DSHI Systems is a physician-led medical technology company and a supplier of triage decision-support software solutions. Last week, the company announced the release of freeMD.com, an electronic doctor that performs an interview, analyzes symptoms and provides expert advice — all for free [1]. The website contains an expert system that emulates the triage function doctors perform when assessing the potential severity of a group of symptoms. FreeMD is able to analyze more than 3,000 symptoms and injuries in infants, children and adults.
FreeMD.com combines text and a video doctor to ask questions about your symptoms and past medical history, and then generates a record in the form of a personal web page. The personal web page contains important information about your condition, your answers to the interview questions, and links to specific health information. Consumers can print out a copy or email the record to their doctor for review. It’s as easy as clicking “E-Mail” or “Print” in the toolbar at the top right of the page.
According to Dr. Stephen Schueler, M.D., CEO of DSHI Systems [1]:
Consumers are on their own when making the decision to see a doctor. Do they go to the emergency room, urgent care center, doctor’s office, or the nurse retail clinic? How does the average person know what to do? We have created a life-like experience that provides personalized recommendations.
FreeMD provides answers to important questions, such as: what might be causing my symptoms; do I need to see a doctor; how do I care for myself; where should I go for care? The website enables consumer-driven healthcare by empowering consumers and enabling them to avoid dangerous delays in care. The system also suggests where to go for care, reducing dependance on the emergency room.
FreeMD Breakthrough Technology
- Uses video to conduct the interview (also uses text and photos)
- Analyzes thousands of symptoms and injuries
- Generates a personal web page that contains care instructions and a detailed health record
FreeMD Evidence-Based Medicine
- 100% physician-written and maintained
- Proven accuracy through millions of interactions
- Reviewed by doctors and nurses for more than 10 years
For the last eight years, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has used DSHI Systems’ Veterans Health Gateway, a sophisticated software system used by nurses to provide health advice via the telephone [2]. A similar system, 24/7 WebMed, has been used by University of Central Florida (UCF) students since 2004 to look up information on specific illnesses and allow the site to guide them through a series of questions about symptoms to determine the illness [3]. UCF now uses FreeMD, which replaces the older 24/7 WebMed system.
According to the website, freeMD doesn’t make a diagnosis, but instead determines your risk for one or more condition(s) that could explain your symptoms. Nevertheless, I tried freeMD a couple of times tonight while writing this article and was impressed with its recommendations. Give it a try and let me know your thoughts.
References
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DSHI Systems Debuts FreeMD the Web’s First Virtual Doctor. DSHI Systems Press Release. 2008 Apr 21.
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Veterans Health Gateway (VHG). Document Storage Systems, Inc. Services & Solutions. Accessed 2008 Apr 30.
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UCF Students Can Access Health Information, Advice on 24/7 WebMed Site. University of Central Florida News & Information. 2004 Nov 21.
“Media snacking” is a term used to describe the consumption of small bits of information, data or entertainment. Social networks such as StumbleUpon, Facebook and del.icio.us, text and media sites such as Twitter and Pownce, Flickr … the list goes on and on. People that consume bite-sized media chunks, short web videos, RSS feeds and blogs are picking and choosing media that can be viewed quickly and easily. Today, it’s all about the packaging of information.
It’s all about being brief and succinct.
In today’s fast-paced, hectic world, everyone is busy, especially doctors. With patient visits, paperwork and meetings, doctors have little time to learn from each other and the healthcare community. The Doctor’s Channel, an internet TV site for doctors, is a time-saving tool that offers doctors an informative media snack, enabling them to learn about the latest news, ideas and information quickly.
The site offers 1 — 2 minute streaming videos offering rich, concise content delivered by doctors, as well as opinions and editorials. Doctors can film and post short videos pertaining to anything they think would be of interest to their peers, such as therapy approaches, surgical procedures, new drugs, etc. Further, users can register on the site and, like other social networks, join groups related to their interests. The site covers a total of 42 therapeutic specialties.
The Doctor’s Channel President David Best, MD, MBA, said [1]:
We started The Doctor’s Channel because it’s apparent that the traditional system of medical education isn’t working as well as it could. Watching a talking head for 15 minutes on a computer screen is a crushing bore. The world is media snacking, getting their information in short bursts from cell phones, podcasts and RSS feeds. We decided that the physician, who really does have precious few minutes a day, is the perfect audience for short, succinct educational streaming videos. Our goal is to provide an engaging, interesting way for doctors to learn that quickly gets to the point.
The Doctor’s Channel is just one of several websites that offer reputable video content that can be viewed by health consumers. Additional websites include:
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icyou, a healthcare video community with hundreds health-oriented videos from certified medical and health professionals (as well as regular people)
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Empowered Doctor, a health and medical news website that offers the latest news with short video stories.
These are excellent alternatives to using YouTube as a source of health misinformation.
Do you know of other reputable medical video content websites? Let me know!
Additional health and medical video resources are listed in the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory.
Reference
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The Doctor’s Channel Launches First Medical Site with Short Streaming Videos That Allow Doctors to Learn From Each Other and the Healthcare Community. PR Newswire. 2007 Aug 22.
Welcome to the tenth edition of Medicine 2.0, the bi-weekly blog carnival of the best posts pertaining to web 2.0 and medicine.
Medicine: derived from the Latin ars medicina, meaning the art of healing.
Web 2.0: the second-generation of web-based communities and hosted services that strive to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.
Medicine 2.0 = Medicine + Web 2.0
For the uninitiated, lets begin with a general definition of the term Medicine 2.0 and the difference between it and Health 2.0.
Medicine 2.0 is the science of maintaining and/or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis and treatment of patients utilizing web 2.0 internet-based services, including web-based community sites, blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, folksonomies (tagging) and Really Simple Syndication (RSS), to collaborate, exchange information and share knowledge. Physicians, nurses, medical students and health researchers who consume web media can actively participate in the creation and distribution of content, helping to customize information and technology for their own purposes.
Health 2.0, a new concept of healthcare, also utilizes web 2.0 internet-based services but is focused on healthcare value (meaning outcome/price). Patients, physicians, providers and payers use competition at the medical condition level over the full cycle of care as a catalyst for improving safety, efficiency and quality of healthcare delivery.
The goal of both of these movements is the delivery of optimal medical outcomes though individualized care.
Medicine 2.0, Informatics and Personal Health Records
ScienceRoll
Why should doctors use web 2.0 in their practice? Dr. Bertalan Meskó, founder of Medicine 2.0, writes an Open Letter to the Physicians of the World, explaining how the new generation of web services will change the way medicine is practiced and healthcare is delivered.
Tech Medicine – Healthline
Dr. Joshua Schwimmer provides an excellent example of a physician using the communication tools of the web, describing A Mobile Medical Practice — Dr. Jay Parkinson.
Medical 2.0
Dr. Uri Ginzburg also writes about Dr. Parkinson and suggests other applications that would make his medical service more accessible to his patients in The New Age of the Outpatients Clinics.UPDATE: October 20th, 2007 Dr. Parkinson’s blog can be found here.
Gene Sherpas: Personalized Medicine and You
Dr. Steven Murphy, aka the Gene Sherpa, discusses his new personalized medical practice, writing About Helix Health. As most medical informatics systems are outmoded, he and his partners have developed their own electronic medical record (EMR) system.
Release Zero Blog
Peter Murray believes that heath informaticians need to address the issues of personalized health/medicine, online identity, new forms of online interaction and hyperlocality as he discusses Web Trends and Personalising Health/Medicine.
Constructive Medicine 2.0
Earlier this month, we witnessed the first of many online health management services as Microsoft launched a free, ad-supported online health portal and personal health information database. Dr. Rahul Shetty writes about the Microsoft Health Vault and his Perspectives on Personal Health Record.
Project HealthDesign
Lygeia Ricciardi also writes about the Microsoft health portal, giving us More on HealthVault: Profiling the Platform.
Kidney Notes
Google is working on their own personal healthcare site. Dr. Joshua Schwimmer presents A Stanford Medical IT Specialist Interviewed by Robert Scoble, a video conversation with a medical IT specialist who’s working with Google.
ScienceRoll
The future of patient records may be the use of 3D representations of the human body. Dr. Bertalan Meskó reviews Visualization Software of IBM for the Future of Medicine: Interview!.
Doctor’s Gadgets
Life Record has developed an emergency medical record (EMR) application that’s compatible with a web-enabled iPhone. Dr. Chris Paton covers a YouTube video demonstrating the Life Record EMR on the iPhone.
Web 2.0 Tools: Blogs, Video and More
DavidRothman.net
As Healia searches PubMed/Medline, David Rothman reviews some of its notable features. An excellent alternative to the native PubMed interface.
Business|Bytes|Genes|Molecules
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. Deepak Singh questions why their search is limited to peer-reviewed publications and is Proposing a “Plus Box†for Google Scholar.
Medical 2.0
Video sharing is one of many web 2.0 tools that can be used with medicine. Dr. Uri Ginzburg presents LabAction.com, a niche video sharing tool for scientists and researchers.
GooMedic Blog
Hamza Mousa shares his own list of medical student resources, reviewing a series of Neurological Examination Videos.
Healthcare Vox
Fard Johnmar announces the launch of a bi-weekly program to chronical how the Internet, computers and other technologies are impacting health globally. Introducing … The Digital Health Revolution.
Flags and Lollipops
Connotea provides free online reference management for researchers, clinicians and scientists and recently, there have been some issues with the service. Stew discusses Connotea and Postgenomic Complaints.
MedGadget
The blog is perhaps the fundamental web 2.0 tool and many of the posts mentioned here are written by physicians. Now it appears that blogs can be cited in biomedical literature. MedGadget describes the Citation Rules for Blogs from the National Library of Medicine.
Brain Blogger
Although many physician bloggers disclose their identities, others blog anonymously. Dr. J C writes about Anonymous Physician Bloggers and his reasons for anonymity.
Nursing Online Education Database
With so many blogs out there, which one do you choose? NOEDb.org provides a comprehensive list of the Top 100 Health and Wellness Blogs and Top 25 Nursing Blogs (By the Numbers).
Shelved in the W’s
Mark Rabnett presents his own select list of English-language med student blogs. 19% of online teens blog and as they grow up they are now Blogging Med School.
Envisioning 2.0
A number of websites are available today to rate physicians. Fard Johnmar writes about Physician Rating: New Study Brings Debate to a Boil.
MedSqod: Podcasting for Medical Professionals
Have you ever wanted to make a quality medical podcast? Dr. Peter Beck writes From The Podcast and New Media Expo. Find out more about MedSqod.
Health 2.0
Health Care Law Blog
Bob Coffield blogs live from the Health 2.0: User-Generated Healthcare Conference 2007.
MedBlog.nl
Jan Martens also writes an excellent review of the recent Health 2.0 conference in SFO [an overview]. I thought the Scribe Media film that opened the conference, A Brief History of Medicine, was awesome.
Shelved in the W’s
Mark Rabnett had other thoughts about the Scribe Media video. Above all the noise and commotion of the video, he’s Scratching an Itch.
Scott Shreeve, MD
Scott Shreeve evaluates the Athena Health Internet-based business services model and maintains there is a real business model in creating value through the aggregation, analytics and advising services they provide. He takes a serious look at the Health 2.0 Business Model: “Payment Dependent on Results”.
ICYou.com
In short video clip from the Health 2.0 conference, Bob Coffield talks about business models and what will attract people to utilize new web-based services.
Social Health Networking
The Health Wisdom Blog
Unity Stoaks discusses the challenge physicians face when prescribing their patients a trusted and unbiased online resource. New Pew Study Shows Patients Turn to Internet for Health Information; Now Can We Get Docs to Do The Same?.
Little Blue Pill
Asif Shah reposts Healthcare and Web 2.0, an article from Modern Healthcare, about healthcare startups using the models of social networking sites.
MedGadget
MedGadget reports that physician-only networks are easy to penetrate and outlines a series of questions they believe need to be addressed by Sermo and other physician social networks, announcing that it’s Confirmed: Sermo is Not for Physicians Only; New Important Questions Raised.
Medical Science, Biotech and Healthcare
SharpBrains
There’s only one place where laypeople can go to learn about medical science and its implications for their lives, investments and political interests. Alvaro provides 10 Highlights from the 2007 Aspen Health Forum.
Bayblab
University teaching used to be limited to chalkboards, slides and overhead projectors. Anonymous Coward discusses innovation toady when Teaching Science with Web 2.0.
Clinical Cases and Images
Dr. Ves Dimov touches briefly on the new biochech company 23andMe and asks if You Can Carry Your Genome Information on an iPhone?.
Nursing Online Education Database
The 2008 U.S. Presidential elections are fast approaching and there are a number healthcare issues. Do you know where all the candidates stand on all the issues? NOEDb.org breaks it down for us with a Comparison: Presidential Candidates on Major Healthcare Issues.
Evolution … not just a theory anymore
Web 2.0 is not just a technological phenomenon but also a cultural one. Greg Laden explores an otherwise typical survey of political attitudes of groups of academics, believing that Health Scientists Need a Slap Upside the Head.
Tech Medicine – Healthline
Dr. Joshua Schwimmer writes about iGuard: A New Drug Safety Website, one of the first web-based services that allows you to get free personalized safety alerts and updates about your medications.
Conclusion
That’s a wrap for Medicine 2.0 #10. It’s been a pleasure to host this edition and I’d like to thank everyone that contributed articles. Be sure to take a moment and let your fellow bloggers know this issue of Medicine 2.0 is available so that everyone’s hard work can be appreciated and enjoyed by all.
Have you written a blog article about web 2.0 and medicine? Submit it to the next edition of Medicine 2.0 using the carnival submission form. The next edition of Medicine 2.0 will be hosted at The Health Wisdom Blog on Sunday, October 28th, 2007.
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