Medicine 2.0

The Medicine 2.0 Congress was held last week in Toronto, Canada. I attended on my way back from the AMEE 2008 conference in Prague.

My role was to chair the session on medical education on day 1 and to present 2 talks on day 2, one on mobile computing and one on online communities.

The event was a great opportunity to catch up with my health informatics colleagues and meet face-to-face with previously only online acquaintances.

Peter Murray gave an excellent keynote address, introducing the conference and some of the themes of Medicine 2.0 on behalf of the IMIA. Gunther Eysenbach followed with his welcome and an introduction to the concept of 'Apomediation'. For those not in the know, you can read up on apomediation in his JMIR article introducing the concept.

The 'Medical Bloggers' panel consisted of Berci Mesko, Peter Murray, Jen McCabe Gorman, Keith Kaplan and Sam Solomon. The panel included some great presentations, and I found Sam's tale of medical blogging gone wrong particularly interesting.

After lunch, I listened to Leanne Bowler talk about teen health sites and Margaret Hansen gave us an insight into the world of virtual reality medical education.

Next up was the session I chaired on Medical Education. We had a great presentation from Panos Bamidis, who talked about the use of Moodle and other e-learning technologies he uses on his Medical Informatics courses. Deidre Bonnycastle was a very enthusiastic advocate of e-learning tools and told us about the various technologies she had tried at the University of Saskatchewan. Berci Mesko gave a very interesting talk about protecting your online reputation and he also showed us some of the fascinating presentations he has attended in Second Life. Finally, Rod Ward livened up the crowd with an animated discussion about all aspects of the use of Web 2.0 technology in medical education.

The next day kicked off with talks from Judy Proudfoot, Caryl Barnes and Lisa Whitehead on the subject of Methodological Issues and Challenges in eHealth Research.

Next up was my session with Carol Bond, Shirley Fenton, myself and Ken Seto. We talked about various aspects of running online medical communities for education and developing professional connections.

After lunch I gave another presentation, this time on the role of mobile technology in medicine. My co-presenters for the session included Benjamin Hughes and Indra Joshi, who talked about the kinds of websites junior doctors used; Miguel Cabrer, who demonstrated the amazing MedTing platform; and Marcelino Cabrera Giraldez, who talked about how Web 2.0 can be used for patients with rare diseases.

The day rounded off with presentations from Joan Dzenowagis of the WHO and Kevin Clauson who gave a very entertaining and interactive session on the risks associated with Web 2.0.

For more coverage of the conference check out:

Peter Murray on the HI Krew:

Rod Ward on Informaticopia:

Berci Mesko on Scienceroll:

John Sharp on eHealth:

Medicine 2.0 Photos and Links

Neil Versel on the Healthcare IT Blog:

Kate Jongbloed on Unpacking Development:

Even more at:

Subscribe