learning web/Health 2.0 tool.

It is based on More than 1500 slices from normal CT and MRI covering all over the human body.

The image series combined with textual information, 3D imaging and anatomical drawings.

There is a possibility to write remarks and comments regarding specific sections or organs.

As I observed it its looks highly professional. It was also mentioned previousely in "Radiology" journal .

To obsereve and watch the full screen images you need to create a free membership.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

PHR buzz

I read yesterday the attached article about the acqusition of the collaborative care management services vendor- MEDecision by Health insurer - Health care srvice corporation for $121M in cash.

It seems from the positive aspect that Google and Microsoft penetration to this market is causing a buzz - creative one.
Potential buyers, developers, IT solution providers companies,Medical professionals and consumers are getting more and more interested about this subject and enjoy the fruits of this prosperity.This growing interesting is having financial influence

From the strategic aspect, as I wrote above, this is a good atmosphere for all the competitors but later on some of them surely will pay the price of the "Big lions penetration/involvement".

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Intelligent search engine

Everyone are looking for the killer application that will enable intelligent search platform for health information.

Its mostly needed for consumers who find themselves eager for such information.

The information is already there on the web but its so cahotic and time consuming so we need the right tools to bring us high quality health information.

there's already various SU which are trying to resolve this problem.Its going to be one of the hot subjects in the health 2.0 world.
There will not be only one winner. Probably there will be few ones. The winners will bring huge value to patients/consumers .
To this neighborhood we are expecting to have a new member called Infomedmd.com.
The basic concept of this platform will be a questionnaire form that will enable to understand the right information needs of the consumers.
In their site meanwhile there is only a promo " going to be here soon" - In July. So we are waiting for you, guys.
The people beyond this venture have a mix and rich knowledge concerning :
Medical practice, innovation, web world and applications.

Good Luck

Saturday, June 21, 2008

New Englaned article about EHR

Attached here an important survey published several days ago on New England Journal Of Medicine.

I will not summerize the article and let you enjoy reading it by yourself.
Although, I want to quote one sentence:
"Financial barriers were viewed as having the greatest effect on decisions about the adoption of electronic health records".

The above sentence is related to the fact that only minority of the American physician adopted already an EHR platform at their outpatient clinic.

I quoted this sentence because this barrier is perhaps also another opportunity and challenge for the Health 2.0 sector.
Creation of an interactive web based EHR will be probably one of the subcategories in the Medical/Health 2.0 world.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Establishing a web world for junior scientists

The University of Leicester Research Training Innovation Fund has funded a new project. Its an Health 2.0/science 2.0 project

They are trying to establish a small social networks for junior scientists which are lacking an important professional connections with their colleagues in the real world on the base that they are tend to work in an isolate environmemt ( small labs and on private projects/research).

The concept is to create seeds of small social networks that in the future will connect between themselves and will create a huge platform of brain storming for those who are really need it in the right time of their careers and they are lacking the right resources ( budgets and time) for that in this stage of their professional life.

The platform will bring some well known web 2.0 applications such as:

Rss , Microblogging tools, Wikis, Social bookmarking .

I think this is an important and a unique project :

1. The concept of not bieng a SU but a "kind of a research program" will give them an advantage to be more criticise and to learn more deeply the truely needs of the scientists from the web in general and from social networks particular

2. They choose the "right market" for this kind of project - Eager scientists who are willing to improve their abilities and professional connections. Most of them are probably young and are more prone to adopt advanced web
technologies
3. The concept of "small networks" will help them to examine more carefully the pro's and cons of the project and the applications within the networking.

So good luck guys
Let us know how you are progressing

Monday, May 26, 2008

What is our role as bloggers?

In the last days im thinking about us - the bloggers and our role in conjuction with the industry in general or in the Health 2.0 world specifically.

Do we have to be always a "cheerleaders" of every entrepreneur in the field or we are taking more serious part and sometimes even can criticize some trends in general and even specific application when we think it can contribute to positive and constructive discussion?

I had these thoughts again after I wrote a minor criticism regarding a new site called Researchgate.com.

unfortunately it seems that some entrepreneurs are taking personally any kind of criticism.

People

Criticism is a part of developement
Its a matter of maturity to accept criticism and its one of the first and importanat gates that every entrepreneur must pass through.
As I wrote before it only for the matter of building a stormy dialog.

Everyone who is respect such constructive dialog should promote such kind of criticism side by side to compliments and enthusiasm from platforms and application which deserve it.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Its time to be more innovative

People

I must disagree with my colleauge in the health 2.0 world - Bertalan Mesko who is writing the excellent blog - Scienceroll.
In one of his latest post he wrote about a new platform called Researchgate.com.

Bertalan called it : "Facebook for scientist"
Maybe it is . Maybe its a great platform but still it seems to be a generic one .
Im disagrre with the pharse :
" researchgate.net changes the picture by offering international networking technology to scientists of all disciplines. It is the world’s first platform of its kind and features numerous technological highlights that simplify research cooperation".

People, we must be more innovative . There are numerous platforma that are trying to be the "Facebook for scientist" already. Some will say there are even more .
Now we are looking for something new, something that leed us to the next step not saying the next generation.





Thursday, May 22, 2008

New fully detailed Health 2.0 research

My friend just now referred me to a research that seems to be a very detailed and comprehensive about the Health 2.0 sector.
The report called E-Health 2.0.
You can purchase the full 108 pages report or try first to read the free executive summary.

quotation for describing the article :

"The report details how the application of web 2.0 technologies is now driving far-reaching changes in healthcare systems in the UK, USA and Europe, a trend it terms e-health 2.0."

Enjoy your time reading it.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Ask experts on-line

Its not a new idea but it seems that it will be a central part of what we are calling "Health 2.0".

justanswer.com/ Health gives you the opportunity to ask doctors and medical professionals on-line.

Its not an on-line communication with your own physician but it gives you the chance to seek for secondary advice.
The advices there are given by "payment for advice" but maybe this equatin lead to more responsibility ( more than the ordinary medical forums).

Answers for medical problems are sometimes complex and you need to transfer a lot of information for the professional for getting a right answer but with the current technology it looks like it can be solved very easily and in friendly usability platforms.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Microsoft and Google involvement on health 2.0 - Privacy concerns

Yesterday NY Times published a review about an article which was written recently on New England Journal of Medicine

The issue : Privacy concerns regarding MS and google's PHR web based projects .

Some of the concerns are well known and based by strong evidence and theories (ofcourse you can read them on the attached link to the article or in the original review on New England) but still everyone should remember several points as well :

1. Its time that the health sector and consumers will earn and get benefits from the highly speed emerging technology on the web.

2. Privacy is a major an important issue but we should not prevent progressing by adopting technology on behalf of being "privacy guards".

3. Strong power and influence by several major companies on tremendous highly valuble health data is maybe not the optimal situation but the involvement of this two giants in the health sector is going to bring prosperity to the health 2.0 world and eventually to the "general" and traditional health sector. More powefull health sector means better services for the public .

I will be more than pleased to hear and listen to my collegues thoughts and ideas regarding this issue

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Microsoft vision on health

Maybe some of you will have the chace to participate in the free event that is going to take place between Aprill 22 and April 24 in Atlantic City New Jersey:

Microsoft Health & Life Sciences Developer and Solutions Conference 2008

Watch the attached link to understand more deeply about the contents and participants among Microsoft executives.

The mission statement by their own words:
"It is a unique event designed for developers, architects, technical and business decision makers in the healthcare industry. Please join us to discover how Microsoft, its partners, and customers make possible the delivery of Software + Services in Health & Life Sciences".

This year it looks more important than ever because of the emerging influence of the health 2.0 on Microsot strategic and tactics in the health and life science sector.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Opensource tools in The health 2.0 arena

Im sharing with you a fine post who summerize by the writer words :

" 100 opensource tools to the medical professionals"
Some of the tools are general ones but can contribute as well to professional in the health sector . There are also several tools in the list that are targeting to the benefits of the patients.
The subcategories are mentioned there :

1. Medical Billing and Electronic Medical Records
2. Antivirus, Security and Privacy ( protection of patients and research data)
3.Communications
4.Graphics and Imaging (for brain imaging, 3d imaging etc.)
5.Content Management Tools
6.Research and Reference (assisting in research work and study)
7.Multimedia ( for audio , visual and mobile files)
8.Storing Patient Information
9.General Tools that Work for Everyone
10.Collaboration Tools (with other medical professionals)
11.Storing, Sharing and Managing Files
12.For Patients (introduce these tools with your patients).

Worth looking into it and find some helping tools.
Thanks Sally for sharing with me this post.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Virtual E- visit

Hello

Today I found an excellent post about an interesting topic :

Virtual e-visit : " A truth or a myth" .

Here you can find the link to the post from "The life ledger" blog .

Its about the rising scene on the net of patients meet their physicians by virtual meetings.
There you can find already known reference such as :

"Jay Parkinson clinic"
"San Francisco on call medical group"

But, more than that is the fact that insurance companies are taking very seriously this scene .

What is missing in this post is reference to new ventures appearing these days such as the new platform for e-visits : Americanwell.com
and analysis/discussion about the upcoming influence of the "giants platforms" : Google weaver and Microsoft Healthvault on this subject.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Revenge of the experts - Is it crucial to the Health 2.0?

One of the hypes concerning the web 2.0 is the "Wisdom of the crowds" concept.

This concept led to developement of many SU including in the Health 2.0/Medical 2.0 sector.
Many new communitiesand social networks are based on this concept.
In the health sector we reviewed in the past several consumers based communities and it seems that there are more and more of them .
I want to share with you a review I read on newsweek which published several days ago - The revenge of the experts .
The main theme is the importance of the experts knowledge to influence and to balance unauthorized and unreliable content.
In the article you can find some example for new "certified content sites "
like :
Bigthink.com
or:
Googles version for wikipedia -Knol (here you can find a sample of knol for the term "Insomnia").

I must agree with the thesis and even say that its more crucial in the health sector.
We must be aware of the cons and the dangers of consumers becoming "addicted" to others unprofessional advices without any reliable source who can edit or controll some way the content flow.
No, Im not arguing that social networks are a major forward step in the nature of the web but probably the next step will be finding the gold pathway that will combine the power of the "wisdom of the crowds" with the basic power of the "knowledge of the experts".
In the health/medical sector is essential.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Social networking for physicians - Updated on Medical 20.com

Yesterday we updated our Medical 20.com site with several more social networking and communities for physicians.
So we have almost dozen of these kind of sites so far.

1. Do we need so many sites for narrow niche ( lets remember that the main crowd didnt join yet to the web 2.0/ Health 2.0 hype) ? .
2.What is their business model or what is the added value these sites are giving to the professionals outside of the commodities - platform and application for community ?

For me thereare intuitive answers :

1. Its too crowded for another "simple" social networking.
2. The "basic platform" for community should be an extra layer to an innovative idea that will gather the professional together.
Im waiting for the "killer platform" that will cause physicians and scientist to see and value the benefits of being there- on the net .

What is your observation regarding this issue?

Sunday, March 9, 2008

The battle on the health sector- Google versus Microsoft

So much was written so far and will be written in the future about the coming war between the big two lions on the health sector .
For us its a tremendous proff for the existance and the spreading of the health 2.0 movement.
Lately I found an article posted on the Eweek.com journal . Its about the competition on the online PHR between the two companies .
In the article there are observations about the similiarities and the differences between the Microsoft Health project (Healthvault) and Googles Health.
For me its quite obvious that everyone of them has a strategic plan to be the central player in the health 2.0 sector so the competition at the medium and the distance phases is unavoidable.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Reliefinsite.com - Tracking and control your pain

What are some of the important characteristics on web site/platform in general or web 2.0 platform specifically?

Simplicity
Usability

If we are investigating health 2.0 platforms its even more important because the professionals are not tech savvy .So these two characteristics can be crucial.

Reliefinsite.com is a platform that is either simple to use and to interact with .Also it has well usability format.
I also like its clean design.
Most of all, this site is giving a great solution to a developing sector in the modern medicine - pain control.
There are more and more physicians that are a "pain experts".
To manage your patients chronic pain you must find way to make a good history survey of their symptoms and you must build a continuous relationship with them to understand the quality and quantity of their pain , and related symptoms.
Reliefpain is just giving you a simple way to use the web for interaction with your patients .
This site is another great example on how health 2.0 can help building a close interaction between physicians and patients for treating chronic diseases and medical conditions

Saturday, March 1, 2008

IBM takes part in the virtual healthcare world

Only few days ago IBM announced the openning of their own new virtual healthcare island on second life .
It looks as an additive post to my last one published yesterday.


The "big lions" are thinking "virtual" as part of their strategic plans in the health 2.0 world and as part of their vision concerning the healthcare sector in general.

It seems that the island for the current is more a front station for IBM to present and show their vision regarding healthcare system including presentation of their EMR, EHR tools/platforms etc .
IBM's plan is to develop more their island in the next following months .

Worth waiting

Friday, February 29, 2008

virtual conference in the healthcare sector

Not many of us, physicians and/or other professionals in the health and biomed sectors aware of the power and the opportunities in the virtual world - Second life
One of the possibilities there is to participate in many professionals meetings and virtual conferences.
This is going to be one of the emerging fields in the health 2.0 sector.
There are inputs from the ground that its going to be a hot trend.
One of these input is the virtual presentation/demo that gives a general introduction for the next virtual Himms coference this year.
It will be the second conference while the first one took place in May 2007.
If you are looking for more detailes for the next coming conference just visit here: http://www.himssvirtual.org/.

Im not sure on base of which platform this virtual conference is going to be but its similiar to the platform of an Israeli SU called Unisfair.
Recently Unisfair raised another 10M$ from Norwest Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital so it seems that some strong players think its a promising field.
Its interesting to read about experience with this virtual conference.
One of the sides are the organizers. here is a link for a short interview with an organizer ( its not an health conference but it can give us some ampiric detailes concerning these virtual meetings).

In the near future im sure we will see more applications and web platforms combining the virtual world to the health/medical sector and vice versa.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Give your patients advice - "How to find high qualified medical content"

How to find the exact medical information is a challenge both to professionals and patients/consumers.

The developement of health 2.0 sites may help some for organization the medical content on the web but it will not solve the problem :
Existence of unproven and uncorrect content.

If we are looking from the patients eyes its important also for us , the physicians, that the consumers will look for "good" materials on the web. It can solves problems of communication with the people on the other side of the table ( lets remember that everyone is on the same side anyhow).
Communication between the doctor and the patient is one of the key factor for treatment success.
I found lately this new article posted on CNN/Health .
Its trying to summarize some good advices for those patients who looks for medical content on the web (It seems that everyone are doing this).

This article is important for the professionals as one of their roles is to guide their patient in every aspect concerning medicine /helth/ preventive medicine

Ifound this article summarize this issue in simplicity and brightness way.
It gives some affiliation sites as well.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Learning anatomy on the web

Nextdimension released lately their new version of Anatomy lab - Anatomy labll

Application features :

1. High level resolution models -3D models
2.Full detailed sections including several thousand parts of bones, muscles and ligaments.
3. Ability to Add your own anatomical content and share it with students, colleagues or other AnatomyLab users globally.
4. Ability to Dissect the model and create your own customized building blocks

Etc.

Single liscence costs 540 Euros
There are package deals for groups/ classes

This is another interesting application among others in the anatomical e-learning sector.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Doccheck - Another community for Healthcare professionals

The official numbers are impressive for niche social community such as Doccheck - more than 500,000 users.
Its probably the leading healthcare community in Europe . The origin is from Germany.
These days they are intending to enlarge their community by openning their platform in variety of countries around the globe.It means offering multilingual platform and some related content in each country site.
Although the community is spreading today outside Europe the beginning was in Germany.
The Firms public information is that as 50 % of the german physician are members in this site. I presume that some of them are not really active.

Doccheck Faces is a simple Health/Medical 2.0 community .They are giving all the traditional applications of "web 2.0 community".
Their strength is of being the first in the neighborhood(Europe) . Maybe even being a "simple platform" is helping them with the busy consumers- the physicians.In the other hand this is their weakness as well - They must find out themselves again.Many others are oferring the same application.

Note :

Their have a unique database by offering to their registrated members a password system who used to control access to over 1700 websites with professional related content.

By my opinion their UI design is lacking

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Trusera - Consumers for consumers

Trusera its quite new health 2.0 start- up.

The Seattle-based Health/medical 2.0 company released only last december their beta version.

What is it ? :

A free invitation-only network of people who care about health.
Its about connecting consumers who experienced variety of medical conditions and treatments with others who are seeking for advices or looking to meet others which had "been there".

Their firs role is to gather a critical mass of experienced pepole who will be the central core of the platform. They shall have to attract all the others.
Its like trying to capture the "middle zone" . Not only consumers to consumers or professional to consumers but unprofessional people who collected enough reliable information through and by their own life experience.
Trusera.com is privately held with funding by a team of angel investors with experience from Amazon.com, Expedia, WashingtonMutual etc.
Until now they raised nearly 2M$ .

Sunday, February 3, 2008

A new section called - Pharma 2.0

Its about a new project called worldpharmanews.net .
Its aim to be a pioneer in a new section called Pharm 2.0.

Worldpharmanews.net is going to be an advanced Web 2.0 pharmaceutical news portal.
The concept is simple : to create an on line submission platform for pharmaceutical news.
Saring and spreading the wisdom of crowds concerning this sector.
There is also ability for voting for the articles/news so if you want you can also call it the "Digg.com" for the pharmaceutical sector.
So nothing unique with the technology, design or concept but still can give added value for those who have special interests in the pharma world, and as you know there are a lot of them.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Biomedexperts.com - Passing over some entrance thresholds

Biomedexperts.com is another social networking in the Health 2.0 arena but yet is different in some aspects :

1. Business and marketing - Strong collaboration between two companies . One of them is Dell. Dell probably will use her strong marketing resources to help spreading the rumor about Biomedexperts among scientists.

2. Segment - Although there are several social networking in the health 2.0 sector , the more advanced ones until present are for physicians. Biomedexperts is totally dedicted her efforts among life science researchers (science 2.0).

3. Solving the problem of day "1" ? - One of the most basic business and marketing problems that any social networking have to deal with is "how to create critical mass of trafic in day "1"?.Without such traffic every potential end user who exposed to the platform can leave it for good by the fact that he doesnt find any added value . Biomedexperts trying to solve that problem by creating virtual identities of almost every searcher or scientist who has fixed number of research publications in Pubmed.
By creation such virtual environment any new active participant can find added value while exposing to enormous data about colleagues. Still , this is ,maybe,only good for solving the entrance threshold of day "1" but afterward
end users are still looking for real interaction with other members .

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Imedix - The promising Start Up for 2007 in Crunchies

congratulations to Imedix.

They won and turned to be the most promising SU for 2007 in Crunchies.
The Crunchies contest is a prestigious one. Imedix became the refreshing surprise by standing beside more known and established SU such as Twitter and even new giants as Facebook.
Its another sign that health/medical 2.0 get central attention.

Gopubmed- Interview with the C.E.O

Attached an interesting interview with Dr. Michael Alvers , the C.E.O of Gopubmed , one of the promising new semantic health search engine.
The interview was posted in "Altsearchengines" blog.

Semantic search engine must be the next step/generation in the health sector.
Gopubmed based in Dresden, Germany, is mostly focus in the research field It is going to be interesting how it will progress alongside and with the health 2.0 trend.

Some quotes from the interview:

"Our mission is to create the next generation search engine for the life sciences, which makes search much better than it was/is today. We are working to realize our vision “towards answering questions,” meaning to ease the process of getting answers"

"Today our target users are researchers in the life sciences and medical doctors interested in scientific research. These are also the users of GoPubMed today. Here is a partial list of corporations using GoPubMed: Unilever, Glaxo Smith Cline, Sanofi-Aventis, Wyeth, L’Oreal – literally the Who’s Who of Pharma and drug development, and also big research institutions like Stanford University, MIT, LMU in Munich and Harvard"

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Alternative medicine 2.0 - Community site

Last post I covered Mamaherb and exposed for you the "Alternative medicine 2.0".
So here another platform that fitting to that term.
Rootdown.us is social community for people who are interested in alternative medicine and for those who are involved in that field and working as therapists.

Basically it has all the features of classic web 2.0 social networking .
There are some extra added value sections like :
1. Search engine for formulas
2. Acumapper- Detailed map describing Acupuncture Point on the human bodey .

Dont forget that Alternative medicine 2.0 is a subsection in the health 2.0 sector.
Many Physicians today are combining convential practice alongside alternative practice, not mention that large percentage of the consumers are interested in this field.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Alternative medicine 2.0

Oficially we are covering all aspects concerning medicine/health 2.0.
In practice it is mostly about western and/ or "convential" medicine but lets not forget the important sector which called "Alternative medicine" .
Many patients are using the help of alternative medicine for their healthcare needs.
Two days ago I was introduced with a new platform called Mamaherb.com.
Its concept seems to be a variation to "Evidence based alternative medicine tool".
They are actually use some important characteristics of the web 2.0:

1.Give us the "wisdom of the crowds" concerning alternative medications and treatments for variety of medical conditions.
The spectrom of medical fiels are broad including cancer, mental health and overweight ( not mention many other fields).
2. Not only advices from key leaders therapists but using the long tail phenomenon to show us variety of recommended treatments from many unknown but experienced therapists.
3.Buliding community for consumers and alternative medicine professionals.

I like their unique "market penetration" : not to be just another community but giving added value by introducing and create public platform to share effective alternative medications/treatment.

I have only good words concerning the user interface . Clean , bright and not overloaded

I will add this site in the nearfuture to our Medical 2.0 .com Directory.
Its time to give alternative medicine a presence in the health 2.0 world.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Xoova - Searching your doctor , Making appointment on-line

Another interesting health 2.0 tool :
Xoova its not a new startup . It was founded in 2006. This name is a new one. The former one was DoctorsDirect.com . Xoova offers service to the both sides - patients and Doctors . The basic linkage is appointment service for doctors . Without using the appointment platform You can use the database to search for your Doctor by location ,specialist, treatment, conditions or name. There are over 500,000 profiles of physicians all over the states.
For the physician its an opportunity to strength their presence on the net and to offer their potential patients some self description written by their own words.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

"Open Health Education " - For school teachers and pupils and Health 2.0 in the service of teenagers

My second post today and its also on the "Open education" topic.
This time its for teachers and pupils. Excellent site helping both sides to learn and get access to educational materials.
The site called California Science from MacMillan/McGraw Hill. It contains materials, contents and activities in many aspects of science including life science and medicine /human body system.
My direct link is only to the activities/content thats belong to our sector.
You can find there :
slideshows
games
Animated summaries and quiz.
This site supposed to be designed for students at middle-school (fourteen-years-old) and below.

Science 2.0 or Health 2.0 has a potential even among teenagers/youths :

1. Open education sites
2. Educational games
3. Virtual reality games per se or as an educational tool.
4. Support communities and social networking for the "sick child or teenager" especially in chronic conditions ( for example : Diabetes , IBD etc.)

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Open education - Opportunity for the health sector

Hello and good year.
Im writing this post based on a reference from the last day of December 07.
Its about the new trend and phenomenon called Open Education.The post was published in the Washington Post.
Milions are reaching now higher education by and through the internet.
Its not the Long - distance courses that some pepole are using them through their formal degree studies .Its about universities which give access to some of their courses in the present and to their rich content on the past by delivering their archives on the web. It is done by self initiation arranged by the universities or through mainstream sites as youtube for example.
This phenomenon is an important one for the health sectors , both for professionals and consumers. The professionals can get access to important and highly professional content. Imagine how it can promote Med studies all over the world.
Even for consumers its an important trend. It can be used to deliver health isuues to the public .

Open education is going to be part of Open medicine and Health/Medical 2.0