Medpedia Now Includes News & Analysis, Alerts, Q&A

December 7, 2009 | by
medpedia-logo

The Medpedia Project is a long-term, worldwide initiative to develop an online collaborative source of health and medical information for medical professionals and the general public. Launched in February 2009, the website currently has 34,100 pages of health and medical content (based on a Google domain search), an increase of over 2-fold since July 2009.

The Medpedia Project recently announced the addition of three new tools for sharing and advancing medical knowledge [2]. The services complement Medpedia’s reliable crowdsourcing of health and medical information.

Health 2.0 Highlights: November 1st, 2009

November 1, 2009 | by

Digital Pathology and Visuvi Visual Search

August 13, 2009 | by

At the 2009 JavaOne Conference in June, Visuvi Inc., a Redwood City, California-based company developing visual search solutions, announced a Java-based visual search technology that integrates a JavaFX front-end with PathXchange, a Web 2.0 pathology portal. The Visuvi Java application enables medical professionals to take a digital biopsy image of 50,000 x 60,000 pixels (that’s 3000 mega pixels) and search medical images in leading databases for similarities.

The power of this technology is that the medical images in the databases have corresponding case information. Thus, images that are found to be similar also provide information on patient diagnosis, treatments, outcomes, etc. This is particulary useful in oncology since, in more cases than you’d expect, pathologists disagree on whether a particular image shows cancer or not [1-3]. By comparing pathology images, the technology greatly accelerates the review process and allows a diagnosis to be more objective than what is currently done.

Check out their demo at the conference in the video below. James Gosling (the inventor of Java) was clearly impressed with the significance of the technology. Chris Boone, CEO and president of Visuvi, and Florian Brody, VP Marketing, highlighted and captured a section of an actual prostate cancer biopsy image and searched 90,000 images in 0.3 seconds to find related patient cases.

PathXchange is a not-for-profit professional networking portal for the global pathology community. PathXchange brings the field of pathology into the digital age with Web 2.0 features designed to promote exchange of pathological cases, knowledge and information, combining the elements of a case gallery, community content contribution and professional networking.

References

  1. Farmer et al. Discordance in the histopathologic diagnosis of melanoma and melanocytic nevi between expert pathologists. Hum Pathol. 1996 Jun;27(6):528-31.
    View abstract
  2. Lettieri et al. Discordance between general and pulmonary pathologists in the diagnosis of interstitial lung disease. Respir Med. 2005 Nov;99(11):1425-30. Epub 2005 Apr 21.
    View abstract
  3. Lodha et al. Discordance in the histopathologic diagnosis of difficult melanocytic neoplasms in the clinical setting. J Cutan Pathol. 2008 Apr;35(4):349-52.
    View abstract

Health Highlights – August 7th, 2009

August 7, 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

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Medpedia: Reliable Crowdsourcing of Health and Medical Information

July 24, 2009 | by

According to a recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 61% of adults look online for health information [1]. Surprisingly however, three-quarters of those searching don’t consistently check the source and date of the health reference they find [2]. Indeed, searching for health information online is dangerous and finding credible, up-to-date sources of health information can be a challenge.

Wikipedia is the Web’s most popular free online encyclopedia. If you’ve ever searched for health or medical content online, Wikipedia articles typically appear at or near the top of search engine results. Nevertheless, Wikipedia’s medical entries are prone to manipulation and are not reliable [3]. Moreover, in many cases you don’t know who has contributed content nor their background or expertise.

Wisdom of crowds is the new model for innovation on the Internet in which collective knowledge is thought to be superior to the intelligence of the few. Nevertheless, not all crowds are wise. Recent cases and new research suggests that crowdsourcing is only truly successful when it is focused on a specific task and when the most effective collaborators are involved [4].

Enter Medpedia.

medpedia-logo

The Medpedia Project is a long-term, worldwide initiative to develop an online collaborative source of health and medical information for medical professionals and the general public. A joint effort with Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School and other global health organizations, the intent of Medpedia is to be a repository of up-to-date unbiased medical information, contributed and maintained by health experts around the world and freely available to the general public. Unlike Wikipedia, which allows anyone to modify pages, Medpedia content creators and editors are required to have an M.D., D.O. or Ph.D. in a biomedical field; each contributor has an author page detailing their qualifications and background.