Welcome to the August 19, 2007 edition of medicine 2.0.

Medicine 2.0? Yes, some pioneers are already making good use of Web 2.0 tools to improve Medicine in a new, collaborative way. This blog carnival seems to me to be, in itself, living proof.

Let’s see.

You may wonder, what exactly is “Medicine 2.0″? well, Constructive Medicine takes a stab at it, showing how it may be much older than we thought.

You want an example? see a blogger (Bertalan) chronicle an amazing medical simulation in Second Life.  

Some bloggers provide great overview posts:

• A Beginner’s Guide to Reading Medical Blogs (Vitum Medicinus) provides a fantastic resource covering everything you need to know about medical blogs and blogs in general, including why to subscribe to RSS feeds (for How, keep reading).
• Nursing and Web 2.0 (Universal Health) is a thoughtful post on the gap between nursing research and practice…and how blogging and 2.0 can help.
• Essay on the effect of Web 2.0 on the future of medical practice and education (Medical Journal of Australia), that provides a great overview of medicine 2.0, defining and listing blogs, wikis, podcasts and more.
• Social science as infectious disease (Mining Drug Space) is an essay on how blogs are contributing to knowledge creation and exchange, and includes the writer’s reflections on blogging.

…while others are already addressing some of the important points raised:

• There is a need for a better way for bloggers to identify peer-reviewed research, a solution is already here (organized by the great Cognitive Daily).
• Fun tutorials on Social Bookmarking in Plain English (David Rothman) and how to use RSS to easily subscribe and read many blogs
• Study On The Go With Medical e-Books: great overview on how to use e-books.
• Open Access Tissue Engineering, posted at Hope for Pandora, says, “Health providers are increasingly familiar with open access publishing like PLoS, but what about open access courses? The Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology now offers many of its courses online through MIT’s OpenCourseWare project. I reflect on the impact of this development on academia and the accessibility of information to the interested public.”

…and others keep us updated on latest developments in the field

• Ranking of english-written medblogs (Medgadget nl).
• Can a personal genome sequence get a creative commons license? (Personal Genome). Preliminary andwer: No.
• Skyscape on the iPhone (Medgadget) offers a list of available resources available via iPhone.
• The Annals of Internal Medicine Launches Podcast and Audio Summaries (Clinical Cases).
• X:Map, a Genome Browser (Yokofakun): click the 2 links at the bottom if you want to see what a “genome browser” is.

Now, there would be no Medicine 2.0 without the Sharing Culture that Web 2.0 and Medicine describes. And there would be no Medicine at all without all the people making it possible-so, let’s pay attention to the information and advice offered in these posts.

• JavaJive: The Older You Get, the More that Coffee Helps Your Brain (GrrlScientist) on how ”Recent research has shown that women older than 65 years old who drink more than three cups of coffee per day were protected from some types of age-related memory declines.”
• Bone Hormone Linked to Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes, posted at Living the Scientific Life, on why osteocalcin might be an effective treatment for obesity and type 2 diabetes.
• More about coffee: Cancer and Coffee posted at Healthoma.com.
• Have you been reading about the growing “medical tourism” field? here you have a very upbeat post on how you can Boost your Healthcare and Reap the Cost Savings! (nomad4ever).
• LifeTwo introduces us to Mild Cognitive Decline.
• And we provide some guidance on evaluating the claims of Brain Training Games.

There are many more areas to cover and contribute in…so we always welcome new blogs:

• On Medical simulations
• On health informatics

That’s all for this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of medicine 2.0 using this carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: medicine 2.0, blog carnival.

Credit for the picture goes to David Brown (no website yet…), who sent some beautiful pics.