Mapping Asthma - GPS in Clinical and Preventive Medicine

Came across this wonderful use of Global Positioning System in medicine. 

The Spiroscout inhaler tracker on Asthmapolis.

By tracking the use of inhalers, Asthmapolis aims to help patients and physicians improve management of asthma and provide a valuable new source of aggregated, anonymous and voluntarily shared data for scientists and public health.

The tracker can simply be attached to the top of the inhaler . It records the times and locations when the inhaler is used and this data can be viewed in real time over handheld devices like phones to create a complete clinical diary of events.This lets you map and track your asthma.

Besides, Physicians who remotely monitor asthma symptoms and the use of medications by their patients can identify those in need of additional attention, and help them achieve better asthma control.  This would also provide very valuable real time data on trends in Asthma attacks amongst various populations and in specific geographical areas.

You can find them on Facebook  and also follow their efforts on Twitter.

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Simple Pubmed Searches

PubMed is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 18 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to 1948. PubMed includes links to full text articles and other related resources. The search volumes at Pubmed are enormous!!

Many people i know do not derive the full benefits of that LARGE library - Pubmed. Most stop at simple article searches and then get lost in the thousands of results which pop up. The few who go for advanced search tend to stop at one or maximum two attributes. It has always been a bit hard to master the Pubmed maze. So now Pubmed has come up with a new improved design for its search Function.

Video by Melissa Rethlefsen, Librarian, LRC - Mayo Medical School

PubMed’s new Advanced Search screen is designed to replace the current tabs in PubMed (Limits, History, Index, etc.) and the Single Citation Matcher.Its more intutive and all the attributes are listed on one page to help you choose easily. I found it better than before. Take a look.

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• Top Health Search Engines of 2008 [Highlight HEALTH]
  
• GoPubMed [Highlight HEALTH Web Directory]

Simple Pubmed Searches

PubMed is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 18 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to 1948. PubMed includes links to full text articles and other related resources. The search volumes at Pubmed are enormous!!

Many people i know do not derive the full benefits of that LARGE library - Pubmed. Most stop at simple article searches and then get lost in the thousands of results which pop up. The few who go for advanced search tend to stop at one or maximum two attributes. It has always been a bit hard to master the Pubmed maze. So now Pubmed has come up with a new improved design for its search Function.

Video by Melissa Rethlefsen, Librarian, LRC - Mayo Medical School

PubMed’s new Advanced Search screen is designed to replace the current tabs in PubMed (Limits, History, Index, etc.) and the Single Citation Matcher.Its more intutive and all the attributes are listed on one page to help you choose easily. I found it better than before. Take a look.

Related articles

• Top Health Search Engines of 2008 [Highlight HEALTH]
• GoPubMed [Highlight HEALTH Web Directory]

Simple Pubmed Searches

PubMed is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 18 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to 1948. PubMed includes links to full text articles and other related resources. The search volumes at Pubmed are enormous!!

Many people i know do not derive the full benefits of that LARGE library - Pubmed. Most stop at simple article searches and then get lost in the thousands of results which pop up. The few who go for advanced search tend to stop at one or maximum two attributes. It has always been a bit hard to master the Pubmed maze. So now Pubmed has come up with a new improved design for its search Function.

Video by Melissa Rethlefsen, Librarian, LRC - Mayo Medical School

PubMed’s new Advanced Search screen is designed to replace the current tabs in PubMed (Limits, History, Index, etc.) and the Single Citation Matcher.Its more intutive and all the attributes are listed on one page to help you choose easily. I found it better than before. Take a look.

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• Top Health Search Engines of 2008 [Highlight HEALTH]
  
• GoPubMed [Highlight HEALTH Web Directory]

-Cannot treat without I.T support?

We know that wider adoption of healthcare information technology (HIT) results in better patient care. Here, in India, most medical students learn to use HIT after they start working as Doctors. Many medical students use the net to study, at a personal level, but institutional use of IT in Indian Medical colleges and associated hospitals is very low.

But here is a study with a very different perspective regarding HIT.

"About 80 percent of the 328 Vanderbilt graduates who participated in the study were working in an environment with less IT. According to the study, they reported "feeling less able to practice safe patient care, to utilize evidence at the point of care, to work efficiently, to share and communicate information and to work effectively within the local system."

Used to IT support in decision making, Medical students were left flabbergasted when they had to provide healthcare from Knowledge. Definitely not a very good sign.

Read the study on Healthcareitnews here.

Meditel 2008 @ Chennai, India

Chennai-Image via Wikipedia
The use of ICT ( Information and communication technologies) for Health care in India is still very limited. Most of the efforts in this direction are sporadic and rudderless.There is no dearth of skilled manpower in this field, but a unified plan of action is still awaited.

Medical computer society of India has taken the lead to organize a national conference on Medical informatics and Telemedicine. Under the leadership of Dr.Sunil Shroff, eminent Nephrologist and President of MCSI, the fifth national conference on Medical informatics and telemedicine is scheduled to take place at Sri Ramchandra Medical College & Research Institute, Chennai on 19th-20th December, 2008.

"The conference (as in the past) will bring together decision makers, policy makers, practicing clinicians, healthcare educators and researchers, health administrators, health technologists and IT vendors.Meditel 2008 offers a platform to meet, interact and network with qualified specialists, users, buyers, healthcare providers, industry representatives, researchers and policy makers from India and abroad.

The event will showcase successful products in the Indian healthcare environment and discuss the challenges in their implementation. The use of ICT for 'Health Education & Research'’ is the theme of this conference.

Meditel 2008 will feature an exhaustive conference program with more than 100 presentations along with workshops on a wide variety of topics to learn about what is latest in e-health and the likely future trends."

I was a part of Meditel 2006 and can vouch for the quality of discussions held at Centre for Digital Health, Amrita institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi, Kerala.It proved extremely useful to me then and I expect a similar experience this year.

-Palliative care in Cancer-

Most People do not realize the importance of palliative care. in Cancer.

Palliative care (from Latin palliare, to cloak) is any form of medical care or treatment that concentrates on reducing the severity of disease symptoms, rather than striving to halt, delay or reverse progression of the disease itself or provide a cure. Palliative care is an interdisciplinary team approach, with a focus on comfort and quality of life rather than prolongation of life
or "cure" for a patient.

With better drugs and technology, we are dramatically improving the survival in cancer patients. New studies are carried out everyday to find new cures.Unfortunately, the research frequently focuses exclusively on survival as an endpoint, leaving surgeons with little information on an
intervention's impact on QOL (Quality of Life).

There are multiple examples of problems that can affect the QOL for a patient facing the end of life. These can be categorized based on symptoms or systems in the body that are affected. Major symptoms include pain, dyspnea, anorexia, and depression. Related to body
systems, one can imagine a potential symptom related to each body system. Neurologic problems include fatigue, headache and other pain syndromes, and delirium. Pulmonary complications include dyspnea, fatigue, and immobility. Cardiac symptoms include shortness of breath, fatigue, and pain. Gastrointestinal problems include obstructions, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and anorexia. Musculoskeletal complications include fractures, functional loss, and pain. Epidermal problems mainly focus on wound problems, but also can include poor cosmesis and pain. Complications related to the hematologic system include infection and fatigue. Urologic problems include ureteral obstructions, bleeding, and pain. It is this compendium of problems that palliative care research focuses on, rather than increase in survival time or cure. We need more research to focus on these problems of the people who survive cancer.

There are many potential reasons for the lack of palliative care research. Many of them are related to ethical aspects of this research.There are also innate barriers, such as a lack of trained researchers and the challenges of subject recruitment.

For the original article, click here.

- Podcasting from Yale medical library-

Yale medical library published an interesting study-cum-project-cum-guide for use of screencasts and podcasts by medical learners.

The study finds many more off-campus users of the medical podcasts and videos than on-campus users. Not surprisingly, the cost benefits were very obvious. What i found particularly arresting was the suggestion of using only 1 to 3 minute long videos for teaching purposes. I would have thought that Ten minute videos would prove very effective. But apparently, yale students have difficulty viewing high quality content for more than a couple of minutes!!

See this slideshow for the complete report.

Screencasting and Podcasting: Experience of the Yale Medical Library

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cla yale)

--Web 2.0 in medicine- A slideshow--

The impact of web 2.0 on medicine and healthcare

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: medicine medicine20)

This is a fine presentation on the use of Web 2.0 in Medicine.

It just puts into focus the importance and uses of Web 2.0 in today's connected world of doctors,health care and patients on the same continuum.

Using technology in medicine.

A new advanced facility at the University of Minnesota is harnessing big ideas for medical devices.


It's called the Medical Devices Center.


"I don't think there's any place across the country in an academic setting with this kind of facility," said Art Erdman, director of the Medical Devices Center.


Located on the East Bank, the center is a place for engineers and medical professionals to come together and capture the ideas of graduate students often lost when they graduate and move on. "[Ideas] are lost all the time," Erdman noted.



At the center, medical device prototypes from the simple to the complex can be mocked up faster than the weeks it can take if a design has to be made off site. Sometimes prototypes can be finished in a day.


One prototype currently on display that was created at the university is a device that would conduct radial breast compression for MRI's, potentially replacing the bilateral breast compression plates that are currently used.


In addition to prototype manufacturing and providing facilities to test devices on tissue, the center also has new 3D cameras that will be used in about 40 operating rooms around campus.


These cameras will allow groups of engineering students to sit in on surgeries remotely so they can help medical experts solve problems.


Surgeons will also be able to see the students on monitors in the OR and communicate with them during surgery.


"Right now you're lucky if you can get into a surgery suite as an engineer. [They] maybe allow one to two people at a time," engineering graduate student Nathan Knutson said. "So to be able to project those surgeries here and have the prototyping equipment to sit down and start solving the surgeon's problems with their devices and handheld manipulators we can really come across with some great innovations and
breakthroughs."


Not only will graduate students be able to advance their ideas more easily, the center has also hired a team of engineering and medical experts well established in their fields to brainstorm ideas.


And a new fellows program will bring together four experts this fall.


"We put them in a think tank and for one year they seek out relevant clinical needs," Fellows program director Marie Johnson said. "So they actually put on scrubs and go over to the OR's, sit in the clinics, watch rehab, participate in all aspects of medical care and they ask stupid questions."


Those stupid questions though, could lead to the next big idea.


Erdman said harnessing these ideas will be good for the University of Minnesota, and potentially great for the state.


"Arguably, this is the center in the United States for medical devices, certainly in cardiology and urology, so how do we sustain that?" he asked. "It's very important for the economy of the state."


Read it all at:
University of Minnesota Opens New Medical Devices Center - MPO Magazine

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Touching on Medicine 2.0

Image via Wikipedia

Medicine 2.0: Social Networking, Collaboration, Participation, Apomediation, and Openness | Eysenbach | Journal of Medical Internet Research

While it may be too early to come up with an absolute definition of Medicine 2.0 or Health 2.0, the figure below shows a suggested framework, created in the context of a call for papers for the purpose of scoping the Medicine 2.0 congress and this theme issue [5]. The program of the first Medicine 2.0 conference [6] also gives a good idea of what academics feel is relevant to the field. An explanation of why we chose the title “Medicine 2.0” over “Health 2.0” has been given elsewhere [4]; it suffices to say at this point that most authors do not necessarily see a significant difference between Health 2.0 and Medicine 2.0 [7]—if anything, Medicine 2.0 is the broader concept and umbrella term which includes consumer-directed “medicine” or Health 2.0.


According to the model depicted in this figure, five major aspects (ideas, themes) emerge from Web 2.0 in health, health care, medicine, and science, which will outlive the specific tools and services offered. These emerging and recurring themes are (as displayed in the center of Figure 1):

1) Social Networking,

2) Participation,

3) Apomediation,

4) Collaboration, and

5) Openness.


[view this figure] Figure 1. Medicine 2.0 Map (with some current exemplary applications and services)

While “Web 2.0”, “Medicine 2.0”, and “Health 2.0” are terms that should probably be avoided in academic discourse, any discussion and evaluations concerning the impact and effectiveness of Web 2.0 technologies should be framed around these themes. Each of the 5 themes will be considered in detail below.

Figure 1 also depicts the three main user groups of current Medicine 2.0 applications as a triangle: consumers/patients, health professionals, and biomedical researchers. While each of these user groups have received a different level of “formal” training, even end users (consumer, patients) can be seen as experts and—according to the Web 2.0 philosophy—their collective wisdom can and should be harnessed: “the health professional is an expert in identifying disease, while the patient is an expert in experiencing it” [8].

Current Medicine 2.0 applications can be situated somewhere in this triangle space, usually at one of the corners of the triangle, depending on which user group they are primarily targeting. However, the ideal Medicine 2.0 application would actually try to connect different user groups and foster collaboration between different user groups (for example, engaging the public in the biomedical research process), and thus move more towards the center of the triangle.

Putting it all together, the original definition of Medicine 2.0—as originally proposed in the context of soliciting submissions for the theme issue and the conference—was as follows [5]:

Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are Web-based services for health care consumers, caregivers, patients, health professionals, and biomedical researchers, that use Web 2.0 technologies and/or semantic web and virtual-reality tools, to enable and facilitate specifically social networking, participation, apomediation, collaboration, and openness within and between these user groups.

Interestingly, Benjamin Hughes' extensive literature review published in this issue concludes with a very similar definition [7].

There is however also a broader idea behind Medicine 2.0 or “second generation medicine”: the notion that healthcare systems need to move away from hospital-based medicine, focus on promoting health, provide healthcare in people's own homes, and empower consumers to take responsibility for their own health—much in line with what others and I have previously written about the field of consumer health informatics [9] (of which many Medicine 2.0 applications are prime examples). Thus, in this broader sense, Medicine 2.0 also stands for a new, better health system, which emphasizes collaboration, participation, apomediation, and openness, as opposed to the traditional, hierarchical, closed structures within health care and medicine.

Original article here- http://www.jmir.org/2008/3/e22/

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