Flickr Images...

Yeah, right.

Source: Xanboozled, a Creative Commons license.

Annals of Internal Medicine Launches Podcast and Audio Summaries

The Annals of Internal Medicine is the latest member of the "Big Five" of general medical journals to launch a podcast. The other four -- NEJM, JAMA, BJM and Lancet -- have been experimenting with portable audio for a while now. Click below to see the coverage of their podcasts on this blog over time:

1. NEJM, 11/2005.
Feed: http://podcast.nejm.org/nejm_audio_summaries.xml

2. Lancet, 4/2006.
Feed: http://podcast.thelancet.com/lancet.xml

3. JAMA, 4/2006.
Feed: http://jama.ama-assn.org/misc/jamapodcasts2006.rss

4. BMJ, 9/2006 (the podcast is not active now).

5. Annals, 7/2007.
Feed: http://media.acponline.org/feeds/annals.xml

Podcasts and text-to-speech programs to convert text to MP3 files can be beneficial to medical education. For example, the podcast/videocast coverage of the 2006 meeting of ACAAI is lively, comprehensive and summarizes most new developments if the field.

Most people subscribe to medical podcasts by using iTunes/iPod/iPhone from Apple. A lesser known fact is that Google Reader can be used as a podcast program as well.

Click here to subscribe to all 4 journal podcasts in your iGoogle homepage.

References:
Stop Going to Conferences for the Lectures. Listen to Podcasts Instead. Efficient MD, 06/2007.
Image source: Annals of Internal Medicine.

Updated: 08/18/2007

PubMed Suprise: A Researcher with 600 Co-Authors on a Single Article

It is somewhat striking to see a list of several PubMed articles with roughly 600 co-authors under each of them. ScienceRoll suspected that the first author (Aubert B.) must have a lot of friends and asked for an explanation. Here it is.

The last name in the author list is "BABAR Collaboration." A Google search shows that "BABAR is a High Energy Physics experiment located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, near Stanford University, in California. The goal of the experiment is to study the violation of charge and parity (CP) symmetry in the decays of B mesons." According to Wikipedia, a meson is a strongly interacting boson, that is, it is a hadron with integral spin. I hope this makes it clearer :)

The BABAR Collaboration consists of approximately 600 physicists and engineers from 75 institutions in 10 countries. This can probably explain the 600 co-authors.

Related reading:

BaBar experiment from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
500 authors of Grand Rounds 
The "BIG 1-98" randomised clinical trial really is big: 885 authors are listed on this Lancet article http://goo.gl/lKEfw via @JRBtrip

Working near a laser printer = Second hand smoking?

Digital Inspiration links to an Australian study which claims that some laser printers release large amounts of small particles in the air which can potentially have adverse long-term health effects:

"If your cubicle is located somewhere near the common office printer, either ask the support staff to move the printer elsewhere or you shift your desk to a different place in the office as in the current setup, the air around you may be highly polluted."

More research is needed before a final recommendation can be made, as usual, but the study results could be something to have in mind. Printing less, potentially saves trees and keeps the air clean. You can save electronic texts online in Yahoo MyWeb, GMail, Google Notebook or any other service you prefer.

References:
Laser Printers in Office Turn Employees into Passive Smokers. Digital Inspiration, 7/2007.
Image source: Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.

Blogging, Microblogging and Facebook

Steve Rubel of MicroPersuasion comments on a recent trend -- he blogs less and spends more time on Twitter ("microblogging" in 140 characters or less) and Facebook.

It seems like the "influentials" in the tech blogging world are also moving in the same direction. Has the blogging peaked or has it just become relatively more mainstream?

Among medical bloggers, Joshua Schwimmer also uses Twitter and has transformed KidneyNotes into a collection of selected links. He writes 2 other blogs -- Tech Medicine and EfficientMD, and has a profile on LinkedIn.

It will be interesting to see how microblogging (Twitter) and social networking (Facebook) will shape the future of medical blogging as we know it.

References:
When Less is More and More is Less. Micro Persuasion, 07/2007.
Newbies Guide to Twitter. ChrisBrogan.com, 08/2007.
Identity Through Online Lifestreams. Micro Persuasion, 08/2007.
Image source: Twitter.com.

Would you like to see Dr. Google or Dr. Microsoft for your personal health records?

According to the New York Times:

Microsoft’s software powers more than 90 percent of all personal computers, while Google is the default starting point for most health searches. People are increasingly turning to the Web for health information and advice. A Harris poll found that 52 percent of adults go to the Web for health information, up from 29 percent in 2001.

"Today, only about 20 percent of the nation’s patient population have computerized records. Under federal law, people can request and receive their personal health data within 90 days. But the process is complicated, and the replies typically come on paper, as photocopies or faxes."


Adam Bosworth talks about GoogleHealth. Image source: AlphachimpStudio, a Creative Commons license.

More or less, the current equation is as follows:

Microsoft = personal computer
Google = Internet

Both Google and Microsoft are reportedly preparing products aiming at the potentially huge market of personal health records.


A screenshot of Google Health. Image source: Philipp Lenssen, a Creative Commons license.

Microsoft’s offering is scheduled to be announced this fall, while Google’s will probably be introduced next year. The launch of new software products frequently faces multiple delays and missed deadlines -- Windows Vista is a good example. Most likely, "Dr. Google" or "Dr. Microsoft" will not be available to see you before 2008-2009.

Update 10/06/2007:
Microsoft launches an online personal health record portal called HealthVault.com.

References:
Dr. Google and Dr. Microsoft. NYTimes.
Google Health Prototype. Google Operating System.
First Google Health Screenshots. Philipp Lenssen.
Who's your patients' best friend? Google!
Google Finds Correct Diagnosis in 58 % of Cases Published in NEJM
Google, M.D. In Action
Google, M.D. In Action - Part II
"Google, M.D." at the Clinic
Image source: Doctors Using Google by Philipp Lenssen, used with permission.

Related:
Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health - The 'Coke and Pepsi' of Online Health (PHR). ReadWriteWeb, 10/2008.
Google now wants to diagnose your disease, offers differential diagnosis based on 10 sites and Wikipedia http://goo.gl/SD1qM

U.S. Life Expectancy Shorter Than 41 Countries

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the life expectancy in the U.S. is shorter than 41 countries including most of Europe and Japan.

Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, comments that "something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries."

What are the likely causes?

- High prevalence of obesity in the U.S.
- Racial disparities
- Relatively high infant mortality rate
- 45 million Americans lack health insurance

The life expectancy ranges from 82.6 years in Japan to 39.2 years in Swaziland - see the map. Many of the countries with the lowest life expectancies, e.g. Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa, Central African Republic, and Namibia, are suffering from very high rates of HIV/AIDS infection, with adult prevalence rates ranging from 10 to 38 percent (source: Wikipedia).


Life Expectancy Falls In Pockets of U.S. WSJ Health Blog. In the the animation, greener equals longer life expectancy.

References:
A color-coded map of the world’s most and least emotional countries http://bit.ly/Ytxx6B
U.S. life span shorter. Associated Press, 08/2007.
List of countries by life expectancy, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
World’s Best Medical Care? NYTimes, 08/2007.
U.S. life expectancy lags behind other countries'. CNN.
Image source: Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.
How low can you go? Megan McArdle, 08/2007.
Life Expectancy Falls In Pockets of U.S. WSJ Health Blog, 04/2008.