Kindle in Medicine

Kindle is a new device that is changing the face of reading. The best of the current lot of e-book readers, Kindle is a boon for medical students and professionals, allowing them access to hundreds of books on the go!. Kindle, now in its third avatar, the Kindle Dx (Deluxe) boasts of advanced features, like PDF support (experimental) , longer battery life, 5-way Controller and sleeker design.

Check out more features here.. You can view it from all angles, zoom into any area and look at its features.

Using Kindle in Medicine

* Easy for medical students to keep up with all their scheduled reading. You can download and read reference materials that you have read previously to refresh your memory.You can seek out new textbooks to look for answers too.
* Seeking out symptoms, conditions, and other relevant information is easy.You can view photos on the Kindle if you need to see pictures of various signs and symptoms conditions.
* Study medical texts and highlight portions of texts / make notes on the Kindle as you go. Zoom into images for micro details.Bookmark and annotate important portions.
* Research can be done on its built-in web browser ( experimental feature) , no need to carry a laptop to access the internet.It offers free Wireless access to Wikipedia
* .Multiple books can be read at once, no need to carry a JUMBO Grey”s anatomy or Robbin”s Pathology encyclopedias !! It boasts of storage capacity of 1500 / 3500 books, depending on the Model.
* You can listen to music while you read.
* Inbuilt Text-to-Speech feature lets you listen to your favorite books.

It has a clear policy for returning the instrument or any content bought ( within 7 days of purchase) and also One year limited warranty. The kindle library boasts of more than 300,000 books for download, and many more added regularly. Priced at 300 and 500 $$ , and weighing approx. 300 and 500 grams (depending on the model) it is still too pricey for open embracing of this technology. Some libraries have started lending out Kindles ( with preloaded content) to its patrons.

Personally speaking , i can see a lot of content being adapted for Kindle, provided the machine becomes less expensive.
Also , many more wireless features ( like chat, email, videos etc) need to be added. If more such functionality is added to justify its high prices, i expect a LARGE number of medical students turning to Kindle.

Related articles

• Video: What Can Amazon Kindle 2 Do for You? (casesblog.blogspot.com)
• Kindle Books: The Art of the Sample Chapter (poynter.org)

 

Web 2.0 in health

With increasing avenues for communication and knowledge dissemination, the practice of health care is changing faster than imagined. Free services like you tube, face book, Wikis, blogs, Twitter, social networks eg. Patientslikeme and a host of other services provide a health consumer with ample information and opinions. No longer is a patient forced to blindly trust his doctor”s judgment. The patient can easily search for more opinions, review personal experiences of friends and strangers plus the latest research studies in the field. This has changed the role of a Doctor to one of facilitator of health, rather than the unquestionable saviour.

E-Health insider has come up with a 108 paged report titled ‘Web 2.0 in the Health Sector: Industry Review with a UK perspective’. {£575.00 (inc VAT)}

The report argues that e-health 2.0 will first and foremost be consumer-led. Health is consistently one of the most searched for subjects online. The application of web 2.0 technologies into health is already challenging traditional doctor-patient relationships and beginning to place far greater power in the hands of consumers. These changes are likely to be rapid and may prove highly disruptive. Further, it concludes that new applications based on social health networks and content generated by health service users themselves – such as reviews of doctors and hospitals – will rapidly evolve to challenge existing healthcare systems and create new ways of delivering health care.

The profiles provide a snapshot of innovation across healthcare: from organisations providing online communities for patients with specific conditions, tools for chronic disease management, sites that enable patients to rate the quality of care they receive, together with tools to enable clinicians to better search for and share research data.

No doubt Web2.0 has changed the game, bringing about a total rethink in long established practices.

With Web3.0 and Personalized Medical services like Webicinia and 23andMe (easy at home genetic testing) internet technologies are bound to change the rules of health care for ever.

Web 2.0 in Health: a Practical Overview

A few other interesting reads,

• Using Twitter in Health care
  
• Social Life of Health Information
  
• The Engaged E-patient Population
  
• The internet as new health-information source
• Tests set for Facebook-style, digital health system
• Selected abstracts from the Medicine 2.0 conference

 

Web 2.0 in health

With increasing avenues for communication and knowledge dissemination, the practice of health care is changing faster than imagined. Free services like you tube, face book, Wikis, blogs, Twitter, social networks eg. Patientslikeme and a host of other services provide a health consumer with ample information and opinions. No longer is a patient forced to blindly trust his doctor”s judgment. The patient can easily search for more opinions, review personal experiences of friends and strangers plus the latest research studies in the field. This has changed the role of a Doctor to one of facilitator of health, rather than the unquestionable saviour .

E-Health insider has come up with a 108 paged report titled ‘Web 2.0 in the Health Sector: Industry Review with a UK perspective’. {£575.00 (inc VAT)}

The report argues that e-health 2.0 will first and foremost be consumer-led. Health is consistently one of the most searched for subjects online. The application of web 2.0 technologies into health is already challenging traditional doctor-patient relationships and beginning to place far greater power in the hands of consumers. These changes are likely to be rapid and may prove highly disruptive. Further, it concludes that new applications based on social health networks and content generated by health service users themselves – such as reviews of doctors and hospitals – will rapidly evolve to challenge existing healthcare systems and create new ways of delivering healthcare.

The profiles provide a snapshot of innovation across healthcare: from organisations providing online communities for patients with specific conditions, tools for chronic disease management, sites that enable patients to rate the quality of care they receive, together with tools to enable clinicians to better search for and share research data.

No doubt Web2.0 has changed the game, bringing about a total rethink in long established practices.But this is just the beginning.

With Web3.0 and Personalized Medical services like Webicinia and 23andme , internet technologies are bound to change the rules of health care for ever.

Web 2.0 in Health: a Practical Overview

A few other interesting reads,

• Using Twitter in Health care
• Social Life of Health Information –
• The Engaged E-patient Population–
• The internet as new health-information source
• Tests set for Facebook-style, digital health system
• Selected abstracts from the Medicine 2.0 conference

 

Second life in Medical education

The New Zealand virtual world education group, Second Life Education New Zealand  (SLENZ), has set up a research project in the on-line virtual world of Second Life for  New Zealand educators to pilot  at least two projects into determining how multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) might benefit New Zealand education and how  this can best be done.

Funded by the New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission the research project  has attracted considerable interest from educators both in New Zealand and abroad.

Learning in second Life — Check this video for Normal Birth Training in Second life !!

 

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Digital Pathology

Download now or preview on posterous

AU7_1242326084.pdf (7223 KB)

Digital Pathology is an environment for the management and interpretation of pathology information that is enabled by the digitization of a glass slide. Digital pathology is software that delivers all the information a pathologist needs, anywhere, anytime. Transition from glass to digital slides, a gradual process, which will make pathology observations more quantitative and a searchable history of preclinical and clinical trials studies. 

http://medical.wesrch.com/paper_details/pdf/ME1AU7W0SEVOS/digital_pathology_technology

 

Using Cellphones to diagnose Malaria and Blood disorders

Microscopy provides a simple, cost-effective, and vital method for the diagnosis and screening of hematologic and infectious diseases.It is an essential tool in disease diagnosis and widely used all over the world. Unfortunately, the EXPERTISE required to use the tool, and to evaluate the findings is not very common. One requires a pathologist with many years of experience to make sense of those seemingly random and confused pixels.  (I know, i am a pathologist :-)

It takes a lot of effort, and money to train a pathologist, equip him/her with all the instruments required, and then use the skills in a backward area without proper facilities. But the advent of digital imaging has solved many of our troubles. Telepathology and virtual microscopy made sure that we do not need a pathologist physically present at the site, to render a diagnosis.

But microscopy and digital imaging of the biopsy/tissue fragment was still a hassle. Now we have done better. You don’t even need a microscope to send a microscopic image over the network!! Researchers from the Univ. of California worked with high-powered LED – which retails for just a few dollars – coupled with a typical camera phone to produce a clinical quality image sufficient for detecting in a field setting some of the most common diseases in the developing world.

The newly developed technology, CellScope, allows for average cell cameras to be retrofitted with powerful microscopes, able to detect malaria parasites, and even fluorescent marker-stained tuberculosis bacteria.Thus you have your humble cell-phone transformed into the sherlockian “cell-scope“.

“The images can either be analyzed on site or wirelessly transmitted to clinical centers for remote diagnosis. The system could be used to help provide early warning of outbreaks by shortening the time needed to screen, diagnose and treat infectious diseases,” University of California in San Francisco (UCSF)/UCB Bioengineering Graduate Group graduate student David Breslauer adds. CellScope could also provide remote access to digitized health records, and would be amenable to epidemiological studies, using triangulation or global positioning system location data, such that outbreaks could be monitored as they happen.

So maybe i could click a photomicrograph of that mole on my friend”s forearm, twitter it to my onco-pathologist friends, who view it on their smartphones and twitter / message their diagnosis back to me. Simple and fast, especially with my own group of pathologists on the network.

Labels: cell, Imaging, Pathology

Also, See –The Rise of Virtual Microscopy

Related articles

• Personal mobile slide viewers for Pathologists. (neeleshbhandari.blogspot.com)

 

Using iPhone as CDSS

Technology use has made the practice of medicine more accurate and more precise.One important feature has been knowledge management, in a way to achieve clinical advice for patient care based on number of items of patient data. Broadly called CDSS – Clinical Decision Support systems

“Clinical Decision Support systems link health observations with health knowledge to influence health choices by clinicians for improved health care”

The latest such application (pun intended) is eRoentgen™ for iPhone. It helps doctors order the most appropriate radiology test for their patients based on a diagnosis, sign or symptom.

eRoentgen Radiology DX 1.0– Size:- 1.6 MB

Physicians and other healthcare professionals use eRoentgen™ to choose the most appropriate imaging study for a selected diagnosis or symptom. The eRoentgen™ quickly and easily improves patient safety and the quality of the imaging workup.It is extremely useful in locations which do not have a radiologist to guide a general Physician regarding the most appropriate imaging test to be ordered for further work up of any patient. It reduces wasteful and needless tests, and also improves diagnostic accuracy.

This app can be purchased online or via the iPhone apps store.Priced at $49.99.
This app gets my Vote, for sure.

In addition to eRoentgen™ for iPhone, iAtros is in the process of developing applications for a variety of mobile devices.

Related articles

• The Evolution of Clinical-Decision Support Systems (medicineandtechnology.com)
• NIH Database More Accessible to iPhone Users (ivor-kovic.com)

 

Using iPhone as CDSS

Technology use has made the practice of medicine more accurate and more precise.One important feature has been knowledge management, in a way to achieve clinical advice for patient care based on number of items of patient data. Broadly called CDSS – Clinical Decision Support systems

“Clinical Decision Support systems link health observations with health knowledge to influence health choices by clinicians for improved health care”

The latest such application (pun intended) is eRoentgen™ for iPhone. It helps doctors order the most appropriate radiology test for their patients based on a diagnosis, sign or symptom.

eRoentgen Radiology DX 1.0– Size:- 1.6 MB

Physicians and other healthcare professionals use eRoentgen™ to choose the most appropriate imaging study for a selected diagnosis or symptom. The eRoentgen™ quickly and easily improves patient safety and the quality of the imaging workup.It is extremely useful in locations which do not have a radiologist to guide a general Physician regarding the most appropriate imaging test to be ordered for further work up of any patient. It reduces wasteful and needless tests, and also improves diagnostic accuracy.

This app can be purchased online or via the iPhone apps store.Priced at $49.99.
This app gets my Vote, for sure.

In addition to eRoentgen™ for iPhone, iAtros is in the process of developing applications for a variety of mobile devices.

Related articles

• The Evolution of Clinical-Decision Support Systems (medicineandtechnology.com)
• NIH Database More Accessible to iPhone Users (ivor-kovic.com)

 

Digital Medicine: Top 9 e-quipped Hospitals in India

Top 9 e-quipped Hospitals in India

The Cybermetrics Lab recently published their world ranking of hospitals, taking into account the instituion”s activities in field of e-knowledge and their use of digital media for communications.

Supporting Open Access initiatives, electronic access to scientific publications and to other academic material are our primary targets…The Web covers not only only formal (e-journals, repositories) but also informal scholarly communication.

The Web indicators measure electronic contents, especially those used for scholarly communication, but also basic information about the hospital, its organization, services and personnel. The rank takes into account both the volume of information published and the impact or visibility of such contents measured by the number of external links the web pages receive from others. As expected, about 45 % of top 200 and 38% of top 1000 hospitals are situated in North America.

The Laparoscopy hospital at N.Delhi is the only Indian hospital to figure in the top 100 hospitals from Asia ( 47/100, Asia), and also the only Indian hospital in top 500 worldwide. Amongst the others, Sir Gangaram hospital scores much better than Apollo and Tata Memorial.

L.R.S Institute of Tuberculosis and respiratory diseases records a very enviable world rank of 19, in number of papers and citations visible on Google Scholar., a noteworthy list headed by The Institute of Cancer Research, London.
Below is the list of 9 hospitals from India in the first 2000 worldwide , and their world rankings ( as per Cybermetrics Lab).

			POSITION
WORLD RANK	HOSPITAL		SIZE	VISIBILITY	RICH FILES	SCHOLAR
279	Laparoscopy Hospital		406	749	599	140
624	Sir Ganga Ram Hospital		2,351	788	1,834	225
632	Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre		1,015	1,429	1,174	179
921	Aravind Eye Care System		1,567	2,717	766	146
1178	Sankara Nethralaya Hospital		2,690	984	1,224	2,200
1349	L.R.S. Institute of Tuberculosis & Respiratory Diseases		2,845	6,679	1,070	19
1407	Apollo Hospitals		3,045	938	3,453	2,200
1819	Tata Memorial Centre		2,459	3,469	322	1,497
1885	Sri Ramachandra University & Medical Centre		1,742	3,787	1,660	426

---

 

Swine Flu guidelines from India

On 14 th august, Friday night, after facing flake for the past two weeks on the bungled handling of Swine Flu epidemic in India, the government has come up with a better set of guidelines.The new guidelines allow ALL doctors to treat for Swine Flu (Believe it or not, earlier only designated hospitals and doctors  < and no other doctor> could treat Swine flu!!) The guidelines were finalized after a five-hour meeting chaired by Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.

The patients have been categorized as follows:

* Category A: Patients with mild fever plus cough/sore throat with or without body ache, headache, diarrhoea and vomiting. They do not require Oseltamivir and should be treated for the symptoms mentioned above. The patients should be monitored for their progress and reassessed after 24 to 48 hours by the doctor. No testing of the patient for H1N1 is required. Patients should confine themselves at home and avoid mixing with the public and high risk members in the family.

I agree with this

* Category B: (i) In addition to all the signs and symptoms of Category A, if the patient has high grade fever and severe sore throat, he/she may require home isolation and Oseltamivir; (ii) In addition to all the signs and symptoms of Category A, individuals having one or more of the following high risk conditions shall be treated with Oseltamivir: children under five, pregnant women, those above 65 years, those with lung diseases, heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, blood disorders, diabetes, neurological disorders, cancer and HIV/AIDS; Patients on long term cortisone therapy. No H1N1 tests are required for Category-B (i) and (ii). Such patients should confine themselves at home and avoid mixing with the public and high-risk members in the family.

I think all such cases be tested for H1N1, and antiviral therapy started without delay

* Category C: In addition to the symptoms of Categories A and B, if the patient has one or more of the following: breathlessness, chest pain, drowsiness, fall in blood pressure, sputum mixed with blood, bluish discolouration of nails; irritability among small children, refusal to accept feed; worsening of underlying chronic conditions. Such patients require testing, immediate hospitalisation and treatment.(

All such patients should be started on antivirals without even waiting for test results!!, its already late!

)

During the meeting, various guidelines and protocols developed by the World Health Organisation, Geneva, the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Atlanta, United States, and the National Health Service, United Kingdom, were also discussed.The death toll has already reached 26 today, and is rising exponentially. Hope these guidelines help, but i really think its too little too late.

Related articles

• Inside the Fight Against a Flu Pandemic – TIME (time.com)
• Swine flu deaths go up in India (news.bbc.co.uk)