My goal in Tech Medicine will be to explore the intersection of medicine, new technologies, and the Internet. This is a purposefully broad topic. Several times weekly I will post focused reviews of issues interesting to health professionals and nonprofessionals alike. Posts may include examinations of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, scientific advances, internet services, and other technologies involving health care and the practice of medicine. Mirroring as it does the nature of the Internet and the sometimes surprising nature of new technologies, the content may also include topics that are wonderful, unusual, hilarious, or strange.
I'm trained as a nephrologist (a kidney and blood pressure specialist). For the last two years I've written Kidney Notes, a blog designed to filter and process medical news. Most recently, Kidney Notes has become a collection of links, commentary, and scraps of information -- a reference database of interesting things with the help of a popular social bookmarking service called del.icio.us. While I will continue posting to Kidney Notes, several friends have asked me to write longer posts of original content -- and this is what I will be writing on Tech Medicine. Recently, I have also written a blog on personal productivity called The Efficient MD (in association with the American College of Physicians). I'm also writing a book on physician productivity and life hacks.
There are many topics I plan to cover, but I'm also open to suggestions, tips, and even posts by guest bloggers. Please email techmedicine@gmail.com.
Let's take a step back. Regarding Twitter, chances are you've either
Heard of it
Use it
Loathe it
All of the above
Twitter is an instant messaging service, a microblog, a social networking phenomenon, a chatroom, the best crowdsourcing utility ever invented, or a colossal waste of time — depending on who you ask.
Regardless of how you feel about it, Twitter matters. Some argue that news is broken on Twitter faster than on any other medium. The conversations on Twitter are often hilarious, informal, and informative, all at once. And the number of people who can potentially see what you write — instantly — is staggering. Leo Laporte, the technology columnist, has 37,860 followers on Twitter. (Barack Obama, by comparison, has 33,597.)
Here's a brief explanatory video:
But is it efficient to use Twitter? It all depends how you read it. Many Twitter clients, like Twhirl and Tweetr, will happily pop up messages from your Twitter "friends" all day when you're trying to get work done. (This is why many people consider Twitter a distraction and a waste of time.) For this reason, I switched from using a client to subscribing to my Twitter feed — which contains all my friends' posts — through Google Reader. (See "Feed Reading, Three Ways" for more details on feeds.) This way, I can quickly scan through messages on Twitter when I have the time.
If you're interested in what doctors and medical students are saying on Twitter, but don't want to join and follow each person individually, consider subscribing to the Doctors on Twitter feed.
Triggers happy, from Running a Hospital, about a rapid response team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Fascinating reading. The mortality rate of a nurse expressing "marked concern" is twice that of showing up in the ED with a heart attack. Literally. Google Health: A View from the Inside, from Wachter's World. Dr. Wachter is one of Google's advisers, and he provides an interesting insider's perspective on Google Health.
Slideshare and the Life Hacks for Doctors Presentation
Monday, May 26, 2008
Joshua Schwimmer, MD, FACP, FASN
Slideshare is YouTube for slideshows. Doesn't sound appealing? I didn't think so either. But last week, I presented on "Life Hacks for Doctors" to a group of physicians. I wanted to put the presentation online, so I figured I'd use the opportunity to test out Slideshare... and now I'm hooked. On slideshows? I know, It's almost embarassing, but hear me out.
The beauty of Slideshare is it allows you to share presentations without the hassle of having to share the file with each person individually. Instead of working with the original PowerPoint/Keynote file — which was 8 MB — Slideshare easily turns the presentation into an embeddable slideshow:
Life hacks are productivity strategies that solve everyday problems — especially problems related to information overload. Slideshare featured Life Hacks for Doctors on their home page. In a week, it was viewed over 1300 times. The service also features tagging and searching for presentations, and it allows you to create your own groups, for example, Improving Medical Practice and Health 2.0.
Slideshows occupy a singular category of knowledge. The results of a Slideshare search are qualitatively different from what you'd find from searching Google or YouTube. Here's the best way I can describe it: the presentations on Slideshare are concentrated, surfable bursts of thought.
I've posted some more examples of slideshows below, but I'd encourage you to have a look around Slideshare and explore on your own.
Wikis — collaborative websites to which anyone can contribute — are powerful tools for education. The most popular Wiki is Wikipedia.org, a public encyclopedia, which as of this writing has 2,377,813 English articles.
One potential problem with Wikipedia is that medical articles aren't peer reviewed by authorities with a medical background. (Some might argue that this is actually an important feature of Wikipedia, and allowing anyone to comment on any topic is essential to Wikipedia's egalitarian nature.) The best known medical wiki, Ask Dr. Wiki, solves this problem by requiring all contributors to prove they have a medical degree before they can contribute.
I recently decided to start a new medical wiki — The Efficient MD Wiki, focused on productivity tips for doctors — and I took this opportunity to review some of the available wiki platforms and hosting services. It was a daunting task. I'll share my experiences here for those interested in starting their own wiki.
(Please note these experiences are my own, and I encourage anyone to comment and argue for/against the various wiki platforms.)
I narrowed my choices down to four platforms/hosting services:
Wikia. This platform is a free hosting service for wikis based on the MediaWiki software package, which is also the foundation for Wikipedia. The familiar MediaWiki package, however, also had certain disadvantages. Chief among them was the likelihood that the nonintuitive wiki markup language would discourage users unfamiliar with it from contributing.
Google Sites. The newest entry to the world of wikis, Google Sites initially looked promising. After setting up a site and experimenting, however, it was clear that the Google Sites was too new and lacked too many features to be usable. For example, the invitation and signin process was cumbersome, and anonymous edits of the wiki weren't allowed. (Knowing Google, I expect later version to be more polished.)
PBWiki. PBwiki also initially looked promising. PBWiki 2.0 was released as I was creating a test wiki. The new version didn't allow anonymous editing, however, and I had some criticisms of the wiki's layout, so I eventually decided not to use it.
Wetpaint. Wetpaint was first suggested when I asked for wiki recommendations on Twitter. I hadn't heard of it before. The Wetpaint platform has numerous advantages. The services are free, the layout is readable, anonymous posting is allowed, and — most importantly — its social networking features are more developed than any other wiki I tested. A major disadvantage was the disruptive presence of Google ads in the sidebar, but the ads can be disabled for educational wikis (if you ask).
The Efficient MD wiki is at wiki.efficientmd.com. Thanks for your contributions, and please let me know what you think.
Sermo is an online network for physicians — currently, over 60,000 of them. (I've written about the Sermo community previously, and I've written about meeting Sermo's CEO, Dr. Daniel Palestrant.) One of the advantage of social networks like Sermo is that it allows groups to quickly formulate and vote on ideas. The physicians of Sermo — over a thousand of them — have used the network to craft "An Open Letter from America's Physicians." I recently had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Sean Khozin, who originally proposed the idea of a group letter from Sermo physicians. He and the writers did a great job. The text of the letter is below. To sign the letter, visit Sermo.
Dear Fellow Americans,
For decades the United States has led the world in healthcare. We have enjoyed the finest hospitals, medical schools, research, technology, and resources. Unfortunately, our healthcare system has lost focus to the point where patient wellbeing is placed after politics, profits, and special interests. Healthcare costs are on the rise and patients have lost their freedom of choice. These trends are hurting our economy and compromising the doctor-patient relationship. As a result, it has become difficult for physicians to deliver the best possible care.
Our heavily fragmented healthcare system has made it very difficult for you, the American public, to get the care you need. As your physicians, we want to partner with you to address the critical defects of the system as outlined below:
* You are paying a lot for healthcare and not receiving enough in return. Your insurance premiums continue to increase while your healthcare options are dwindling. Gatekeepers, insurance networks, and restrictive regulations limit your choice of doctors and your access to care.
* You have been made dependent on complicated and expensive health insurance plans. Employers are forced to take money out of your paycheck to purchase health coverage. If you lose your job, you are left with no safety net and the money you have paid for health coverage vanishes.
* The time you spend with your physician has become remarkably brief due to regulatory hurdles requiring doctors to spend more time on documentation than with you.
We believe the following factors have made our current healthcare system unsustainable:
* The insurance industry's undue authority and oppressive control over healthcare processes
* Excessive and misguided government regulation
* The practice of defensive medicine in response to a harmful and costly legal environment
We, the physicians of the United States, will no longer remain silent. We will not tolerate a healthcare system where those without medical expertise or genuine interest in our patients' health have absolute control. This letter is merely a summary of the most important problems in our current system. We believe that by partnering with the public we can start to demand real change and formulate practical solutions.
We invite you, our patients, friends, neighbors, and employers to unite with us at this important time in the history of healthcare in the United States. Together, we can guarantee our nation a healthier tomorrow.
Please talk to your doctor about this letter and visit Doctors Unite for more information.
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Image from WikipediaWhat's this blog all about?
