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.