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Progress In The Field Of Personalized Medicine And What We Can Expect Next

The third edition of The Case for Personalized Medicine (PDF) was released a week ago and I had a chance to do an interview with Edward Abrahams, Ph.D. of the Personalized Medicine Coalition.  The new edition is a primer that highlights the progress in the field of personalized medicine for policymakers, researchers, and business leaders.

  • How many prominent examples of personalized medicine might we have next year?

It’s impossible for us to know how many prominent examples of personalized medicine products will be available a year from now, but we project that the rapid acceleration in the number of new products coming onto the market will continue. When we published the first edition of The Case for Personalized Medicine in 2006 – there were only 13 available products; when we published the second edition in 2009, there were 37 products available, and now, in 2011, there are 72.

  • Sometimes lecturers use two numbers: 7 billion and 3 billion referring to the mass sequencing of everyone’s DNA in the world. When could it happen, what is your estimation? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

7 Observations About The Next Generation Of Physicians

For the last 4 years, I’ve been teaching medical and public health students about the use of social media and generally digital technologies in medicine and healthcare and I got a good picture of what kind of medical professionals they would become soon. They represent the new generation of physicians.

Here are my points and observations:

  1. They are technophile. I remember the time when there was no internet, I remember the first website I first saw online. They were born into the technology and internet-based world. For them, websites, Facebook, Twitter and blogs represent the basics. They love gadgets and devices.
  2. They are fast. They use smartphones, read news online, follow blogs and know what RSS is, they are familiar with multi-tasking. They are much faster than the previous generations, therefore they need different tools and solutions in their work.
  3. But they use the technology for Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Share Your Story: Has Social Media Improved Your Health Or Work In Medicine?

There is a new social campaign being launched right now on Webicina.com that curates the medical resources of social media in 80 topics in 18 languages:

We receive hundreds of suggestions from empowered patients and medical professionals every week about which social media resources should be included in our selections, and we thought we must find a way to let them know how much we appreciate their help.

So now we kindly ask you to tell us your story about how social media helped you improve your health management or helped you get better in your specialty in order to win grand prizes.

As we curate resources in basically all the social media platforms, you can tell your story in any platforms from Twitter and Facebook to blogs and Youtube. Your submissions will be Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Best Online Resources For Alzheimer’s Disease Information

The Alzheimer World Day only took place a few days ago and we received many suggestions about creating a selection focusing on this important topic. Webicina’s new Alzheimer’s Disease and Web 2.0 collection features relevant and quality social media resources from blogs and podcasts to community sites and Twitter users focusing on Alzheimer’s disease.

Here is my top 10 social media selection for Alzheimer’s disease: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Picture Illustrates What Some Believe To Be Left Brain And Right Brain Differences

This is one of the best pictures I’ve ever seen. I’m almost totally a left brain… What about you?

Left brain: I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.

Right brain: I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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