Emergency Medicine factoids on Twitter
The medical profession is slowly incorporating Twitter. If you have a Twitter account, here are some great Twitter accounts to follow:
Social media in academia: Why do it?
“Why would I want to participate in Twitter and social media?”
This is a common question that I get from my fellow emergency physicians. They think that social media applications are for people who have nothing better to do than to read/write about trivial personal opinions.
Internet CME: EMedHome.com
Two weeks before renewing your license, you realize that you’re short 7 CME credits. Uh-oh…what to do now? Unfortunately, not enough time to go to a conference. Reading always gets boring after a while. Lie on your renewal application (NOT!)? If only there was a one-stop method of getting a variety of CME to keep you interested.
First annual Medical Apps Awards: Vote now
The polls for the first annual Medical Apps Awards is now open. Voting closes April 21, 2011 @ 12:00 AM EST.
- General instructions (you can win various prizes)
- Go directly to the polls
There are 3 categories that you can vote on:
1. Best Medical App for Healthcare Professionals
- MediBabble – a medical translation tool
- Doximity – a professional networking tool
- Medscape – comprehensive guide to drugs, interactions, diseases, & procedures
- Epocrates – comprehensive guide to drugs, interactions, identifying pills, & calculators
- DrChrono – the first EMR for the ipad
2. Best Medical App for Patients
- iHealth BPM w/ cuff – the first medical app to take your blood pressure & keep track of it
- Asthma Maze – know which food additives & cosmetic ingredients can trigger an asthma attack
- Mayo Clinic Diabetes Type 2 Wellness Solutions – comprehensive guide to diabetes
- Free RX iCard – get discounts on prescription drugs at participating pharmacies, easy locater
- Calorie Tracker by Livestrong – keep track of your daily calories and weight loss progress
3. Most Innovative Medical App
- Airstrip – monitor your patient’s vitals, waveforms, labs, I/Os, meds, & allergies from home
- Webicina – a comprehensive online medical resource for both patients & healthcare folks
- Fooducate – scan any barcode in the grocery store to instantly see product health highlights
- PocketCPR w/cradle – real-time feedback so that anyone can do CPR correctly
- Google Translate – speak into your phone and it will speak out the translation
I thought I would mention this since Medibabble was created by recent graduates from the UCSF School of Medicine. It’s a creative, well thought-out, free medical translation app. I had highlighted the app back in Feb 2011 and deserves to be on the list of impressive apps.
The downside of voting is that you are required to enter your email and snail-mail address in case you win the prize. Good luck to all the nominees!
I do not have any financial ties with any of these apps.
What’s your perfect idea for a medical app?
The American Medical Association (AMA) is harnassing the innovative power of the people in its “AMA App Challenge”. What do you think would be the perfect app for medical students, residents, and/or practicing physicians in their day-to-day life?
This challenge is the perfect opportunity for all those with great app ideas but are too busy (or lazy) to do the technical, legal, and business groundwork to make the idea a reality. The down side is that once you submit the idea, AMA has full proprietary ownership of it.
Article Review: Role of instructional technologies in medical education
A conference called “A 2020 Vision of Faculty Development Across the Medical Education Continuum” was held at Baylor College of Medicine in 2010. At this conference, experts convened to discuss the changing role of technologies in medical education.
Their conclusions were summarized in this Academic Medicine article, which discusses 5 trends and 5 recommendations.
Trends
- Explosion of new information: It has been postulated that the world’s body of knowledge will double every 35 days by 2015. We are in an age of information explosion. Physicians will have to be able to process an ongoing onslaught of information throughout their career. Learning how to sustain lifelong learning will be critical.
- Digitization of all information: Medical records are slowly transitioning to an all-electronic format. Also in the age of Web 2.0, much of the digital content in health care are posted by the learners. Medical schools and residency programs will have to shift their approach to teaching, disseminating, filtering, and supporting learning in this digital age.
- New generation of learners: Learners in medical schools are primarily “digital natives”. They have grown up with primarily digital textbooks and references. They have grown up with Facebook and Google. In contrast, educators are usually “digital settlers” — not “born digital” but now “live digital”.
- Emergence of new instructional technologies: In the Web 2.0 age, there are a myriad of online tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, and virtual learning environments.
- Accelerating change: Computers will increasingly play a greater role in our everyday lives. I imagine something like the Minority Report movie. The future is almost here.
Recommendations
- Use technology to support learning: Technology shouldn’t replace face-to-face learning but rather supplement areas which are better served using technology. Technology definitely helps with geographically distant learning groups, teaching deliberate practice using simulation, and individualizing learning plans.
- Focus on the fundamentals: Keep your eye on the prize. Don’t be tempted to use the new technologies for the sake of being current. First and foremost, focus on learner needs and the course objectives.
- Allocate a variety of resources: Faculty should be taught how to effectively use instructional technologies in faculty development workshops. Furthermore, “e-learning specialists” should be available to help faculty create effective courses. These specialists include Web designers, videographers, and e-learning management system experts.
- Support and recognize faculty as they adopt new technologies: Institutional grants should be created to support faculty who want to adopt new instructional technologies. Furthermore, University promotion committees should value e-learning teaching modalities as academic scholarship. I wholeheartedly support this second statement– my blog is still considered a “hobby” rather an academic pursuit. Good thing I love doing this.
- Foster collaboration: We, as educators, need to share our ideas and resources nationally and internationally. Examples include the Health Education Assets Library (HEAL), MedEdPORTAL.
Reference
Robin BR, McNeil SG, Cook DA, Agarwal KL, Singhal GR. Preparing for the Changing Role of Instructional Technologies in Medical Education. Acad Med. 2011 – in early press. PMID: 21346506.
Trick of the Trade: Website resource on HIV medications
At our department’s first annual UCSF High Risk Hawaii Conference 2 weeks ago, Dr. Rachel Chin taught about complications from all of the HIV drugs on the market now. It’s a virtual alphabet soup: EFV, TDF, FTC, oh my. How do you keep track of them all?