My colleagues and I presented posters/abstracts on different aspects of blog use in medicine at the 2006 American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Meeting, the 2007 American College of Cardiology (ACC) Meeting, the 2006 Annual Perioperative Summit at the Cleveland Clinic, and the 2007 Annual Research ShowCASE at Case Western Reserve University. The interest by the attendees has always been great.
A dentist blogger was recently asked to present on "Blogs and Their Use in Dentistry" at the American Acdemy of Pediatric Dentistry's Annual Session.
The Annals of Emergency Medicine recently featured a summary of popular blogs authored by EM physicians (link via GruntDoc). What is next? The Annals of Internal Medicine with an article about popular IM blogs? The Annals of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology with the summary of popular allergy blogs? The blogs are gradually hitting main stream in the minds of medical publishers about a year after they became commonplace in the general media. Most major newspapers and TV stations now have blogs. Medical journals and hospitals cannot be far behind.
Blogs offer a unique way to connect with readers/customers. They are instant and look spontaneous. Subscription via web feeds creates a relationship. This is just one aspect of why blogs are influential. The other is their popularity. Google changed our world. When I teach case-based management of DKA to residents at the Cleveland Clinic, I do not give them the web address anymore. I just tell them "search Google for "DKA case" and you will find the case we discussed today at number 1 or 2 in the search results."
References:
Web 2.0 in Medicine Presentations at Research ShowCASE in Cleveland
Cleveland Clinic Perioperative Medicine Summit
American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Renal Week 2006
Wow, I made Annals of Emergency Medicine! GruntDoc, 04/2007.
Emergency Medicine in the Blogosphere: The Irreverent Wit of the Specialty’s Unofficial Voice. Annals of EM, Vol. 49, Issue 5, Pages 612-614 (May 2007).
Several medical journals have already begun their own blogs, it seems:
ReplyDeleteOpen Medicine: http://blog.openmedicine.ca/
BMJ (multiple): http://blogs.bmj.com/
Lancet: http://blogs.thelancet.com/
PLoS (multiple): http://www.plos.org/cms/blog
Health Affairs: http://www.healthaffairs.org/blog/
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Also, come check out the National Review of Medicine's blog, Canadian Medicine.