From this Sunday (4th of July), I will cover the World Congress of Gerontology & Geriatrics 2009 through my blog and Twitter account for 4 days. I will mostly focus on the genetics-related presentations.

Held every four years, the IAGG (International Association of Gerontology & Geriatrics) World Congress of Gerontology & Geriatrics is attended by teams of experts from around the world, who will discuss the latest findings in the fields of ageing. An attractive program was created by its International Scientific Committee and will feature four main investigation areas:

- Health and geriatric sciences
- Social gerontology
- Behavioural and psychological sciences
- Biology of ageing.

The new site that will aggregate posts, tweets, images and videos, is up.

Bob Coffield shared a fantastic slideshow with us on his Healthcare Law Blog.

A few months ago, we created PeRSSonalized Medicine on Webicina.com, a free service, to help medical professionals keep up with the huge amount of new medical information. Without having a clue what RSS is, you can follow your favourite resources, medical news sites and Pubmed updates in one place with just one click. You can also personalize it according to your needs.

Now here is Clinical Reader that seems to be useful for those professionals who spend some more time on the web. It looks great though you can’t personalize it now and for me it takes many clicks to get to my favourite resources.

Welcome to Clinical Reader, a truly quality collection of accessible clinical, scientific and health literature aiming to ease information delivery to the medical community. Focus your time, discover new links, fine-tune your online experience in a bid to effectively manage online clinical browsing.

Let me know your suggestions and if you want to add a new resource to PeRSSonalized Medicine, just leave a comment.

Today is the last day of the Nursing Informatics Congress taking place in Helsinki, Finland. You can check the Twitter updates of the congress. And here is the panel presentation of Scott Erdley and Peter Murray. Scott also mentioned Scienceroll.com, many thanks for that!

• An Open Letter To Patients Regarding Health Reform (Dr. Wes)

It has come to my attention that in order for you to enjoy success as patients in the new era of health care reform, you must start working now to prevent illnesses that might befall you. Do not, under any circumstances, eat or drink too much. Fast food might as well be considered illegal. Exercise three, four, five times a day, even if it means take time off from work. It goes without saying that you should not smoke. The government has data that demonstrates how you have become fat, lazy, and a huge burden on our health care system.

• Unpublished Data, No Pictures Please (Next Generation Science)

• A selection of Grand Rounds video presentations by Mayo Clinic staff members.

• What would science look like if it were invented today?

• Top 20 Websites Every Scientist (or engineer) ought to know

• Medical Patients Consult the Internet (eMarketer)
  

• Medical Twitter (BMJ Careers)

• Twitter in 1935 (BoingBoing)

• 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Twitter Research

• Doctors, Patients, and Twitter (Sean Khozin, MD)

• Twitter and Science presentation from the 140 Characters Conference (A Blog Around the Clock)

• How Hospitals and Health Systems Should Not Use Twitter (A “HealthTweep” Pulse Check)

If you are a hospital, healthcare facility or parent system considering social media, please take the time to learn what is happening in the “Twittersphere”, and do pay attention to the evolving “agreements” of Twitter-etiquette.

Pawel Szczesny had a great idea about visualizing Science 2.0, Health 2.0 and Culture 2.0:

Initially I had an idea to launch a huge portal around “2.0″ meme – essentially tracking changes in communication methods across various areas. I wanted to quit science and start a consulting career in helping people to communicate more efficiently (new channels and tools, efficient visual communication, etc.).

Later he created AllTwoPointZero.com,

Even if the “2.0″ phenomena are not a future anymore, “2.0″ is still a useful meme to attach to processes of change. This site is a simple tracker of the news and discussions on a few aspects of the “change” that happens because of the internet. In its current form its not even beta – treat it as experimental alpha, with more links and sources to come.

BestCollegesOnline published a list of the top 100 lectures from the world’s best scientists. I thought I should share my favourite ones:

On Webicina.com, the first medical web 2.0 guidance service, I keep creating free e-guides for doctors in order to help them get closer to the web 2.0 world and make their online presence as efficient as possible. Now here is “Medicine in Second Life“, a free e-guide in which I provide step-by-step tutorials about how to enter the virtual world and organize medical meetings or case presentations.

Please take a look at the table of contents:

• What is Second Life?
• Step 1: How to enter the virtual world?
• Step 2: How to move, search and create landmarks?
• Step 3: Medicine and health in the virtual world
• Step 4: How to organize a meeting or presentation in Second Life?
• Step 5: How can patients use Second Life?
• Step 6: Which health groups should you join?

Next week, Webicina will release a new Web 2.0 Guidance Package focusing on Radiology resources.

A meeting at the Ann Myers Medical Center

Free Webicina content:

• How to keep yourself up-to-date in medicine?
• How to write a quality medical blog?
• Neurology 2.0
• Rheumatology 2.0
• Diabetes 2.0
• Depression 2.0
• Cancer 2.0
• Pregnancy 2.0

Cameron Neylon rocks again:

I would like to share my favourite and ongoing projects with you so I can give you a proper introduction to Scienceroll.com. You can also find me on Twitter or on Friendfeed.

Medicine 2.0 University Course: This is the second semester of the first university course that focuses on web 2.0 and medicine for medical students. Last semester, almost 50 students attended the 20 slideshows through 10 weeks and they filled a survey out before and after the course. I launched the second semester for English-speaking students (February – May, 2009). I’m open to launch the same course in Second Life.

Medicine 2.0 Collection: I maintain the biggest collection of links and posts focusing on web 2.0 and medicine.

Webicina.com is my service that aims to help medical professionals and patients enter the web 2.0 era by providing them with e-courses, consulting and personalized packages.

PeRSSonalized Medicine is a free tool that lets you select your favourite resources and read the latest news and articles in one personalized place. You can create your own “medical journal” and as we are totally open to suggestions, let us add the journals, blogs and websites that you would like to follow.

Scienceroll Search is a personalized medical search engine powered by PolyMeta search and clustering engine. You can choose which databases to search in and which one to exclude from your list. It works with well-known medical search engines and databases and we’re totally open to add new ones or remove those you don’t really like.

Medicine 2.0 Blog Carnival and Microvarnival: The blog carnival focusing on web 2.0 and medicine. Let me know if you have a submission or if you want to host an edition.

Gene Genie is the blog carnival of genes, personalized genomics and gene-related diseases. Our plan is to cover the whole genome before 2082 (it means 14-15 genes every two weeks). Let me know if you have a submission or if you want to host an edition.

List of biomedical and scientific community sites: More than 30 communities with links, descriptions and screenshots.

List of Biomedical video sites: Almost 40 sites featuring scientific or medical videos and videocasts.

I’ve been creating medical Web 2.0 Guidance Packages on Webicina.com for patients and for doctors as well. Such a package contains all the quality selected web 2.0 tools from blogs and communities to online slideshows and wikis that focus on one medical condition or medical specialty.

The next package will be dedicated to Fitness / Weight Loss 2.0, so if you know a good blog, wiki, community or Twitter user writing about these issues, please let me know so I can include your suggestions.

Thank you!

That’s what we have so far:

• How to keep yourself up-to-date in medicine?
• How to write a quality medical blog?
• Neurology 2.0
• Rheumatology 2.0
• Diabetes 2.0
• Depression 2.0
• Cancer 2.0
• Pregnancy 2.0

TrendMetr is a new service that might once be useful for us. At the moment, it’s hard to determine how it can be used in medicine. Well, it turns out we must talk more about medical issues on Twitter.

• Every minute, the dB meters update to show how many times a search term was mentioned on Twitter in the last hour.
• You can enter your own search terms into the search boxes.
• Add more meters to compare buzz in real-time.

Of course, it’s just a joke. I hope you will follow me on Scienceroll and on Twitter as well.

Medgadget posted about a very interesting iPhone application, SonoAccess™, that can help clinicians improve their analytical and performance skills when using ultrasound.

More on Medgadget…

Here are some other tips how to improve your skills:

• Medicine Meets Virtual Reality 17: Day 2

• Wii for Surgical Training

• Medicine via Nintendo Wii

The Vizedu.com Team (they created the presentation of Webicina.com as well) just published another unique slideshow focusing on wireless e-health technologies.

Wireless Technologies have the potential to revolutionize Health Care. With the massive adoption of Wireless Internet and Social Media – the empowered patient wants to be a partner in health care. West Wireless Health Institute aims to explore wireless technologies to advance human health and wellbeing.

From next Sunday (4th of July), I will cover the World Congress of Gerontology & Geriatrics 2009 through my blog and Twitter account for 4 days. I will mostly focus on the genetics-related presentations.

All the Youtube videos, Flickr images, etc. will be published on the HealthandAge.com site as well.

I met Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva in Bilbao, this June and he had a great presentation about how the Catalans are using the services of web 2.0 and the old tools of web. Here is the slideshow.

Here is my newest favourite medical  blog, NCBI ROFL where you will find the funniest peer-reviewed articles published day-by-day. Just e-mail them the PubMed link and your discovery could appear there. A few examples:

• Feet rolled over by cars: radiological and histological considerations from experiments.

• Flaturia: passage of flatus at coitus. Incidence and pathogenesis.

Adam Bosworth published a very important announcement:

A Declaration of Health Data Rights

In an era when technology allows personal health information to be more easily stored, updated, accessed and exchanged, the following rights should be self-evident and inalienable. We the people:

1. Have the right to our own health data

2. Have the right to know the source of each health data element

3. Have the right to take possession of a complete copy of our individual health data, without delay, at minimal or no cost; If data exist in computable form, they must be made available in that form

4. Have the right to share our health data with others as we see fit

These principles express basic human rights as well as essential elements of health care that is participatory, appropriate and in the interests of each patient. No law or policy should abridge these rights.

As that is what I’ve been actually working on with Webicina.com, of course I endorsed it.You can do the same here.