We've all heard of Wikipedia – the world's largest web site. I'm sure almost everyone who uses the internet has read an article or two on Wikipedia, thanks to their incredible search engine ranking. Let's take a look at exactly what Wikipedia and wikis are.
From the "kettle calling the pot black" file, here is Wikipedia's definition of itself:
Wikipedia (pronounced /ˌwiːkiˈpiːdiə/ or /ˌwɪkəˈpiːdiə/) is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project. The name "Wikipedia" is a portmanteau (a combination of portions of two words and their meanings) of the words wiki (a type of collaborative Web site) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information. from wikipedia
We all know what an encyclopedia is, but the definition of a wiki might not be quite as familiar.
A Wiki
A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language (a set of annotation that tell text how to displayed. Example: Mircosoft WORD showing bolded text). Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranet and Knowledge Management systems". from wikipedia.
The word "Wiki" is a Hawaiian word for "fast".
The first web site that could call itself a wiki is WikiWikiWeb, started in 1994 by Ward Cunningham. The largest and most familiar wiki is Wikipedia.
So, a wiki is easy to use (very easy to use) knowledge management and distribution system that can be completely private, semi-private or public. Are there applications for a wiki in healthcare? Absolutely – from department-level intranets to a professional-level wiki where doctors share cutting-edge research.
Wiki's and HealthCare
Here is a list of different applications of a wiki in healthcare. This is not a comprehensive list nor is it a list of the best healthcare wikis, it's just a list of some of the good ones.
AskDrWiki
"Dr Wiki is a nonprofit educational web site made by physicians for physicians, medical students, and healthcare providers. Its purpose is to serve as a online repository of medical information that can be accessed by anyone."
MedPedia
"In association with Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School and other leading global health organizations, Medpedia will be a commons for the gathering of the information and people critical to health care."
Clinfowiki
"The Clinical Informatics Wiki." "The Clinical Informatics Wiki is an implementation of a wiki devoted to topics in clinical informatics.
Consumer Health Information service - Toronto Public Library
"This site, created and maintained by the Consumer Health Information Service (CHIS) of the Toronto Public Library, is designed to help you find reliable, understandable health information for you and your family. The information on this site is constantly being revised as changes or new information comes to light."
Diabetes Wiki
"A consumer-focused diabetes education site. Allows anyone to tell their story and share their knowledge."
ECG-pedia
"A wiki electrocardiography (ECG) course and textbook designed for medical professionals such as cardiac care nurses and physicians."
Journal of Medical Internet Research e-health Wiki
"This is a platform for the eHealth research community to collaboratively develop eHealth and Internet research ideas and observations into papers, proposals, research protocols, projects and programs."
FluWiki
"The purpose of the Flu Wiki is to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic. This is a task previously ceded to local, state and national governmental public health agencies."
Ganfyd
"Welcome to ganfyd.org - The free medical knowledge base that anyone can read and any registered medical practitioner may edit. "
WiserWiki
"WiserWiki is a wiki that will allow accredited physicians to comment, collaborate and update medical information online and is viewable by everyone. The site was originally seeded with content from John Noble's 'Textbook of Primary Care Medicine' (3rd Edition)"
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Tweeting on Twitter
I'm sure you've heard of Twitter, just in case you haven't, you really need to read this blog, because Twitter is everywhere.
As before, we'll start with the official review from Wikipedia:
"Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates (say, 140 characters or fewer) or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web."
So, Twitter is a messaging service where your messages are limited to 140 characters. Period. It's not generally considered an instant messaging service (like ICQ, or AIM) where you can have one-on-one conversations with individuals (although it is possible to direct message or DM one individual on Twitter). Twitter is a messaging service that allows you to message all of people who are "following" you. There are some privacy settings on Twitter but most tweets (messages) are open for everyone to read.
Twitter in Health Care:
There has been some noise in the technology blogosphere about all of the usage of Twitter in health care. Now I can see many applications for e-health companies to use Twitter for marketing and community involvement, and on-line and real world patient communities to encourage members to keep in touch with each other. But I can't see immediate real world application for most hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies or health care professionals, beyond the reasons other people use Twitter: keeping in touch with friends, family; keeping up to date with news, cultural events (lots of twittering on inauguration day) and conferences.
Does Subject: Brilliant! twitter? Sure I do, so sign up for Twitter and follow me.
I think the 140 character restriction on Twitter is too limiting for most health care applications. Does anyone know of a great health care twitter usage? Let me know.
As before, we'll start with the official review from Wikipedia:
"Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates (say, 140 characters or fewer) or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web."
So, Twitter is a messaging service where your messages are limited to 140 characters. Period. It's not generally considered an instant messaging service (like ICQ, or AIM) where you can have one-on-one conversations with individuals (although it is possible to direct message or DM one individual on Twitter). Twitter is a messaging service that allows you to message all of people who are "following" you. There are some privacy settings on Twitter but most tweets (messages) are open for everyone to read.
Twitter in Health Care:
There has been some noise in the technology blogosphere about all of the usage of Twitter in health care. Now I can see many applications for e-health companies to use Twitter for marketing and community involvement, and on-line and real world patient communities to encourage members to keep in touch with each other. But I can't see immediate real world application for most hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies or health care professionals, beyond the reasons other people use Twitter: keeping in touch with friends, family; keeping up to date with news, cultural events (lots of twittering on inauguration day) and conferences.
Does Subject: Brilliant! twitter? Sure I do, so sign up for Twitter and follow me.
I think the 140 character restriction on Twitter is too limiting for most health care applications. Does anyone know of a great health care twitter usage? Let me know.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Mashup – Smashup
This week, I thought I'd start covering some standard technologies that are floated around all the time in Web 2.0 conversations. Today, let's review Mashups.
Official Definition
The official definition of the term Mashup is (taken from our favorite web 2.0 encyclopedia, Wikipedia.org):
"In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. The term Mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently done by access to open APIs* and data sources to produce results that were not the original goal of the data owners. An example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source."
Shorter Explanation:
"A mashup is a combination of data sources to create a unified interface and experience."
Laymen's Explanation:
You can think of a mashup like a Reese Peanut Butter Cup: peanut butter + chocolate: individually two pretty good items and some would argue that chocolate is beyond pretty good. And when you combine those two pretty good items together, you get something greater than the sum of its parts. That's what a mashup is - two technology-based products that are combined to make something new.
Mashup's can be web-based (two different web programs slammed together), or digital art, or video, or music.
Best Examples of an e-Health Mashup
It's always hard to stick your neck out and say "this is the best" of anything on the web, but let's say that this is the best examples of an e-Health mashup that I've found.
Fight4Rx
Fight4rx.org is a brand new web site, having only been live for about 24 hours. It is an excellent example of how a mashup can be used to provide relevant information to a health care consumer. "Fight4Rx is a non-partisan grassroots effort of the National Community Pharmacists Association aimed at educating patients about the value of their local community pharmacy." (from the Fight4Rx.org web site) Although there are more tools on the site than the mashup, their mapping component that allows a user to type in their zip code and find the closet community pharmacy.
"Who is Sick".
"Who Is Sick was started in 2006 with a mission to provide current and local sickness information to the public - without the hassle of dealing with hospitals or doctors. With a strong belief in the power of people and a faith that user generated content can be extremely valuable, our team set out to create an entirely new system for tracking and monitoring sickness in your area and obtain sickness information. Information retrieved by tracking sickness in my area can also be used to map sickness trends in my region." Taken from the Who Is Sick web site.
People go to the site and enter their zip code, age, gender, symptoms, length of illness (anomalously) and any additional details about their illness, and results are plotted on an easy to read Google map, so visitors can see the types of illness any state, city or neighborhood.
Pretty neat eh?
*API
Explanation coming soon.
Official Definition
The official definition of the term Mashup is (taken from our favorite web 2.0 encyclopedia, Wikipedia.org):
"In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. The term Mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently done by access to open APIs* and data sources to produce results that were not the original goal of the data owners. An example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source."
Shorter Explanation:
"A mashup is a combination of data sources to create a unified interface and experience."
Laymen's Explanation:
You can think of a mashup like a Reese Peanut Butter Cup: peanut butter + chocolate: individually two pretty good items and some would argue that chocolate is beyond pretty good. And when you combine those two pretty good items together, you get something greater than the sum of its parts. That's what a mashup is - two technology-based products that are combined to make something new.
Mashup's can be web-based (two different web programs slammed together), or digital art, or video, or music.
Best Examples of an e-Health Mashup
It's always hard to stick your neck out and say "this is the best" of anything on the web, but let's say that this is the best examples of an e-Health mashup that I've found.
Fight4Rx
Fight4rx.org is a brand new web site, having only been live for about 24 hours. It is an excellent example of how a mashup can be used to provide relevant information to a health care consumer. "Fight4Rx is a non-partisan grassroots effort of the National Community Pharmacists Association aimed at educating patients about the value of their local community pharmacy." (from the Fight4Rx.org web site) Although there are more tools on the site than the mashup, their mapping component that allows a user to type in their zip code and find the closet community pharmacy.
"Who is Sick".
"Who Is Sick was started in 2006 with a mission to provide current and local sickness information to the public - without the hassle of dealing with hospitals or doctors. With a strong belief in the power of people and a faith that user generated content can be extremely valuable, our team set out to create an entirely new system for tracking and monitoring sickness in your area and obtain sickness information. Information retrieved by tracking sickness in my area can also be used to map sickness trends in my region." Taken from the Who Is Sick web site.
People go to the site and enter their zip code, age, gender, symptoms, length of illness (anomalously) and any additional details about their illness, and results are plotted on an easy to read Google map, so visitors can see the types of illness any state, city or neighborhood.
Pretty neat eh?
*API
Explanation coming soon.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Do You Do Social Media?
Whether you call it social media, Web 2.0 or social networking, its 2009, so if you aren't putting your toe into the world of social media, you'd better get started and soon. Let's start with some basics like a definition.
Just what is "Social Media"? If we tap the world's largest encyclopedia, Wikipedia, for a definition of social media, this is what we get:
"Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences."
Huh? ... "depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning among communities". Okay, enough of the consultant-speak-garblely-gook. Let's try again.
Social media are online communications in which individuals move seamlessly between reading and creating content (content could be words, images or video). They use social software that enables anyone without knowledge of coding, to post, comment on, share or mash up* content and to form communities around shared interests.
*Tomorrow I'll cover what a mashup is.
More definitions:
Robert Scoble: What is Social Media?
Bryan Eisenberg: Understanding and Aligning the Value of Social Media.
Brian Solis: What's Wrong with Social Media.
The Internet is Big ... And Going to Get Bigger
The global internet population has crested over the 1 billion mark according to ComScore.
Even as the internet population passes the one billion mark, only 41% (416 million) of adults (15+) in the Asia Pacific are online while in the US only 28% (185 million) of 15+'s are online. That leaves a lot of room for continued growth.
"Surpassing one billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the Internet," said Magid Abraham, President and Chief Executive Officer, comScore, Inc. "It is a monument to the increasingly unified global community in which we live and reminds us that the world truly is becoming more flat. The second billion will be online before we know it, and the third billion will arrive even faster than that, until we have a truly global network of interconnected people and ideas that transcend borders and cultural boundaries."
Sites that Top the Global Internet Traffic Mountain
It should be no surprise to anyone who has even a basic understanding of the internet these days that Google is the "King of the Mountain", with over 775 million visitors. Yikes ... remember 8 years ago when Google was breaking into the search engine market? Google was named the top search engine by PC magazine in 1998. The most prophetic statement in the short PC magazine article, "There's much more to come at Google!, but even in its prototype form it's a great search engine.", truer words have not been written.
Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL hold positions 2, 3, 4 and coming in in 5th position is the Wikipedia Foundation Sites. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone and that aims to provide free encyclopedic information to its readers that was founded in 2000. and it can boldly hold claim to the success of user-generated content. As of Jan 25/09 Wikipedia contains 2.7 million articles.
If you think it's too late to claim your corner of the internet? Think again. The internet is only just beginning and one can only imagine that new businesses and innovations the next billion internet users will bring.
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