Highlight HEALTH 2.0 Interview: Bertalan Mesko

September 20, 2010 | by

In 2006, Bertalan Mesko (Berci) started Scienceroll, a blog about genetics and popular medicine. It quickly evolved into a leading source of information following the impact of Web 2.0 on medical education and healthcare. He posts regularly on Twitter (@Berci) about health 2.0, medicine 2.0 and personalized medicine (top five words: rt, ff, medicine, medical, health), and maintains two “microcarnivals” on FriendFeed: Gene Genie and Medicine 2.0.

Berci Tweet Cloud

Over the past four years, Berci has accomplished many things. In 2009, he started a Ph.D. in clinical genomics after graduating with an M.D. from the University of Debrecen in Hungary. From his work at Scienceroll, he has been invited to lecture on medicine in the Web 2.0 era at several clinics and departments at the University of Debrecen, and has presented at several medical conferences around the world.

Berci Mesko

In 2008, Berci launched the first university credit course for medical students that focuses on Web 2.0 and medicine (med20course.wordpress.com). He also founded Webicina.com, the world’s first medical Web 2.0 guidance service. Webicina aims to ease the work of physicians and scientists by recommending useful tools and sites and by presenting them the new world of Web 2.0. Just last week, Webicina launched its 65th medical topic spanning 15 languages on medicine.

I’ve known Berci Mesko since 2006 and we recently had a chance to talk about Scienceroll, Webicina and his professional path in the Web 2.0 era.

Social Media in Health and Medicine: Medlibs Round 2.7

August 11, 2010 | by

Welcome to Medlib’s Round, edition 2.7, the monthly blog carnival highlighting excellent blog posts in the field of medical information. Just under a year ago, we hosted MedLibs Round 1.8: Finding Credible Health Information Online. For this edition, we wanted to focus on how social media is being used to promote health information online.

Social media in health and medicine
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.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the term mobile is being used quite often when discussing social media and health. Indeed, according to a recent Pew Internet report, 59% of adults are now accessing the internet wirelessly using a laptop or cell phone [1].

Keeping with this month’s theme, we’re tweeting and sharing posts using the Twitter hashtags #medinfo and #medlibs. If you like a particular post, share it with your friends and be sure to add both hashtags.

Finding Credible Health Information Online: MedLibs Round 1.8

November 11, 2009 | by

Welcome to the eighth edition of MedLib’s Round, the monthly blog carnival that highlights some of the best writing on medical librarianship, encompassing all stages in the publication and dissemination of medical information: writing, publishing, searching, citing, managing and social networking.

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.
yale-medical-historical-library

Here at Highlight HEALTH, we advocate health literacy for improving self-management in health. To that end, all the sites in the The Highlight HEALTH Network strive to consistently provide credible, reliable sources of health and medical information.

A 2008 study by the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest found that searching for health information online can be dangerous, with search engine results pages dominated by websites that appeared legitimate but had zero medical authority [1]. Our hope is that this edition of MedLib’s Round — themed Finding credible health information online — will offer ideas and advice to help people use the Web more effectively to search and find credible health information.

Grand Rounds 5.14 Holiday Edition

December 23, 2008 | by

Seasons Greetings! Welcome to the Holiday Edition of Grand Rounds, featuring some of the best articles of the biomedical and healthcare blogosphere.

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.

At this time last year, I announced the Highlight HEALTH Network, a single source that aggregates content from all the Highlight HEALTH websites. This year, I have a similar gift for biomedical and healthcare blogosphere readers:

Health and Medicine blog carnival email and RSS subscriptions!

Health Search and the Semantic Web

November 18, 2008 | by

Before it gets too far behind us, I wanted to write briefly about the Health 2.0 Conference, which was held in San Francisco on October 22 and 23rd. The Health 2.0 Conference focuses on the application of Web 2.0 technologies to the fields of medicine and healthcare. Specifically, I wanted to comment on health search, the semantic web and the demonstration of the health 2.0 service iMedix.

Search engines today rely extensively on keywords. However, with health-related searches, context or meaning takes on great importance. Consider this: a study earlier this summer found that simply replacing the search term “vaccine safety” with “vaccine danger” replaced virtually all accurate search results (out of the first 20) with inaccurate results [1]. Granted, there are several limitations to the study (small sample size, controversial topic), but it nonetheless illustrates how a single keyword can dramatically alter search results.