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Crowd-Sourcing For Medical Diagnoses

The Times ran an intriguing experiment on its Well blog yesterday: a medical problem-solving contest. The challenge, based on the story of a real girl who lives near Philadelphia, drew 1379 posted comments and closed this morning with publication of the answer.

Dr. Lisa Sanders, who moderated the piece, says today that the first submitted correct response came from a California physician; the second came from a Minnesota woman who is not a physician. Evidently she recognized the condition’s manifestations from her experience working with people who have it.

The public contest – and even the concept of using the word “contest” – to solve a real person’s medical condition interests me a lot. This kind of puzzle is, as far as I know, unprecedented apart from the somewhat removed domains of doctors’ journals and on-line platforms intended for physicians, medical school problem-based learning cases, clinical pathological conferences (CPC’s) and fictional TV shows. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*

Research Blogging Awards Now Open For Nominations

ResearchBlogging Awards 2010

Seed Media Group’s Research Blogging Awards honor the outstanding bloggers who discuss peer-reviewed research. With over 1,000 blogs registered at ResearchBlogging.org and 8,500 posts about peer-reviewed journal articles collected, it is time to recognize the best of the best.

Any blog that discusses peer-reviewed research is eligible for nomination, and the winners will be determined by votes from their peers in the Research Blogging community. All finalists will be highlighted on ResearchBlogging.org, and winners will receive cash prizes totaling $2000.

Here’s how the awards will be chosen: Read more »

Dr. Wes’ Healthcare Reform Photo Contest

DrRich urges his readers to consider entering Dr. Wes’ Healthcare Reform Photo Contest.

Dr. Wes, like DrRich himself, is an electrophysiologist, and is therefore a person of exquisite artistic taste. Even better, he’s married to Diane, who probably actually knows what she’s doing.

Your submission (which Dr. Wes fully expects you to torture and disfigure mercilessly with Photoshop, not unlike the actual healthcare reform bills) can espouse a point of view either for or against healthcare reform. The winner (after Wes and Diane cull out all the completely inappropriate and disgusting submissions, and choose the five or six finalists), will be determined by a reader poll. So while it may defy the odds, it is not outside the realm of possibility that a pro-reform photo can win – especially since the pro-reform photos are less likely to be excluded for offensive subject matter.

Best of all, the winner gets an iPod touch, with which you can listen to DrRich’s podcasts.

The rules, deadlines, etc. can be found at Dr. Wes’ blog.

*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*

Contest: Making Sense of Diabetes

I have a lot to catch up on, but something I wanted to post about ASAP was the Making Sense of Diabetes contest that is happening at TuDiabetes, in preparation to raise awareness of World Diabetes Day (coming up fast on November 14th).

According to the release, “We are seeking video entries that tell about the impact diabetes has on our lives through one of the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell.  Diabetes affects our lives in ways we may not always realize. We smell insulin, savor glucose tablets, feel the poke of our lancing devices, react to our doctor’s words and see the life ahead of us.”

They’re looking for video submissions, and there are some really cool prizes on tap for winners.  Not to mention the emotional boost that creativity like this can provide – which, in my mind, is huge in helping us deal with diabetes.  For details on how, and what, and when, to submit, check out this entry on TuDiabetes. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*

Contest: Guess Who’ll Win The Nobel Prize In The Sciences?

Next Monday, the Nobel Foundation will announce the winner(s) of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In the following two days, two more Nobels will be revealed: in Physics and in Chemistry. Because of the success of last year’s inaugural Guess-A-Nobel Contest, we decided we’ll repeat this event annually until there is no more science worthy of the prize. This year we’re giving out three 8GB Apple iPod Touch devices to those who correctly guess in each of the three science categories. Because we profile a good deal of apps for the iPhone/Touch platform, we thought this might be a useful tool beside all the fun it can provide on the off time. Furthermore, if someone does manage to guess all three correctly, he or she will be getting the souped-up 64 GB version of the iPod device with all the trimmings.


Here are the rules of the game: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

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 Cartoon

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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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