More than half of U.S. adults turn to the Internet when they have health or medical questions, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center. (Did we really need a research center to tell us that?) More alarmingly, a survey in April found that 50 percent of doctors turn to Wikipedia for medical info!

How does Wikipedia fare as a medical reference? Its collaborative, user-generated philosophy generally means that errors are caught and corrected quickly. Several studies, including one examining health information, another probing articles on surgery, and one focusing on drugs, found the online encyclopedia to be almost entirely free of factual errors.

Better still, the articles improve significantly with time, according to a study Clauson published last December in the The Annals of Pharmacotherapy (vol 42, p 1814). “Wikipedia’s editing policy does work,” he says.

Read the article at newscientist.com

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Embedded below are slides from a presentation from Bob Coffield titled “PHRs, Health 2.0 and the Impact of Social Media on Health Care”. It was given at the American Health Lawyers Association 2009 annual meeting in Washington, DC.

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A few weeks ago we discussed the rapidly growing relationship between medical technologies and the Web2.0, or more specifically, the iPhone. Technologies like Apple’s iPhone is helping to bridge the gap for a new revolutionary healthcare marketplace. For facts about this drastically changing market, take a look at this video, Facts About Social Media in Healthcare.

Today I came across a new iPhone application that allows you to zoom in and identify an individual bone or part of a bone within the full skeleton. It has been designed to accommodate medical professionals as well as medical students from basic to advanced level of anatomical medical knowledge.

The user is presented with a high-quality 3D model/image of the full skeleton. The user can zoom in to any area – by tapping on a region – tapping again will zoom in further – eventually the user will have zoomed into a individual bone, bone region or ligament. The user can then identify the different parts by pressing on the flags. Each label is in English and in Latin and by pressing on the ‘i’ icon the user can access additional information on a label. There is also a super Magnification Mode that greatly magnifies a bone part allowing the user to press on flags that are close together!

YouTube Link

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Yesterday was a big day for Mac and iPhone users. Apple hosted its annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) and announced the latest updates to their wildly popular iPhone. While the majority of the opening keynote was focused on updates to the Apple products, they did allow some time for featured developers to discuss their latest technologies using the iPhone.

A very exciting presentation was done by AirStrip Technologies. They made medical devices and their presentation at WWDC 09 was about AirStrip Critical Care which delivers real time information to practitioners like ventilator flow tracings, patient vital signs data and rhythm strips.

The medical industry is flocking to the tech market and applications like this are a glimpse into the future of healthcare. Patients are looking for their healthcare providers to take steps toward advanced technologies. It’s important that your medical company show its strong commitment to staying current and valid in today’s dynamic market.

While you may not have the ability to create your own medical technologies, there are other ways to establish a presence of innovation and we can help you do it.

We specialize in:

• creating integrated marketing campaigns that include TV, radio, print, outdoor and interactive
• developing surgical cases for healthcare facilities, surgical centers and surgeons
• ensuring your staff effectively captures and tracks leads
• patient generation for individual physicians and physician groups
• website development
• pay-per-click (sponsored keywords) to drive targeted leads
• natural/organic search engine optimization to drive targeted leads
• powerful social media tools that capture grassroot leads doing research on the web
• results that are quantifiable by our proprietary software tracking and CRM system

Find out more at LEVELTWO Medical.

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Interesting facts and figures describing the way social media and new media are changing the healthcare industry.

The text is kind of hard to read, so here’s a few of the interesting points from the video.

• 60 million consumers are using new media to interact and share their health experiences online
• 277 US hospitals use social media
• Facebook has 175,000,000 active users
• 3.5 million users become fans of Facebook pages each day
• Roughly 1,200 Facebook communities advocate for cures for different chronic illnesses
• 83 Hospitals have Facebook pages
• Twitter had 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008, 7,000,000 million in February 2009
• 201 US hospitals have Twitter accounts
• 77% of active internet users read blogs
• 93% of global consumers use search engines to find and access websites
• 72% of e-patients searched for medical information just before or after a doctor visit
• 23,000,000 million Americans have downloaded and listened to an audio podcast in the past month
• YouTube has 1,000,000 videos viewed per day
• 135 hospitals have YouTube accounts

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A few days ago there was a lot of talk about surgeons Twittering from the operating room. Now there is a buzz about Medpedia opening its door as a public beta.

Unlike Wikipedia, which anyone in the world can freely edit, Medpedia’s content is created by physicians and PhD’s in their respective biomedical/health fields. If you are a physician or Ph.D. in the biomedical field, you can create a profile and, if you are approved to become an Editor, you will gain editing privileges and will be able to make changes directly to the Medpedia wiki. If you are anyone else, you can use the “Suggest Changes” link at the top of any page to make a suggestion for that page. An approved Editor will review and potentially add your suggestion.

Follow the buzz about Medpedia on Twitter and read more about Participatory Medicine.

Online encyclopedias are all part of the social media changes that are pushing their way into the healthcare industry today. Are you engaging the online community? Social media is a powerful medical lead generation tool. Get started, before you get left behind.

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The future of microblogging (Twitter) and the health care industry has a lot of exciting possibilities. I recently viewed a presentation on the future of Twitter and the health care industry and here is a summary of some of the ideas discussed.

Twitter for Medical Students
- Contact and seek advice for medicine related questions from educators around the world
- Get feedback easily on ideas and projects
- Students can follow doctors and see what their everyday lives are like
- Prepare themselves for practicing medicine
- A point of health care news, information, and knowledge sharing platform for medical students

Twitter for Patient and Doctor Communication
- Useful as a daily/weekly reminder to patients with chronic conditions
- Educating and helping patients will have a positive impact on their health

Twitter for Doctors
- Create a Twitter page for every doctor in the hospital (or at least a test group of doctors)
- Increases productivity and efficiency at the hospitals as everyone is updated on the activities of the doctors

Twitter for Hospitals
- Reputation management for customer feedback
- Improve customer service at hospitals
- Improved patient care

Twitter for Medical Devices
- A diabetic patient monitors his/her blood sugar and whenever there is a serious difference from normal values, the doctor receives a tweet about it
- High blood pressure patients measures his/her blood pressure and when the value is serious, the doctor receives a tweet
- A pregnant mother wears a monitoring device which tweets stats like heart rate and other activity. For example, the Kickbee.

The Kickbee is a wearable device made of a stretchable band and embedded electronics and sensors. When a baby kicks, a Twitter message is posted. (Read more about the Kickbee)

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