The cleverly named 5th annual Research ShowCASE at Case Western Reserve University features at least 3 presentations on using Web 2.0 technologies in medicine:- Blogs: Use of a Free Blog Service to Build a Web Site for a Hospitalist Group
- Wikis: Use of a Wiki-based Web Site for Medical Education
- Sharepoint: Web-based Collaboration for Clinical Care, Research and Education at an Academic Hospitalist Group
I am a co-author along with John Sharp, Ashish Aterja and Neil Mehta from Cleveland Clinic, and Ken Civello and Brian Jefferson from AskDrWiki (which was also started at the Clinic).
As you can see, we pretty much cover a lot of the spectrum of Web 2.0 in medicine with abstracts on blogs and wikis but some unexplored topics still remain: web feeds (RSS/Atom), podcasts, video-sharing sites (YouTube/Google Video), photo-sharing sites (Flickr/Picasa Web), social media (Sermo).
With all the recent coverage that AskDrWiki received from the press, wikis seem to be all the rage, displacing blogs from the top spot in the short attention span of the general media. I think wikis offer much more opportunities for medical education than blogs because by design they are open, multi-author communities. Most blogs are still more or less a "one-man-show." Believe it or not, blogging is becoming old news and seems to have "matured" since 2004. This is confirmed by the Tecnorati's State of the Blogosphere annual report which shows that blog posts per day, the most critical measure as it relates to blogging, slid. Micro Persuasion provides more coverage in As Daily Postings Slide, Blogging Peaks.
Don't get me wrong, I still think that blogs are incredible tools for medical education which are extremely easy to use and can reach millions in a matter of seconds after hitting the "publish" button. If you have doubts, just check my SiteMeter statistics with 1,310,750 page views since 2005. Still, I am becoming more interested in wikis especially since I have discussed their use with AskDrWiki founders.
One of the main reasons why we submit abstracts to Research ShowCASE and other national meetings is the goal to make medical educators aware of the exciting opportunities that Web 2.0 technologies offer.
If you are in Cleveland on April 12, please come to join us at Research ShowCASE. You may have the chance to meet some real celebrities - Ken and Brian of AskDrWiki were featured on the front page of the main Cleveland newspaper The Plain Dealer last week.
My presentation on Web 2.0 in Medicine from December 2006.
References:
Upcoming Presentation at Research Day at Case Western Reserve University. eHealth, John Sharp, 4/5/2007.
Main Cleveland Newspaper Features a Cleveland Clinic-based Wiki
As Daily Postings Slide, Blogging Peaks. Micro Persuasion, April 05, 2007.
Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education. BMC Med Educ. 2006; 6: 41.
Images source:
Case Western Reserve University campus, Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.
Terminal Tower in Cleveland, photo by Lisa Chamberlain, Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License.
Further reading:
Collaborative Presentation on Web 2.0. Link via Go2Web2.
Social media in medical education - Grand Rounds presentation by IUH Med/Peds residency program director http://goo.gl/Zw3lK