In the past week I came across two new online community sites, or to use the Web 2.0 jargon, "social networking" sites. One is for doctors and one is for patients.

The first one is sermo for doctors. The about page describes it as this:

Here, physicians aggregate observations from their daily practice and then - rapidly and in large numbers - challenge or corroborate each others opinions, accelerating the emergence of trends and new insights on medications, devices and treatments. You can then apply the collective knowledge to achieve better outcomes for your patients.

This is a very interesting idea. It's open to US-based physicians (which they check, according to the FAQ) and works by doctors asking and answering questions. The answers are voted on, and if you don't like an answer, you can add one. Very interesting.

Then you get to the 'how do we make money' part. This is how they describe it:

Sermo's business model is one of information arbitrage, the opportunity that arises when breaking medical insights intersect with the demand for actionable, market-changing events in healthcare.

Eh? Whoever wrote that needs get an award for Buzzword Compliance. How does it actually happen? It's better explained here. Basically, health care companies, investors, and consultants get a chance to ask the community questions. They pay sermo for the access, and whoever answers these questions may get paid for that.

That in itself is a very interesting business model (I've never seen anything quite like it), so if it works, Sermo could, gasp!, be a Web 2.0 company that actually makes money. We'll see.

Sermo has gotten some good coverage lately: the AMA has partnered with them and the WSJ had a piece about social networking that talked about them too.

On the other side of the coin is patientslikeme. They describe themselves like this:

Our goal is to enable people to share information that can improve the lives of patients diagnosed with life-changing diseases. To make this happen, we've created a platform for collecting and sharing real world, outcome-based patient data (patientslikeme.com) and are establishing data-sharing partnerships with doctors, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, research organizations, and non-profits.

This sounds like Sermo, but focusing on patients. There is one problem I see with this: although each page on patientslikeme clearly states that its content should not be taken as medical advice, I can't help but think that patients will go down the self-diagnosis route and take the content as medical truth, without regard if it applies to them or not. This problem is partly offset by focusing on a few diseases; at the moment these are ALS, Multiple Sclerosis, and Parkinson's disease. Still, this quote jumped at me from FierceHealthIT's award announcement for patientslikeme:

the site allows patients to select for other patients with a similar profile (say, same age, stage of disease, gender), see what treatments that patient has had and what their outcomes were.

Apart from potentially having patients 'suggesting' treatments to doctors, the site sounds like an amazing opportunity for patients and doctors to interact. To put it mildly, a world-wide support network for patients to help them through tough times is an idea whose time has come.

And there you have it. Two great online innovators in the world of medicine.

Birds teach technologists a thing or two.

An interesting article on National Geographic about how to make airplanes quieter. With the worldwide air traffic growth set to continue to grow (for example, see the EADS annual report for last year and the British Department for Transport aviation report), quieter airplanes are virtually a necessity.

A friend of mine lives under the landing path of Heathrow Airport in London. I'm sure he'll appreciate a quieter sleep on the weekends!

Technorati Tags: noise, air travel, airplanes, technology

Thermochromic ink in action.

From the BBC:

The age-old argument over the best way to cook the perfect boiled egg could be a thing of the past thanks to a new hi-tech ink logo going on shells.

After cooking begins, an invisible, temperature-sensitive thermochromic print appears in black to indicate when an egg is soft, medium or hard-boiled.

Read the full article. Cool!

Technorati Tags: eggs, thermochromic, ink, technology

SPOT-NOSED smell technology yields electronic nose.

A new approach for an ‘electronic nose’ has been developed by researchers in Spain, France and Italy; the project is called SPOT-NOSED.

This ‘biosensor’ (an electronic sensor based on biological detection) is unusual in how it’s made. The researchers used actual proteins used in rat noses, and used them to detect smells in an electronic device. How cool is that?

By placing a layer of proteins that constitute the olfactory receptors (the proteins used to detect scents) in animal noses, a system capable of detecting odorants at concentrations that would be imperceptible to humans is made.

Where do these proteins come from? Several hundred different proteins were genetically copied from rats and grown in yeast. Nanotechnology makes such an electronic nose feasible, even though the human nose uses 1,000 different proteins to allow the brain to recognise 10,000 different smells.

The next step is to recognize scents: it’s exciting to be able to create this detector, but it’s not of any use. Luckily, the project partners are now planning to continue their research and develop the instrumentation and software tools necessary for an electronic nose to recognise smells. This mimics the brain in animals.

As the coordinator of the SPOT-NOSED project, Josep Samitier notes, "The potential uses of smell technology are endless."

Technorati Tags: SPOT-NOSED, biosensor, olfactory, Spain, France, Italy, biotechnology, smell, scent, science, technology

Blinking lights using RFID

In the ‘Why didn’t I think of that!’ category, a new purse tells its owners if important objects (keys, wallet, etc) are not inside it.

It works like this: a set of lights outside the bag are turned on by default. To each important item, a small RFID (radio frequency ID) chip is attached. If the item is placed in the purse, the lights system detects the attached RFID chip and turns off the corresponding lights. The prototype can handle up to three items, each having its own set of lights.

Is that cool or what? More info at the Discovery Channel.

Technorati Tags: RFID, purse, technology

Scientific literature search

A very cool new service part of the up-coming MSN Live website: Windows Live Academic Search. The same functional (if a bit slow) and information-dense interface is used as the main Live search site, but with focus on academic papers. Check it out.

MP3 medical advice

In what has got to be a first, the British Sussex Ambulance Service has released medical advice in MP3 format. That’s a good use of technology if you ask me!

Technorati Tags: Sussex Ambulance Service, podcast, ipod, medicine, medical advice, technology

Microphones + glasses = hearing aid

A very cool hearing aid has been created in the Netherlands. Called Varibel (in Dutch), it is basically a pair of glasses which has microphones embedded into the frame. This arrangement primarily picks out sounds from the direction people of looking, giving a directional sensitivity of +8.2dB as opposed to +4dB of the regular hearing aids.

Technorati Tags: Varibel, hearing aid, technology

Engineers baffled by lack of stereotype

A study by Dr Wendy Faulkner from the University of Edinburgh found that very few engineers fit the classic stereotype. By interviewing 66 men and women engineers working in a range of industries, she found that "women and men engineers alike get excited about technology" and that "many different types of men and women enjoy engineering work".

The study shows in detail how topics of conversation, humour and social activities often reflect men’s interest and ways of bonding. This can leave women on the margins socially, and make it difficult for women to break into the ‘inner circles’ that influence how the job gets done and who gets promoted.

Technorati Tags: women, engineers, engineering, science, technology

Lasers make images out of thin air

What happens when you focus a laser 100 times a second at different points in mid air? You get a 3D image. The concept is straightforward: get a laser to heat up a small area of air (call it a ‘point’). Once the point is hot enough, it turns into plasma and emits light. Now do that 100 times a second and you can form an image in mid air. That image will be a real three-dimensional image of whatever depiction you want.

A prototype has now been built by Japanese scientists and they get some really cool results. Check out their images.

Technorati Tags: laser, 3d, imaging, physics, science