How do you backup your computer files?

One approach is described below and it is by no means perfect. I wrote this post long time ago and some of the equipment is outdated but one can still get a general idea.

Areas of storage and backup:

1. Desktop PC, 70 GB hard drive.
2nd degree backup. Files are transferred from the primary backup with free programs such as SyncBack Freeware or Toucan.

2. 500 GB second hard drive on desktop PC.
Primary backup -- this is a new drive by Seagate and should last the longest.

3. Seagate Free Agent ToGo portable hard drive, 120 GB.
3rd degree backup. Portable Apps (free) are installed on the Free Agent drive and the files are encrypted with Toucan (part of the portable suite). It is important to encrypt all portable drives because they are often lost.

4. Western Digital external hard drive, 80 GB.
4th degree backup. It also has Portable Apps and files are encrypted with Toucan.

5. Notebook PC (laptop), 30 GB (old).
I use this PC primarily for Internet access when traveling. Not much is stored there, only occasional downloaded files.

6. GMail, 6 GB.
The GMail account has all my emails, some files and music. The emails are downloaded to desktop PC via Mozilla Thunderbird. See how to backup your Gmail account(s) via POP.

7. Box.net, 1 GB.
Not much free storage but it has a nice interface and is easy to use.

8. DVDs.
Backup photos, music, documents.

9. Picasa Photos, 1 GB.
For public photos.

10. USB drive, 2 GB.
For some files. Similarly to the portable hard drive, the USB drive also has Portable Apps and the documents are encrypted with Toucan.

References:
Pushing Paper Out the Door. NYTimes, 02/2008.
Sleep soundly: Back up your photos. Google Photos Blog, 03/2008.
Image source: Wikipedia

Related:
Synching Just Became a Cinch. NYTimes, 03/2008.

Ultrasound-guided Central Line Placement: Embed Several Videos in One Frame

Video: Ultrasound-guided Central Line Placement

Google Docs is a free web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application.

You can include YouTube videos, images, and text captions into slides to condense and display a “deck” of graphical content in a concise format in your posts.

For example, instead of publishing several videos on one page, you can insert videos and pictures in an embedded presentation slideshow -- see the example above.

I picked the topic of Ultrasound-guided Central Line Placement because this modality is of proven efficacy and safety but is still underutilized. A colleague of mine and I published a A Step-by-Step Procedure Guide with Photos for Central Line Placement with Ultrasound Guidance in an attempt to popularize the approach. A free PDA version of this procedure guide is available from MeisterMed.

References:
Multiple-size Embedded Presentations from Google Docs. Blogger Buzz.
Central Line Placement with Ultrasound Guidance: A Step-by-Step Procedure Guide with Photos
Central Line Placement: A Step-by-Step Procedure Guide with Photos
Ultrasound Guided Vascular Access (USGVA)
SiteRite Video
Ultrasound-guided Central line insertion

Slideshow: Life Hacks for Doctors

| View | Upload your own

Joshua Schwimmer, MD, FACP, FASN presents a useful and entertaining slideshow on Life Hacks for Doctors. Be sure to check the comments on his website as well.

Joshua was very kind to invite me as a collaborator on his new project, The Efficient MD Wiki:

"Wikis — collaborative websites — are powerful tools for education. The Efficient MD Wiki is designed to help healthcare professionals and medical students discover clinical pearls, useful resources, life hacks, and strategies to improve the practice of medicine."

Shortly before the launch, I asked him to list his tips on selecting a wiki platform which he did in My Experience Creating a Medical Wiki.

This Week's Grand Rounds

Check out Grand Rounds, the weekly summary of the best posts in the medical blogosphere.

Grand Rounds has become the contemporary weekly portrait of medicine through the eyes of the medical bloggers. Pre-Rounds is an article series about the hosts of Grand Rounds on Medscape.com. Nick Genes of Blogborygmi, who writes the Medscape column, is the founder of Grand Rounds and the archive host.

WSJ: Understanding Sen. Kennedy’s Brain Tumor

From Wikipedia:

"In October 2007, Sen. Kennedy had surgery to clear up a blocked left carotid artery (carotid artery stenosis).

In May 2008, Kennedy was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital from the Kennedy Compound after feeling ill and consulting with his physician, and then was subsequently transferred by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. It was later reported that Kennedy had suffered two seizures, one initially at his Hyannis Port home and another on a helicopter en route to Massachusetts General Hospital from Cape Cod Hospital.

A few days later, doctors discovered that Kennedy has a malignant glioma, a type of cancerous brain tumor."


WSJ Video

According to WSJ Health Blog:

“Unfortunately, the older you are, the more likely it’s a glioblastoma,” Patrick Wen, clinical director at the Dana-Farber Center for Neuro-Oncology, told the Health Blog. Kennedy is 76. The average survival for a glioblastoma is 14.5 months, but survival tends to be shorter in elderly patients, Wen said.

Kennedy’s doctors said his tumor is in the left parietal lobe, a section of the brain that plays a role in sensation for the right side of the body, and in the ability to understand language."

Related:
Doctors: Ted Kennedy has malignant brain tumor. CNN.
Understanding Sen. Kennedy's Cancer Diagnosis. NPR.
A grim diagnosis: Kennedy's brain cancer is worst kind. AP.
Senator Kennedy Has a Malignant Brain Tumor. NYT.
Prognosis Usually Bleak for Condition, a Glioma. NYT.
Kennedy Diagnosed With Brain Tumor. WSJ.
Image source: Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation license.

Google Health (Personal Health Record) Launches for Everybody Today

Screenshot of Google Health

Google Health is an online service which provides personal health record (PHR). The website is live and anybody can sign in, with a Google account, of course. It looks friendlier and easier to use than the competing offering by Microsoft called Health Vault. See the Google Health tour here.

A few excerpts from the "About Google Health" page are listed below:

Google Health allows you to store and manage all of your health information in one central place. And it's completely free. All you need to get started is a Google user name and password.

Why use Google Health:

- Keep your doctors up-to-date
- Stop filling out the same paperwork every time you see a new doctor
- Avoid getting the same lab tests done over and over again because your doctor cannot get copies of your latest results
- Don't lose your medical records because of a move, change in jobs or health insurance

With Google Health, you manage your health information — not your health insurance plan or your employer. You can access your information anywhere, at any time.

With Google Health, you can:


Create a health profile

- Build online health profiles: you can enter your health conditions, medications, allergies, and lab results into your Google Health profile

- Review trusted information on diseases and conditions


Search for doctors and hospitals

References:
Google Health launched. Google Blogoscoped.
Google Health: A View From the Inside. Wachter's World.
Image source: Google Health.

Related:
Would you like to see Dr. Google or Dr. Microsoft for your personal health records?
Adam Bosworth, Google Health Architect, Leaves Google

Cases Journal -- Online Open Access Journal by Former BMJ Editor

Cases Journal is a peer-reviewed, open access journal publishing case reports from any area of healthcare. Case reports will be incorporated into a PubMed Central database.

The journal has interactive features typical of Web 2.0:

"Authors are encouraged to invite the patient to contribute to the case report - each article can include an optional 'Patient's perspective’ section, where the patient describes their experience of the disorder and treatment.

We do not see publication of your case report as the end of the process. Once your case report is published, you will be able to add extra information in response to comments from the reviewers. Readers may post questions on your published case report, and we strongly encourage you to post a reply. We will also invite you to share information on any follow-up to the case - we will contact you one year after your case report is published to invite you to share with readers any changes that may have occurred with the patient."


Richard Smith

The Editor-in-Chief Richard Smith is the immediate past editor of BMJ. You can see his video interview and read Why do we need Cases Journal?

In one of the first case reports, Richard Smith describes his own experience with nagging cough in Beijing. As you can see from the text, the style is closer to a blog post than to a journal article.

This new initiative proves the validity and potential usefulness of our Clinical Cases and Images project which is an online case-based curriculum of clinical medicine launched in 2005. The project is hyperlinked in the web sites of 27 medical schools in the U.S., Canada and Europe and was featured in multiple medical journals.


Screenshot of Clinical Cases and Images

We welcome the "competition" and encourage you to the subscribe to the RSS feed of Cases Journal: http://casesjournal.com/rss/

Currently, ClinicalCases.org and CasesBlog are the number one and two search results on Google for "clinical cases" among 10 million web pages (have been so for 2 years). I doubt they will continue to rank so highly but let's see what happens in a few years.

Image source: Cases Journal.