I just had a look at our Medicine 2.0 social network (http://www.medicine20.net) database to see how many connections have been made in the past week: Over 1300 connections were added (a connection is defined as a Medicine 2.0 user connecting to another user by saying they have met, they want to meet, they are a fan or friend/colleague)! 450 of these connections were made at the Medicine 2.0 Congress in Stanford through scanning badges - i.e. ou... [read more]

See the video on YouTube here Medicine 2.0: Social Media, Mobile Apps, and Internet/Web 2.0 in Health, Medicine and Biomedical ResearchMedicine 2.0'12 (Boston, USA)Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical SchoolSeptember 15, 2012 – September 16, 2012Thank you, Stanford, for hosting Medicine 2.0'11, which was SOLD OUT and a great success. See you all next year in Boston!(Attended Medicine 2.0 @ Stanford? Please fill in this electron... [read more]

Medicine 2.0'11 at Stanford is over and we are already busy preparing the next Medicine 2.0'12 in Boston (Sept 15-16th 2012). Since 2008, we have always "embedded" epatients in Medicine 2.0, and as in past Medicine 2.0 conferences, we will actively engage epatients in the 2012 conference. This starts with having epatients (such as epatient Dave) on the advisory board, and ends with offering free participation for epatients.For the latter we will ... [read more]

Larry had the brilliant idea to put QR codes on Medicine 2.0 badges, which contains a URL. Use an iphone/android app like Redlaser to scan he badge of the person you are talking to.We combined this powerful tool with the Medicine 2.0 Social Network, which means that - if you use the default URL linking to your med2 profile page - not only can you see the profile of the person you are chatting with when you scan the QR code, but that person is als... [read more]

Update Sep 2011: A decision for 2012 has been made - Medicine 2.0'12 will take place in Boston at the spectacular new conference center at Harvard Medical School. We are currently accepting bids and proposals for potential hosts of 2013 - please contact the conference series producer Dr Eysenbach for the RFPPlease help us to decide where the next Medicine 2.0 (2012) should be hosted (use the poll at the top of this page).Should we stay in the Sil... [read more]

Explore the Medicine 2.0 Social Network http://www.medicine20.netAs the founder and producer of the Medicine 2.0 series it was always my intention to use and support social media as much as possible when putting together Medicine 2.0 conferences.There is twitter of course (the Medicine 2.0 community uses the #med2 hashtags), and Facebook, but the "drawback" of these communities is that they are open for anybody to join - which is great in princi... [read more]

The Stanford Organizing committee is proud to announce 14 more winners of scholarships to attend the Stanford Summit and Medicine 2.0 @ Stanford. This brings the total number of scholarships awarded by Stanford to an unprecedented 23 ePatient scholarships (5 full scholarships, 2 travel awards, and 18 partial scholarships)! The Stanford Organizing committee committed funding to the epatient scholarship program because it believes that patients are... [read more]

With the Medicine 2.0 Stanford conference just a few weeks away, I'm happy to share that the bloggers from Medgadget will be at the conference as a media partner. Medgadget, which calls itself as "the Internet journal of emerging medical technologies," has been covering the space for years and I'm excited to see their reportage at Medicine 2.0. -Larry Chu, MD For more information about the congress, preregistration for future conferences, abstrac... [read more]

Brian S. McGowan, PhD, and his co-authors, Bryan Vartabedian, Robert Miller and Molly Wasko, will present their recent survey work on the "Meaningful Use" of social media by physicians at Medicine 2.0 @ Stanford next month.In a recent interview (via Skype) with Dr. Paul Martin from the AIM lab at Stanford, Brian explained his research project and the goals he hopes to achieve by presenting his work at Medicine 2.0 @ Stanford.Dr. McGowan's group w... [read more]

In an effort to make Medicine 2.0 Stanford as accessible as possible to all ePatients, we are delighted to offer partial and full scholarships for ePatients to attend Medicine 2.0 Stanford. Some of these awards include limited funds to defray the cost of travel. We'd like to congratulate the following ePatients scholarship winners: Sean Ahrens (Full Scholarship, 3-Days)Hugo Campos (Partial Scholarship, 3-Days)Melinda Cuthbert (Full Scholarship, 3... [read more]

I'm excited to announce an unprecedented opportunity for ePatients with financial need to attend the upcoming Medicine 2.0 conference at Stanford University. We recognize that ePatients often have significant financial constraints that limit their ability to pay registration fees to attend important conferences. ePatients often spend a considerable portion of their income on health care-related expenditures. We want to make Medicine 2.0 Stanford ... [read more]

David Gustafson, Ph.D., and his colleague from University of Wisconsin-Madison designed ACHESS, a smartphone system to help prevent the relapse of alcoholism.In his accepted abstract (#762), Dr. Gustafson recruited 180 people recently discharged from residential addiction treatment for alcohol dependency to either the ACHESS or a control group. The ACHESS system connects individuals with other ACHESS users as a means of support, requires users to... [read more]

Tejas Desai, M.D., and his colleagues from East Carolina University – Brody School of Medicine measured the usage of a medical blog/journal, Nephrology On-Demand.At Medicine 2.0 Stanford, Dr. Desai will discuss the successes of Nephrology On-Demand described in his accepted abstract (#520). The blogs published on the website have attracted readers from around the world, providing a method for sharing medical information with an international au... [read more]

Bassam Kadry, M.D., from Stanford University conducted a study analyzing online physician review sites that present physician information to patients and give patients the opportunity to rate physicians.His accepted abstract (#539) identified the ten “most frequently visited online physician-review sites with user-generated content.” Each of the ten websites were evaluated for information available, different rating scales and scores, and dimensi... [read more]

Sue Ziebland M.Sc., research director of the Health Experiences Research Group, conducts interview studies for the websites www.healthtalkonline.org and www.youthhealthtalk.org. These websites have been interviewing patients to gain a first-hand account of various health conditions and illnesses. As of now, they have interviewed over 2000 patients and have covered more than 60 different health conditions. The website includes interviews with the ... [read more]

One of the major problems at Shuman-Liles, a mental health clinic in Oakland, CA, is that patients aren't following the recommended protocols for their drug regimens. According to the accepted abstract (#711), “50-70% of mentally ill patients at Schuman-Liles do not follow the prescribed regimen, regularly fill prescriptions, or attend follow up appointments.” Anjna Patient Education, a non-profit organization, has been working with Shuman-Liles ... [read more]

Jackie Bender and her colleagues at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, University of Toronto and University Health Network conducted a study “aimed to identify the extent, nature and conditions of online community use among breast cancer survivors, known to be peer support providers.” The results of this study speak to the potential of online communities to "fill gaps in supportive care services by addressing unmet needs of breast cancer s... [read more]

James Barrett and his colleagues at Brigham Young University did a study to provide a panoramic view of the thousands of paid apps pertaining to the health and fitness category on iTunes. The researchers created a database of 3,773 paid apps under the Health and Fitness category of iTunes, including the app title, the developer’s description and the price. Each app was coded according to one of the CDC’s core content areas for health promotion, w... [read more]

António Vaz Carneiro, MD, PhD, from Harvard Medical School implemented a program in April 2007 to distribute a large quantity of health information to the general public in Portugal. Research over the past 30 years has shown that people can protect their own health through adopting healthy lifestyles, and that there has also been a great increase in the interest of the general public in health and biomedical research. This program focuses on incr... [read more]

In recent years, there has been a skyrocketing of interest in new mobile technologies and how they can be used to enhance higher education and the practice of medicine and health sciences. Rhoda Weiss-lambrou, professor of occupational therapy at University of Montreal, examines the current integration of the iPhone and iPad into American and Canadian universities and hospitals.At Medicine 2.0, Professor Weiss-lambrou will talk about the signific... [read more]

I'm absolutely delighted to confirm Dr. BJ Fogg, Director of the Persuasive Technology Laboratory at Stanford as the Sunday opening keynote speaker for Medicine 2.0 Stanford.Dr. Fogg is a world-renowned expert in the use of persuasive technologies to change behavior. Trained as an experimental psychologist, Dr. Fogg seeks to understand how technology can be used to change people’s beliefs and behaviors. His work empowers people to think clearly a... [read more]

Mark S. Boguski, M.D., Ph.D co-founded the website http://www.celebritydiagnosis.com with Michele Berman, M.D. to report on common diseases affecting uncommon people, and to include the medical facts behind the headlines. This website portrays a series of teachable moments in medicine, which highlights health issues by following celebrity diagnoses.At Medicine 2.0, Dr. Boguski will discuss how social media can be used to communicate educational h... [read more]

Lena Rosenmann and her colleagues in Israel at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center investigated the willingness of orthopedic surgeons to provide an "internet prescription" for their patients.This study was conducted to examine the attitude of orthopedic surgeons toward internet-educated patients. The authors did a cross-sectional survey of a nationally representative sample of orthopedic surgeons. They prepared a questionnaire about su... [read more]

Taridzo Chomutare at University Hospital of North Norway and colleagues have done a review of iPhone Applications for Diabetes Self-Management available in the Norwegian market.According to Chomutare, "We are experiencing an increasing growth in interest for mobile health (mHealth) applications for self-management of blood glucose (SMBG)".In their accepted abstract (#583), the authors noted a 400% increase in the number of diabetes applications f... [read more]

We are delighted to confirm Peter Binfield as a speaker at the Stanford Summit at Medicine 2.0. Dr. Binfield is publisher of the open-access scientific and medical journal PLoS One.After graduating with a PhD in Optical Physics from Aberdeen University, Pete Binfield began his publishing career at Institute of Physics Publishing in Bristol, UK as a Commissioning Editor in their books program. From IoPP, he moved to Kluwer Academic Publishers (KAP... [read more]

Dr. Sivan Rapaport at Ben-Gurion University and her colleagues at leading universities in Israel are studying the use of social networks by Israeli family physicians.In her accepted abstract (#542), the activities within a social network consisting of about 300 primary-care physicians in Israel regarding a clinical case published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) were analyzed. The potential contribution of this study is to shed light... [read more]

A breadth of consumer products indicates a wide range in consumer feelings about health data protection spanning from a willingness to share data to a desire to rigorously protect it. According to Mr. Lupiáñez-Villanueva’s accepted abstract (#625) “[g]overnments across the Atlantic have adopted legal instruments to defend personal data and individuals' rights, such as the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (1996) in USA…These r... [read more]

CTO of SimCode ACLS™, Raymond Wu, MD writes in his accepted abstract (#605), “A reported 50,000 patients a year suffer cardiac arrest requiring resuscitation.” Resuscitation efforts are conducted in a fast setting, rendering this type of critical care especially vulnerable to the strengths or weaknesses in both the providers’ training and in the ability of the provider team to effectively communicate. Medicine practiced in a pinch leaves no time ... [read more]

As social media begins to pervade all aspects of networking, it is exciting to find the influence of web 2.0 seeping into the foundations of healthcare research culture. Anyone in research, particularly healthcare research, knows how hard-pressed the field can be for time, efficiency, and fluid collaborations. Mendeley, a “research workflow and collaboration tool”, aims to address these issues in a way that can improve productivity for healthcare... [read more]

We are delighted to announce that Mr. Vikram Sahai, senior software engineer at Google, will present his work on Google's groundbreaking disease surveillance websites FluTrends and DengueTrends.Using advanced analytics, Sahai and his team utilize aggregated Google search data to estimate disease activity in geographical regions of the world. Launched in November 2008, Google FluTrends research has been published in the journal Nature.Don't miss M... [read more]

dr. Marc Sprenger, the newly appointed director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (Stockholm, S), just confirmed his participation in the Opening session of the Medicine 2.0 congress that takes place 29-30 Nov in Maastricht, the Netherlands.