The idea behind rateadrug.com is for users to rate drugs.
Our goal is to provide unique user-generated data on side effects and subtle side effects of medications. We want to know how these prescription drugs make you feel.
I’ve seen stupid applications of social media in healthcare, but this may take the cake as the dumbest I’ve seen in a good while.
[Update] One’s FriendFeed feed needs to be public in order for IntenseDebate to pick up the comments and bring them onto the blog. IntenseDebate isn’t perfect, but I love the threaded comments, I like quickly moderating comments via email, and I like the sidebar widget for comments (if you’re reading this via RSS, visit the blog and check out the left sidebar). I’ll keep it for now. Thanks to those who helped me test it![/Update]
I’ve installed a plugin/service called IntenseDebate on this blog. Among the things it is supposed to do is pick up comments people make on my posts in FriendFeed and import them as comments. I’m curious to see if it will find those comments even if my FriendFeed is set to private. If you’re seeing this post through FriendFeed, please leave a comment in FriendFeed (not a ‘like’) so that can be tested?
Thanks!
Most know I’m not a huge fan of Twitter (I prefer FriendFeed), but this interests me anyway.
JustTweetIt is a service intended to help Twitter users find others they may want to follow and includes directories. I recently stumbled across JustTweetIt’s directory of Twittering Librarians
Check it out, see if there are any librarians listed you want to follow and consider adding an entry to help others find you.
New to me- and a good idea to put all of this on one page.
http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/
I didn’t know the CDC was on MySpace or that the FDA had a recall Twitter feed.
I decided I should definitely follow the CDC’s Twitter feed for Health Professionals, which is for “…Health Professionals interested in staying up-to-date with CDC’s interactive media activities…”
They’ve also got a widget to help consumers search for products impacted by the Peanut-Containing Product Recall (embedded below).
Includes:
Hat tip: Maura Sostack
A friend recently asked for clarification. What is the difference between social media and social networking?
Yours may differ, but here’s my take:
“Social Networking” is an activity. When you go to a professional conference or gathering, you’re engaged in the activity of social networking. People you know introduce you to new people you don’t know. You exchange business cards and, now acquainted, may contact each other in the future directly without the common intermediary who introduced you.
The activity of social networking can take place anywhere, any place, and any way people establish and maintain these connections.
The activity of social networking has been amazingly facilitated in recent years by the appearance and development of online tools built with the specific purpose of illuminating and illustrating the complex web of relationships between people. I refer to these as online social networks1
Lee LeFever does a great job explaining how online social networks facilitate social networking in the CommonCraft video embedded below, “Social Networks in Plain English.”
I think that online social networks are a subset of social media. Often, “social media,” “new media,” “the social Web,” or “the read/write Web” are used as interchangeable synonyms. For the most part, I’d argue that “social media” is anything that makes information move in a more multidirectional manner.2
There’s no doubt that a kind of networking can and does happen on YouTube or Slideshare or del.icio.us3- but these sites are focused on sharing user-generated content (videos or slides or links with metadata), not on cultivating relationships- so I think they’re not quite the same species as Facebook or LinkedIn.
Put another way: I think of online tool/site/service as an “online social network” if it exists primarily for the purpose of exposing or maintaining the web of interpersonal connections that already exist or the purpose of facilitating new connections. In my venn diagram, online social networks would all be inside the “social media” circle.
Still, this is sort of just thinking aloud. What do you think?
1
2
3
(Started drafting this post on 10/12/2008)
We’re well past the point where there is an online social network for every community. We’re at the point where there are an absurd number of online social networks for every community.
A selection of online social networks for nurses:
Nurse Connect (previously mentioned here):
NurseConnect is an online nursing community and networking site for nurses and other healthcare professionals interested in advancing their education, careers and personal lives by sharing experiences and knowledge with others. NurseConnect is owned and operated by AMN Healthcare, Inc.
NurseLinkUp (previously mentioned here), is one of many sites run by Online LinkUp.
ANA Nursespace (previously mentioned here) doesn’t seem to be doing much at all.
I asked Arlton Lowry, the director of SocialRN, to make a case for what sets his site apart from the other online social networks for nurses.
Many of the other nursing social networking sites that are operating are built with one key objective in mind – profit. When sites are designed solely for the acquisition of profit, the design of the site and features suffer. We built socialRN for the nursing community and we have no other objective in mind.
The site offers many of the features that the other nursing social networks offer – like, photo sharing, blogs, status updates, file sharing, groups, ext. But what sets socialRN aside is how it integrates other Web 2.0 applications within the users profile. A user can display their flickr photos, what music they have last listed to – through last.fm, their position with Google Maps, and even their Twitter update. It allows users to bring all the other Web 2.0 services they are using together into one location.
Also, the design of a site is crucial for a pleasant user experience. There is no clutter within socialRN. We have developed the site so that it is easy for a user to navigate content and socialize with other users.
It’s worth noting that the site is built on Open Source software that will is upgradable and expandable in the future. It will allow us to add additional features and grow the site as more users are added.
The Open Source software socialRN uses is elgg, also used by Nurse’s Cafe
In the category of Online Social Networks with Very Unfortunate Names, we have TNA LinkUp.
Liz: Whatcha’ looking at?
David: A site called “TNA LinkUp”
Liz: …You’re looking at porn?!
See? Unfortunate name. ‘Nuff said.
I was interested to find there’s a social network just for travelers, HealthCare Gypsy.
Nurses Lounge interests me because it is made up of lounges that are specific to metro area or nursing specialty.
CampusRN2RN is for nursing students.
I know I’ve missed some- please let me know?
I know I’m way behind on such things, but this article from the Annals of Pharmacotherapy deserves a mention, even one this belated:
Scope, completeness, and accuracy of drug information in Wikipedia.
Ann Pharmacother. 2008 Dec;42(12):1814-21. Epub 2008 Nov 18.
[PubMed] | [html] | [PDF]
The article compares drug information in Wikipedia to drug information in the Medscape drug reference.
“This study suggests that Wikipedia may be a useful point of engagement for consumers looking for drug information, but that it should be supplementary to, rather than the sole source of, drug information. This is due, in part, to our findings that Wikipedia has a more narrow scope, is less complete, and has more errors of omission versus the comparator database.”
And I loved this:
“…health professionals should not use user-edited sites as authoritative sources in their clinical practice, nor should they recommend them to patients without knowing the limitations and providing sufficient additional information and counsel. If these sites are recommended, it should be in the form of a permanent link pointing to the specific recommended version of an entry. Finally, the issues raised in Web 2.0 are not novel, nor are the approaches; consumer education, watchful editors, alert health professionals, and ethical online behavior remain, as ever, the foundation for the safety of Internet health information.”
Added to the list:
So the book is getting some attention!
Internet Cool Tools for Physicians is in Google Book Search
Stephen Francoeur made this little video:
The Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the MLA mentioned it on their blog.
The MLA’s Taskforce on Social Networking Software posted about it, calling it “…an accessible, illustrated and contemporary guide to online tools in medicine.”
Laika, whose blog has quickly become one of my favorite MedLib blogs, mentioned it, as did Creaky.
I’m watching WorldCat.org with interest to see which libraries are getting it (though Duke’s copy doesn’t show up yet).
Dr. Shock (MD, PhD) gave it a very nice review.
I’m lucky to count as friends people like Meredith Farkas and Michael Stephens, both of whom thought the book worthy of mention on their very popular blogs.
Gosh- Brandi blogged about it way back in August- well before it as released!
I’m pleased to see mention of it in languages other than English.
The President and CEO of Community General Hospital blogged about it.
It has gotten some buzz on Twitter.
We’re anxious to hear any feedback you have about the book- please let us know what you think….and what you think needs to be added or changed for the second edition! 
Got my hands on my copies of the book today! How exciting!
Yay!
You can buy a copy from:
Springer Publishing
or here:
I’m looking forward to eventually seeing it in WorldCat.
Congratulations to Melissa Rethlefsen (who wrote a heck of a lot more than I did)! You should really go email Melissa now and tell her how much she rocks.
My apologies to the awfully nice folks who attended the CE course I taught at UNYOC a couple of weeks ago! I’ve taken far too long to get these slides posted:
Also: I’ll be on a panel at NYLA tomorrow (Friday, 11/6/2008) afternoon at 4:00 PM- please say hello if you’re going to be there! As usual at these sorts of things, I’ll know almost nobody. But hey- I might get to meet Polly Farrington!
Eugene Barsky and Dean Giustini wrote an editorial for Physiotherapy Canada on practical tips and useful Web sites for physical therapy that is short, practical, and chock full of resources I know and like. It isn’t comprehensive by any means (and doesn’t seek to be), but I think it provides a really good, digestible introduction to some useful tools for those in physical therapy.
Barsky E., & Giustini D. Web 2.0 in Physical Therapy: A Practical Overview. Physiotherapy Canada, 2008; 60(3): 207-215.
Available at either of these URLs:
http://www.swetswise.com/eAccess/viewFulltext.do?articleID=38506191
http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/j767550n62473718/?p=6d30aec4e9ba49ae905cefbbfa34e113&pi=0
Interesting item via Patricia Anderson: A Kaiser Family Foundation panel on the health blogosphere.
Interesting to note that the only bloggers on the panel are from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and the Wall Street Journal. Where are the physician bloggers, patient bloggers, nursing bloggers, etc.?
Amidst all the coverage of Medpedia that has generally seemed to be derived from a press release is this more informative article from Pam Dolan at American Medical News.
I’m quoted in the article:
Medical librarian and blogger David Rothman, who regularly writes at DavidRothman.net about medical wikis, expressed concerns about the regular monitoring of Medpedia’s content. “If the academic institutions … wish to avoid embarrassment, I’d recommend that they dedicate some time of their health care experts to regular review of articles,” Rothman wrote.
He estimates about 65 medical wikis exist. He’s not sure what the involvement of prominent medical institutions will mean to the project, noting that comparisons won’t be possible until the site is up and running.
As I usually do when I’m interviewed or quoted, I thought I’d post the entirety of my comments here. Pam got my views partially from this post I wrote about Medpedia and partially from an email. Pam’s questions are bolded:
My question for you is whether or not medpedia will be the largest collaboration of its kind for a medical wiki…
That depends on what you mean by “largest” and what we learn about Medpedia when it comes out of Beta. We haven’t yet seen how many contributors/editors it has or how many articles/words it contains. We won’t know for months after it begins how active a community it has. What other metrics could be used to measure “largeness”? The names of affiliated institutions? Medpedia doesn’t really say exactly what contributions those institutions are making (aside from, apparently, allowing the use of their names and logos).
…and if it will raise the bar for those wanting to develop medical wikis in the future.
I think that remains to be seen. So far, Medpedia looks to the public like a press release and a mock-up. When it is up and running, we can begin to compare it to other efforts. Until then, such comparisons aren’t possible.
I’ve added a few new sites to the list of medical wikis.
No, I’m not going to add Medpedia to it because Medpedia is still in beta. I’m flabbergasted how much press it is getting while not even visible to the public. They must have hired the right PR firm.
Wikis recently added to the list are noted below (details are in the list itself):
I first wrote about Medpedia in January.
I noted in my post that Medpedia did not seem to specify what would qualify an applicant to become a contributor. Medpedia’s Angela Simmons addressed this in the comments:
Anyone with medical and health knowledge is encouraged to apply to become a Contributor. It is not a requirement that you have medical credentials; however, it is important that you are passionate and knowledgeable about at least one topic related to medicine, health and the body.
My concern here is that clinicians should not use an information resource built by people who are not qualified health professionals. Passion is not, in my view, a sufficient qualification.
I also asked Angela if Medpedia was intended to be a resource for professionals (like UpToDate) or a resource for healthcare consumers (like MedlinePlus). Angela replied:
Initially, Medpedia will be a resource for the general public. Over time, with 1000’s of clinicians and researchers on the site, discussing what should be on the main pages, Medpedia will also become a resource for medical professionals, health educators, and medical schools.
This did not seem promising to me. I don’t believe that a single article on a topic can appropriately serve both healthcare professionals and healthcare consumers- their needs are usually quite different.
Medpedia seems to have addressed some of these concerns since that time. Their index page now only invites “Medical Professionals” to “Apply to be a Member, ” and the FAQ says:
There are multiple ways of contributing. If you are an MD or PhD in the biomedical field, you can apply to become an Editor and make changes directly to Medpedia articles (See more below). If you are anyone else, you can use the “Make a suggestion” link at the top of any page to make a suggestion for that page. An approved Editor will review and potentially add your suggestion.
Also interesting to note that Medpedia will be advertising-supported (neither Ganfyd nor AskDrWiki are ad-supported. AskDrWiki is a non-profit). Again from the FAQ:
To support the costs of operation in the future, non-invasive, text-based advertising will be shown on the Medpedia website through third-party ad networks such as Google’s AdSense or Healthline’s third party ad service. Next to these ads on the page will be a link “Flag inappropriate ads” so that the community can keep the ads on the site clean and useful.
Then there’s the question of how reliable the content will be. The FAQ says:
The seed content available on Medpedia at launch is up to date, accurate, and provided by reputable sources. After launch at the end of 2008, once Editors start making edits and adding new pages to the seed content, it is possible, and even likely that there will be mistakes and language that is unclear. This is the nature of a collaborative wiki.
If the site is meant to be used by healthcare professionals, I’d strongly recommend a routine (Monthy? Quarterly?) review of each article by an admin to make sure the content is accurate and up-to-date. To say “it can’t be kept reliable because it is a wiki” is, in my thinking, a cop-out. After all, Medpedia’s own FAQ says the site is meant to be “…a platform to share the most up-to-date medical knowledge.” If the academic institutions listed on the front page of Medpedia wish to avoid embarrassment, I’d reccommend that they dedicate some time of their healthcare experts to regular review of articles.
Prediction:
(Just a guess, but) I think Medpedia’s content will end up focusing mostly on the information needs of healthcare consumers. In that sense, I think it’ll resemble MayoClinic.com
Criticism aside, here are some things about Medpedia that I DO like:
What do you think? Do you anticipate other problems I may have missed? Maybe you think I’m being too critical? Share your thoughts in the comments.
When discussing sites which allow patients to rate doctors, I have frequently heard the argument that the ratings wouldn’t really be useful or meaningful.
My response to this is that it doesn’t matter at all how accurate or meaningful the ratings on these sites are- users will like them (and use them) regardless.
My wife, for instance, spent a good bit of time examining books about pregnancy, parturition, and the care of infants. Rather than making use of the abundance of experts at her disposal (including midwives, OBs, medical librarians, and pediatricians), she took very seriously how well reviewed and rated each book was on Amazon.com.
Nevermind if the particular review of a particular book showed the reviewer to be ignorant and semi-literate. What mattered was that the ratings were overwhelmingly positive.
So here’s the advice I gave physicians at the 28th Annual AMA Medical Communications Conference:
Rather than fretting about potentially negative reviews on sites that allow patients to rate or review physicians (about which, after all, little can be done), the physician should place her/his efforts into building a very strong Web presence. Hire a white hat SEO consultant if you have to, but make sure that anyone Googling your name (or your practice’s name) sees YOUR site first in the search results.
Another great overview from Patricia Anderson:
Above: Those reading via RSS aggregator may need to visit the site to view the embedded slideshow.
The following is a guest post written by PilgrimTinker (a pseudonym for a consumer health information librarian who regularly blogs at Learn to Live.
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So, you need to see a doctor. Or, you have been seeing a doctor for some time and love her, or can’t stand her, or secretly suspect him of not paying appropriate attention to your complaints or wonder if he knows anything about geriatrics. Whatever the initial question, you decide to google him. And you discover that there are dozens of physician rating websites available, ready to help you dig up dirt or make a choice or trash a reputation.
Have you guessed yet that I am feeling ambivalent about these sites? I am. On one hand, it makes perfect sense to be able to research a physician or facility before you choose them for your health care. It’s responsible health care consumerism. On the other hand, doctors aren’t used cars and the complexity of medicine and the nature of the relationship between a patient and a physician cannot be portrayed with a simple matrix.
With these considerations aside, another difficulty in assessing physician rating websites is the large number and variety of choices. Here I offer a sampling, by no means exhaustive but more of a snapshot. I’ve looked at many more and chosen these as fairly representative.
First, there are physician directories, offered by government sources or various medical associations. These will verify an affiliation or specialty, board certifications, and contact information. They don’t offer much or anything in the way of user satisfaction but will verify professional credentials and provide a list of practitioners in a geographic area or at a particular facility. For a good start finding this kind of directory, try MedlinePlus GoLocal, the US Dept of Health and Human Service’s HospitalCompare or the AMA’s DoctorFinder.
Now for that more problematic category, the sites that encourage patients to publish their opinions and experiences and to surf what others have already posted. Let’s take a look at a few.
RateMDs.com makes posting ratings very easy- no need to sign in or create an account. The comments are completely anonymous, though they are read by the moderators and may be removed or edited. This is a fairly common policy on physician rating sites. The site uses a smiley face system, based on 2 questions: Is the doctor helpful and Is the doctor knowledgeable.
The downfall of this simplicity is that the faces become meaningless; as demonstrated by the comments for an obstetrician I saw in another city long, long ago. Several can be summed up by “he save my life, we wouldn’t be here if not for him” while others amounted to “he doesn’t answer questions, I would never recommend him, he is uncaring”. The only way I can imagine a site like useful is if there were thousands of comments per physician before they were displayed and the questions were more skillfully stated, allowing the number of responses to create a trend.
DrScore.com is also easy to use and invited me to rank my doctor on a scale of 0 to 10, with an option to post up to 40 words worth of commentary. They encourage raters to note “particularly good things you noticed about the visit” and that “Ratings and comments submitted to DrScore are designed to give feedback to physicians to help them enhance their medical practice.” This is a different and much more positive twist on the usual protect-yourself-by-digging-up-the-dirt approach to promoting physician rating venues. The process included more questions rated 0 to 10 such as time spent with the doctor, if and how well the doctor answered questions, treatment options offered, treatment success and ease of communication with the entire practice. The search works best for those checking ratings of an individual so it took several tries to get a list of physicians in one city to browse by score. The scores are divided into category and displayed on a 0-10 scale, providing a more nuanced profile than RateMD.com’s smilies.
Vitals also allows for consumer ratings of physicians but gathers information from medical boards, federal websites, hospitals, doctors, surveys, business alliances and third party affiliates. I found this search interface to be the easiest to use and the results display very slick. There are several interactive features that actually work, such as a compare box that displays choices side by side and an alert feature for changes to a profile.
Results are divided into sections including specialty, hospital affiliation, education and publications, with links and mapping features.
The rating feature asked only 7 questions with a final overall assessment; asking patients to respond from disagree strongly to agree strongly. This leads to the same limitations as the other sites data, but there are several reasons I like this site better. One is the 360 vitals view, diagrammed on the about us page. It is divided into thirds for empirical information, consumer ratings and peer reviews. The site encourages consumers to think more broadly about what makes a good physician. The search interface and results were much better than any others I’ve seen. Every feature I tried worked as I had hoped, never asking me to sign in, pay for a report or requiring me to use a series of those annoying drop down choice boxes.
But seriously, what about that elusive quality, hotness? Yes, there is a website for that particular aspect of a physician’s fitness to practice and I found it, thanks to an ad on WebMD. PharmaStats promises plenty, including a special icon to alert us when a hot physician has been identified. Unfortunately, the site didn’t deliver- results only included the most basic yellow pages contact information and the chance to “register for more results”
While we are on the subject of unfair or irresponsible ratings, I can’t quite classify The Healthcare Scoop.com. At first, I thought maybe I wasn’t on the home page but found that yes, it is simply a list of random posts with no format at all. Or, as they describe it, “Real, straight-forward information – written and shared by people just like you – about personal healthcare experiences.” Patients simply create an account and post a story, which is then immediately posted. The site also includes ads and a few search features (by doctor, by facility) but doesn’t organize the collected information in any other way.
There are several websites that charge fees for reports about individual physicians, including Angie’s List and HealthGrades, which wanted me to buy a report to see Disciplinary action, board certification, phone numbers and much more! These seem to be the least useful and most likely to prey on those easily frightened by contorted statistics in headlines.
What exactly do you need to know to intelligently choose a doctor? Their clinical proficiency? Quality of their office service? Bedside manner? Personal experiences and biases? What they learned from their first surgery experience and how they responded to their first death? How many journals they read and if they know about the latest advances in medical genomics? What about if they are willing to prescribe antibiotics over the phone for your niece? Will any of these sites allow you to determine if your physician is well educated, experienced and open minded, willing to listen and think and to use her hands to keep you as healthy as possible for as long as possible?
Surf all day if you like, but I’ll have to default to what is emerging as my personal take on the whole health 2.0 movement- thanks, it is nice and I’m glad to partake but there is nothing like the human touch. Give me my blink moment, when that young pup/pretty face/tanned golfer reveals with an indefinable gesture or prescient connection that they have heard me, and even better, that they have a plan for me. Medicine is practiced face to face, so ultimately, it is the face to face assessment that will convince me of a physician’s worth.
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Interested in writing a guest post while David is on paternity leave? Send your submission to:
