- Podcasting from Yale medical library-

screencasting-and-podcasting-experience-of-the-yale-medical-library-presentation

Screencasting and Podcasting: Experience of the Yale Medical Library

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Podcasting@ Yale

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)

Screencasting and Podcasting: Experience of the Yale Medical Library

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

- Imaging technologies, Connectivity and the markets.-

Let the commoditization of medicine begin! | Trusted.MD Network

I was tempted to read this article, though the headlines(COMMODITIZATION of medicine) don’t appeal to the Human rights aspect of my personality. I find the choice of word very cynical and it brings to question the motives of the author. But the services he describes are definitely noteworthy.

I believe the author talks about providing the best radiology service in the most cost-effective manner. Looked at it this way, the services provided by Nighthawk  teleradiology services is a boon for patients.It has the potential for bringing down the costs of healthcare. Any measure taken to reduce health costs will benefit the patient, even if the healthcare is being provided via third party ( Insurance) paying for the service.

Telerays.com is a new service allowing bidding for radiology services. You can understand more about the process here.

Since radiology involves interpretation of digital images, it makes real sense to get the best doctors at the best prices (wherever they may be) by making good use of technology.. Simple economics here. And, i dont think quality will really suffer. After a few possible initial hiccups and pruning out of “sub-standard” opiners, I am sure only quality work will prevail.Quality radiologists will always get work, wherever they are. Teleradiology services now being woven into this kind of business model shall definitely be a positive step towards health rights.After all, “TIMELY, best possible quality healthcare for all without discrimination” is what health rights is all about, in essence.

Wonder when will a chunk of pathology services go this way. Very soon, i believe.

- Web 2.0, Copyrights and Plagiarism-

the Web2.0 Rights project.

Web 2.0 has changed many things. But the most profound change, IMO, is in the field of Intellectual Property Rights.

New content is being created collaboratively, from distant locations. We now have the concepts of Joint authorship and joint ownership. Joint authorship means a work produced in collaboration by two or more people, where the contribution of one is NOT DISTINCT from other collaborators.The term joint ownership refers, in general, to a situation in which two or more persons share interests in property rights.Performers rights are another important field because of easy distribution of videos online (Youtube) . Many IPR theories have not yet been tried in court, especially in use of deep linking, embedding of content and use of crowd sourced content.

When one talks of IPR, how can talk of plagiarism stay far behind?

According to Wikipedia, Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the
language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them
as one’s own original work. Plagiarism is a huge problem in schools with thousands of students passing off content from the web as their own content. But it is now quite simple to detect frank plagiarism. One way is to use “” quotation marks and search within google. Advanced search features of google allow for better search of copycats.You can learn using gogle to detect internet plagiarism on this link of Marywood university Library.

You can check whether your own content is being copied elsewhere by using copyrightspot.com. You can also download free software for detection of plagiarism here.(University of Virginia).

You can access useful links to sites on Plagiarism here.

This link talks of everything related to IPR in the Web 2.0 environment. Check it out.

-Hand devices in medical education-

Life as a Healthcare CIO: The Kindle for Medical Education

Medicine is much identified by thick large books. There were numerous jokes on the sheer size of the books. Medical students were advised to use their books for their gyming and weight training.But all has changed.

Studying medicine has become less physically taxing during medical school and after wards.An encouraging use of hand held devices in Medical education is outlined here by use of Kindle.

Similar uses of handheld devices to view documents and more (word/powerpoints/pdfs/videos) is a very good innovation in medical education.

An iPhone (or an iPod)can be put to similar good use in medical education. The medical students should all be issued one pre-configured iphone on their admissions. Ensuring such individualized reach to every student would yield HUGE benefits in trainings and expenditure on medical books and journals. WiFi access via iphone/hand held devices is the clear way to go for medical colleges in India.

Another added benefit of using such devices is the accompanying swing towards use of evidence-based-medicine and confirming that one has the Numbers-needed-to-treat.

- Imaging techniques in Pathology-

Israel’s ASI gives pathologists a vital second opinion – ISRAEL21c

-I have written previously about the subjectivity involved in the practise of Pathology. Its difficult to get two pathologists to agree on any one diagnosis if both pathologists insist on looking at the case through the prism of their own experiences.Besides, it is always tough disputing any one”s diagnosis as it is merely an opinion and reflects the Pathologists own “view” of the case.

Now, ASI (Applied Spectral Imaging), a privately held company in Israel has come up with a colorful solution for the problem. Instead of depending totally on the “morphology”, ie shape and size, it provides a way to visualize the antigenic proteins present in the tissue. Using their Spectracube family of products, It allows researchers to distinguish between
different materials on a chromosome by highlighting its features with
unique colors, instead of the black dye that had been used previously. This leads to better identification in suspicious cases and the test also lends itself to reproducibility.

The company has already launched “ TB Finder” in the market.In addition to TB Finder, ASI is already selling
or planning to market additional tools for pathologists, including
PathEx, as well as for morphologists, who examine protein structures
and alterations in cell structures.

The company presently promotes its products only as a backup / second opinion. But this seems to be more out of its desire not to rub the so-called “Specialists” the wrong way. Being able to corroborate one”s opinion by a scientific and a  reproducible test is a tool sorely needed in the practise of Pathology. I shall not be surprised if such corroboration of opinion of a pathologist soon becomes a norm rather than an option.

All in all, a very very useful service to improve accuracy of diagnosis.

- HMIS for India-

India launches health management info portal : iGovernment
New Delhi: The Government of India on Tuesday launched the Health Management Information System
(HMIS) portal to convert local health data into real time useful
information, management indicators and trends which could be displayed
graphically in the reports.

Launching the portal, Health and
Family Welfare Secretary Naresh Dayal said that real time data provided
by the web-enabled technologies will strengthen the monitoring and
would enable policy makers to make better decisions for public health
delivery.

The new system envisages enhancing the information
flow at various levels and providing useful and timely inputs for
programme development, monitoring and midcourse interventions in the
policies.

Recognising the need for an information base, one of
the core strategies of the strengthening capacities for data
collection, assessment and review for evidence based planning,
monitoring and supervision, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
has established this dedicated portal for all public health related
information.

The HMIS portal captures data to be collected as
per the revised HMIS formats on a web-based system at the District
level so that the primary data can be easily aggregated and the
information and reports flow quickly to the state head quarters and the
Ministry.

The system also enables information to be entered for each facility so that MIS reporting can be of a better quality.

The
application has been developed by the Ministry in technical
collaboration with iBILT Technologies who will also be providing
maintenance and support to the application for the next five years.

The
portal will be generating unique intelligence reports using the
advanced SAS Data Warehousing platform and explore and establish new
linkages and advanced analysis for policy initiatives.

- Telepathology made simple-

MEDTING – MedicalTube, medical meeting; exchange video and image

As a pathologist, I know the importance of collaboration and second opinions. The practice of pathology is sometimes very subjective and its not unusual to get three different diagnosis for the same tissue sample/ histopatholgy slide from three different pathologists.Besides, all pathologists at one institute tend to think along similar lines, further increasing chances of bias. But getting distant doctors to review any one case and histopathology slide has been difficult till date. The best we could do was “store-and-forward” telepathology, where the images of a histopathology slide were forwarded to known experts via email for second opinion. A very primitive means of practicing telepathology, if i may say so!

Enter Medting.

“MEDTING is a clinical web portal that provides a platform for
exchanging clinical cases, images, and videos. Physicians can post
clinical cases with associated images or videos for discussion among
colleagues. In addition, independent images or videos can be sent to
the Atlas space for other to review. Other members of the community can
then vote and write comments on the cases and images posted.”

Medting allows doctors from around the globe to offer their opinions on any histopathology slide (or any other clinical image). Any doctor can upload the facts and images related to any case for second opinions from experts all over the globe.Patient privacy is not compromised as names are not revealed and the site claims to be 100% HIPAA compliant.

The images uploaded presently on the site were of very good resolution. One could easily scan the whole slide, Zoom in on interesting areas of the slide, leave comments, tag images, share them, etc. It provides an excellent collaboration platform and can serve as an excellent educational tool. At present, it boasts of 1840 cases and 15760 images and videos. Cases and images are tagged with keywords using the SNOMED CT terminology.

Medting also offers premium membership and individual institutional support.

I like their service, though it is still very BASIC and has tremendous scope for improvement.

 

- Health support services in Hindi-

Many Seek Second Opinions From Health Sites and Online Communities – NYTimes.com

Web 2.0 has certainly changed the way Medicine is practiced.
Now, if you are a lazy Doctor, your patient might come to you with more knowledge about his own disease than you do!! I cant help feeling amused when i think of some of my classmates and how they would be coping with today’s super-informed patients.

And its not just about the information available to the patient.
Its also about the support.

Its easy to join any forum/group of people having the same illness as you. Have a Migraine? Log onto the headache blog and find out how other people are coping with theirs. Want to talk to someone about your migraine? Join a chatroom. Want some advice from a doctor? Log onto the Live chat service of Organized wisdom. Want to know more about the drugs the doctor prescribed you? Check it here. The options available are endless. Gone are the days when the doctor simply prescribed you acetaaminophen and sent you home.

My only crib is the lack of such resources and support in the Hindi language.Hindi is spoken by almost 500 million people and is the third most spoken language in the world. Native speakers of Hindi dialects account for 41% of the Indian population.And yet, we have no such services available for this huge under served population.

I am hoping to soon start similar services in Hindi, encompassing the whole patient education and support services. I hope to do this through RAKSHA, a non profit organization working for democratization of knowledge and health. This is a huge task and will take time. But then, SOMEONE has to do it. Why not me?

Read the original article here.

-Obvious uses of data and technology-

Scientists to use satellite imagery to predict disease outbreaks

At last, scientists are correlating what they know and what they see to come up with new ways to fight diseases.

Seen from a distance, both figuratively and literally, it is ridiculously easy to predict an epidemic or infectious disease outbreak.All you need is good dependable information about the current environment at the location. Tie this up with what we already know about the infectious agent life-cycle and the disease process and Voila!- We have our own Crystal Ball.

Scientists now plan to use satellite imagery to predict some seasonal and climate dependent infectious diseases like Cholera. Similar models can later be developed for other diseases like Hepatitis A, Malaria and Leptospirosis.

Hoping more money is spent on such life-saving use of Technology in preventive medicine.
Read the original news item here

-Web 2.0 strategy for Business-

Ten Aspects of Web 2.0 Strategy That Every CTO and CIO Should Know [Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog]

Web 2.0 has changed the way things are or can be done. Organizations need to adapt to these new trends ASAP. A few key points of note for business to survive in the new world-

# It’s not about technology, it’s about the changes it enables.
# The implications of 2.0 stands many traditional views on their head and so change takes more time than usual.
# Get the ideas, concepts, and vocabulary out into the organization and circulating.
# Existing management methods and conventional wisdom are a hard barrier to 2.0 strategy and transformation.
# Avoiding external disruption is hard but managing self-imposed risk caused by 2.0 is easier.
# Incubators and pilots projects can help create initial environments for success with 2.0 efforts.
# Irreversible decisions around 2.0 around topics such as brand, reputation, and corporate strategy can be delayed quite a while, and sometimes forever.
# The technology competence organizations have today are inadequate for moving to 2.0.
# The business side requires 2.0 competence as well.
# Start small, think big.