Following the Biomedical and Healthcare Blogosphere

April 4, 2009 | by

The mission of Highlight HEALTH is to promote advances in biomedical research, to encourage health literacy and to provide reliable sources of health and medical information (more on the about page). In support of these goals, when Highlight HEALTH hosted the Holiday Edition of Grand Rounds in December 2008, I introduced subscription options for eight credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals.

There’s a revolution occurring on the Web: those “authoritative” articles written on traditional, static websites are being replaced with blogs, wikis and online social networks. In the sphere of health, medicine and information technology, this “real-time Web” consists of many who are professionals in the field; their posts are listed below.
In the digital age, these are the characteristics of new media: recent, relevant, reachable and reliable.

Fast-forward to April 2009. There are now ten health and medicine blog carnivals that offer email and/or RSS subscription options. Each carnival feed post links directly to the blog hosting the carnival. You never have to search for the latest edition of any of your favorite health and medicine blog carnivals again! There’s something for everyone: the weekly best of the “medical blogosphere”, nursing, genes and genetic diseases, Web 2.0 and medicine, cancer research, neuroscience and psychology, surgical experiences, health policy, medical librarianship and palliative care.

Subscribe with RSS Grand Rounds Subscribe with RSS Change of Shift
Subscribe with RSS Gene Genie Subscribe with RSS Medicine 2.0
Subscribe with RSS Cancer Research Subscribe with RSS Encephalon
Subscribe with RSS SurgeXperiences Subscribe with RSS Health Wonk Review
Subscribe with RSS MedLib’s Round Subscribe with RSS Palliative Care Grand Rounds
carnival-calendar

A Google Calendar highlighting all of these carnivals is also available. The calendar is publicly accessible, so if you have your own Google Calendar, you can conveniently follow the Health and Medicine Blog Carnival schedule right next to your own by clicking on the +GoogleCalendar icon in the lower right corner of the calendar. If you click on any event, the description links directly to the specific carnival feed. You’re just three clicks away from the latest edition of any carnival in the biomedical and healthcare blogosphere. You can also subscribe to the Health and Medicine Blog Carnival calendar using iCal or RSS.

If you’re interested in more than one carnival, an aggregated feed is available. The Health and Medicine Blog Carnival Mashup enables you to receive notification of all the carnivals by email and/or RSS.

twitter-for-health

Lastly, many people are using Twitter to complement or replace RSS. If you use the microblogging service, you can also keep up with all of the new carnival editions by following @BioMedCarnivals on Twitter.

My hope is that these subscription options increase the popularity and readership of each of the carnivals. With all these choices, it’s easier than ever to follow your favorite health and medicine blog carnival(s).

Do you know someone who isn’t reading any of the health and medicine blog carnivals? Click on the “ShareThis” button below this post and share on Facebook or email this article to a friend so that they can learn how to follow the biomedical and healthcare blogosphere.

Health Highlights – March 6th, 2009

March 6, 2009 | by

Health Highlights is a biweekly summary of particularly interesting articles from credible sources of health and medical information that we follow & read. For a complete list of recommeded sources, see our links page.

Health Highlights

Health 2.0 Highlights: February 9th, 2009

February 9, 2009 | by

Highlight HEALTH Goes Mobile

October 14, 2008 | by

As more and more people use cell phones, the Mobile Web — accessing the World Wide Web using a mobile device such as a cell phone, PDA or other portable device — is increasingly being used to access online information. According to AdMob, the world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace, in August 2008 mobile worldwide traffic grew 12.8% to 5.1 billion web page requests [1].

New smartphones like the iPhone are accelerating this use in the mobile web. Indeed, in August 2008 the iPhone saw the largest share increase of any smartphone [1]. With healthcare consumers and professionals increasingly relying on handheld devices to access the web, I’m pleased to announce that a mobile version of Highlight HEALTH is now available.

Standard mobile phones, Blackberries and 3G devices such as the iPhone and iTouch are fully supported. Optimized for the mobile web, http://www.highlighthealth.com enables readers to access all the articles on Highlight HEALTH while on the go.

At the bottom of every article, you can show and post comments. Additionally, there are links to “Email” the full HTML article link, “Bookmark on delicious” or “Share on Twitter”.

UPDATE:

Highlight HEALTH now automatically detects mobile devices like iPhones, iPads, Android & Blackberry and more, and serves an optimized theme instead of the regular desktop theme. Visitors can always switch back to the desktop theme if they choose.

According to a study last year, 75% of people who access the mobile web conduct searches [2]. As consumers use the Internet more than any other media source to research health information [3], I anticipate an increasing number of health-related searches to be done using the mobile web. I hope the mobile version of Highlight HEALTH will enhance its appeal to readers who have busy schedules and frequently don’t have time to read on a computer.

Mobile web users, please give the mobile version of Highlight HEALTH a try and let me know what you think.

References

  1. AdMob Mobile Metrics Report. AdMob. 2008 August
  2. Consumers Stick with Big Search Engines, Demand Mobile Optimized Content. iCrossing press release. 2007 Apr 25.
  3. Research Reveals That Internet Has Become Primary Means by Which Consumers Access Health Information. WebMD press release. 2003 Feb 10.

Viral-based Human Disease and the Nobel Prize for Medicine

October 10, 2008 | by

nobel medal in medicineThe 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced earlier this week. The prize was awarded to three europeans for the discoveries of two viruses that cause severe human disease; the cancer-causing human papilloma virus (HPV) and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Two French scientists, Luc Montagnier, age 76, at the University of Paris in Paris, France and Francoise Barré-Sinoussi, age 61, at the Institut Pasteur in Garches, France will split half the prize for their discovery of the HIV virus. Barré-Sinoussi is the 8th woman to receive the Nobel award for Physiology or Medicine.

A German researcher, Harald zur Hausen, age 72, at the University of Dusseldorf, Germany, will receive the other half of the $1.3 million prize for establishing that most cervical cancers are caused by two types of human papilloma virus.