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The Google Body Browser

b2bzsd.jpgGoogle has released an awesome in-browser anatomy viewer to demo the new 3D graphics capabilities of their Chrome development version. It lets you explore the human body in all its glory in a Google Earth-like fashion. Individual anatomic layers (skin, muscles, bones, etc.) can be selected or deselected for viewing, but can also be made semi-transparent on an individual level. Labels can be displayed, and all anatomy is fully searchable.

The catch is you will need a WebGL enabled browser to try it. WebGL is a technique that enables 3D graphics within the browser without the use of plugins. Chrome 9 Dev Channel, Chrome Canary Build and Firefox 4 beta have this enabled by default. In Chrome 8 (the current stable version), you can enable it by going to about:flags (type it in the address bar), and from there enable WebGL. Below are two videos, one demonstrating the body browser, and one of a presentation by the developers.

Link: Google Body Browser…

(Hat Tip: Google Operating System Blog)

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Gather Professional Opinions From Your “medCrowd”

medCrowd is the 52nd in my list of biomedical community sites and maybe the first one using crowdsourcing. From medCrowd:

Perhaps, you have a patient with a rare condition and you don’t know the best treatment. Or you are treating a patient and you have heard there have been recent developments in the field, but you are not sure how these actually affect your patient’s day-to-day management.

The problem is finding the best solution for your patient. What you need is help finding it.

medCrowd enables you to find the best solution for your patient by collecting your peers’ professional opinions, simply and in one place. This is called crowdsourcing.

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Medicine And The Internet: 2000 Vs. 2010

Whenever I talk to doctors about using social media in medicine, they seem to think there are more cons than pros regarding this issue. I like reminding them about some major differences between 2000 and today:

What would I do if… In 2000 Today
I need clinical answer Try to find a collegue who knows it Post a question on Twitter
I want to hear patient story about a specific condition Try to find a patient in my town Read blogs, watch YouTube
I want to be up-to-date Go to the library once a week Use RSS and follow hundreds of journals
I want to work on a manuscript with my team We gather around the table Use Google Docs without geographical limits

Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

A Story Of Online Care Without OpenNotes

Next in our series on my experience with OpenNotes, a project sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio.

This item has nothing to do with OpenNotes itself –- it’s what I’m seeing now that I’ve started accessing my doctor’s notes. In short, I see the clinical impact of not viewing my record as a shared working document.

Here’s the story. 
______

In OpenNotes, patient participants can see the visit notes their primary physicians entered. Note “primary,” not specialists. I imagine they needed to keep the study design simple.

So here I am in the study, going through life. Five weeks ago I wrote my first realization: After the visit I’d forgotten something, so I logged in. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*

Should Medical School Applications Mention Social Media?

I have a friend actively involved in social health applying for medical school. She reached out to ask me how much should she make of her social media involvement? Will the mention of participation on a SXSW panel or the start of a social community help or hurt her application?

Actually a good question. Some academics, after all, see social media as a waste of time, but many are curious about it.  The really smart ones understand its potential power. So as a medical school applicant you can see how this could work for you or against you.

While initially I thought that positioning yourself as a social health innovator could be something of a liability, I think the potential upside outweighs risk. But like so many things, it’s all in how you set it up. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

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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