At a meeting in Copenhagen earlier this week Bertalan Mesko was introduced as “the world leader in social media and medicine.” After listening to him and looking at some of his websites I decided that this was not an exaggeration. If you want to be up to the minute on social media and medicine you […]
At the height of the 2009 pandemic, there were 10 000 swine flu related tweets an hour. These ranged from the helpful (“Swine-flu symptoms: checklist to see if you may be infected), to the more ephemeral (“This swine flu stuff is kinda creeping me out.”) During a public health crisis, how can we accurately evaluate […]
I’m not surprised that Guy Kawasaki’s 10th book is called Enchantment: How to Woo, Influence, and Persuade. It takes some chutzpah to assume near–zero knowledge of social media at a scholarly publishing conference but Kawasaki, a former “software evangelist” (I kid you not!) for Apple, pulls it off with an idiot’s guide to curation, tweeting, […]
It’s easy to dismiss Twitter, a network that links people using messages of 140 characters or less, but it fills a genuine social gap. If Facebook is an archipelago of islands held together by social ties, Twitter is the shifting current that bathes them. Where Facebook is faithful, Twitter is promiscuous. Teaching thinking skills to […]
In the UK, we usually do it in groups – that is teaching patients with diabetes and other chronic disease how to self manage their condition. For example, a group approach is now used commonly for teaching patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes, for those moving from oral hypoglycemic agents to insulin or when […]
In his BMJ blog last week, David Kerr asked whether Twitter would ever be used for healthcare. As soon as this blog was posted, the Twitter healthcare community was buzzing with responses including: “It already is [being used for healthcare]: we are developing healthcare through our discussions,” “Does he mean the same Twitter that is […]
The NHS is in love with the airline industry. The idea of checklists before operations has really caught on, and increasingly ex-airline people are being placed in advisory roles for a variety of NHS organizations. Hospitals are especially envious of the ability of the airlines to develop and use technology that allows hundreds of random […]
Although I bemoan prepublication peer review, I do a fair bit of reviewing. I’m never quite sure why, but it’s probably that I’m still insufficiently practised at saying no. I reviewed for the BMJ Jerry Kassirer’s article published last week in which he regrets that young doctors don’t browse more. I wasn’t greatly impressed, and […]
Last Sunday it seemed like the whole of Silicon Valley stopped work to watch the Oscars (on-line of course) otherwise known as the 83rd Academy Awards. Overall, the impression was that it was a pretty limp affair with only one F-word, robotic presenters, and bland acceptance speeches. The botoxed fashionistas were particularly scathing about the […]
Should information be free? Does any good come from restricting access to it? These questions were the topic of conversation at a talk hosted by IQ2 at the Dana Centre, on Tuesday 22 February. The discussion opened with Daniel Glaser from the Wellcome Trust asking whether scientists should make their research data free. The Lancet […]