Archive for August, 2007

August 14th, 2007

The future of Medicine 2.0 with Google or Microsoft

by admin

“When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable” -Anton Chekhov

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Picture credit:Express Healthcare India

Official Google Blog: New advisory group on health

With Google forming an Health Advisory Council that looks as more US centric,but delivering Health information across the globe!

Where do you want to go today? Google or Microsoft for your personal health record information storage needs?

In the current news at Health care world Google and Microsoft are keen to enter into the world of Personal Health Record world.With Health care technology is billed as the next big revolution in IT industry.It is quite certain that the next wave of supremacy will be to be the leader in health care information.

With last year study in BMJ showing that Google searches revealed the correct diagnosis in 15 (58%, 95% confidence interval 38% to 77%) cases.it’s only a matter of time,before Google or Microsoft enters into Health care arena to battle for supremacy.But,health although is universal issue,yet the delivery of health care information is not quite simple.

Many people would like to avoid issues about health as much as possible and stay far away from it,because health is always associated with something bad.That means when you are healthy,disease free you don’t want to think or talk about it.Health is equated to sickness.Health is depressing.

The future of Medicine will be more of preventive care,with patientIndividual-centric model.Wherein the Healthy Individuals will have more control over their health and also mode of delivery.The beginning will be by optimizing health care information through education.Followed by personal health record.Then by delivering pertinent information to physicians..

Web 2.0 is the extension of the web 1.0,in fact it represents the true power of Internet as envisioned by Sir Timothy John Berners- Lee.But,the proliferation of numerous websites and also information resources has also diluted the quality of information. Today,we need to wade across vast repository of online information if we need to collect good quality information.

The Search is dominated by SEO (Search Engine Optimized )techniques and also numerous other analytics which makes only SEO rich websites rank on top of the list and really good informed websites are way below.

Moreover,the web as of today is not semantic enough to retrieve results of what we actually need,but it is a pile of huge amount of content.In the world of medicine,although for physicians the current web may help in arriving at rapid diagnosis,yet patients need to be careful as many users tend to use information provided in Internet to diagnose or treat any illness, disease, health problem, or metabolic disorder without consulting physicians or health care providers.This is one of the dangerous side effect of uncontrolled web 1.0 proliferation.

Semantic Web

Popularity: 23% [?]

August 6th, 2007

Personal Health Application 2.0

by admin

Phaedrus: Hippocrates the Asclepiad says that the nature even of the body can only be understood as a whole.

One of the difficulties of web 2.0 is the definition.When applied to medicine,it becomes even more difficult,yet the spirit of web 2.0 could be easily applied onto medicine,as a platform in which collaboration,sharing of knowledge and also discussion could play a major role.

Managing diseases in the next decade could be based on this spirit of collaboration and sharing of patient knowledge.Today,we depend on Journal articles and conference session to gather more information about a new treatment for a particular disease,which is not perfect but if we could harness all these information into a single entity then it could serve immense benefit to entire mankind.

Applying the sum knowledge and adding this to patient’s disease will help in making better informed decisions about patient’s health condition.Managing this information to get “What if” analysis and then treat patient accordingly as a whole not just a particular part which is damaged will change the way medicine functions in the next decade.

Popularity: 17% [?]