2007: The Year of the Personalized Genomics

George Weinstock, co-director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine, wrote a short, interesting article posted to MIT’s Tech Review, contemplating whether this year may be remembered as the year of the personalized genome.

In April, two companies, 454 Life Sciences and Illumina, announced plans to sequence individual human genomes. While genotyping tests have been used for decades to sequence single genes, DNA sequencing has never been done on the entire genome of a single person.

Healthcare Self-Management Suggestions for e-Patients

We are witnessing a transformation of healthcare in the information age. The Internet has become a powerful healthcare resource for both physicians and patients. e-Patients represent a new type of informed health consumer, a term encompassing both primary patients who use the Internet to educate themselves about a given medical condition for their own illness and the friends and family members who go online on their behalf [1].

The Trust and Credibility of Healthcare Blogs

A recent survey from Zogby International finds that more than half of Americans (55%) believe bloggers are important to the future of American journalism and 74% said that citizen journalism and Web 2.0 websites such as NowPublic will play a vital new role [1].

Web 3.0 and Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine

Since January, Berci Mesko over at Scienceroll has been writing about how Web 2.0 is changing medicine. He’s written a number of interesting articles, including Medical wikis: the future of medicine? and Medical Web 2.0 Sites.

In Web 3.0 and medicine, Berci writes about WikiProteins, a new site that plans to use Web 3.0 technologies to incorporate real time community annotation into a semantic framework. The article Meet the uber-wiki is a great review of the up-and-coming resource.

Pharmacy Errors – Avoid Prescription Dispensing Mistakes

Recently, an undercover pharmacy investigation conducted by 20/20 and reported on by Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross evaluated prescription dispensing at some of the best known U.S. chain drug stores.

The results are surprising and the suggestions at the end of this article really could save your life or that of someone you love.

Pharmacy errors and prescription drugs