Following the Biomedical and Healthcare Blogosphere

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes

The mission of Highlight HEALTH is to promote advances in biomedical research, to encourage health literacy and to provide reliable sources of health and medical information (more on the about page). In support of these goals, when Highlight HEALTH hosted the Holiday Edition of Grand Rounds in December 2008, I introduced subscription options for eight credible, rotating health and medicine blog carnivals.

There’s a revolution occurring on the Web: those “authoritative” articles written on traditional, static websites are being replaced with blogs, wikis and online social networks. In the sphere of health, medicine and information technology, this “real-time Web” consists of many who are professionals in the field; their posts are listed below.
In the digital age, these are the characteristics of new media: recent, relevant, reachable and reliable.

Fast-forward to April 2009. There are now ten health and medicine blog carnivals that offer email and/or RSS subscription options. Each carnival feed post links directly to the blog hosting the carnival. You never have to search for the latest edition of any of your favorite health and medicine blog carnivals again! There’s something for everyone: the weekly best of the “medical blogosphere”, nursing, genes and genetic diseases, Web 2.0 and medicine, cancer research, neuroscience and psychology, surgical experiences, health policy, medical librarianship and palliative care.

Subscribe with RSS Grand Rounds Subscribe with RSS Change of Shift
Subscribe with RSS Gene Genie Subscribe with RSS Medicine 2.0
Subscribe with RSS Cancer Research Subscribe with RSS Encephalon
Subscribe with RSS SurgeXperiences Subscribe with RSS Health Wonk Review
Subscribe with RSS MedLib’s Round Subscribe with RSS Palliative Care Grand Rounds
carnival-calendar

A Google Calendar highlighting all of these carnivals is also available. The calendar is publicly accessible, so if you have your own Google Calendar, you can conveniently follow the Health and Medicine Blog Carnival schedule right next to your own by clicking on the +GoogleCalendar icon in the lower right corner of the calendar. If you click on any event, the description links directly to the specific carnival feed. You’re just three clicks away from the latest edition of any carnival in the biomedical and healthcare blogosphere. You can also subscribe to the Health and Medicine Blog Carnival calendar using iCal or RSS.

If you’re interested in more than one carnival, an aggregated feed is available. The Health and Medicine Blog Carnival Mashup enables you to receive notification of all the carnivals by email and/or RSS.

twitter-for-health

Lastly, many people are using Twitter to complement or replace RSS. If you use the microblogging service, you can also keep up with all of the new carnival editions by following @BioMedCarnivals on Twitter.

My hope is that these subscription options increase the popularity and readership of each of the carnivals. With all these choices, it’s easier than ever to follow your favorite health and medicine blog carnival(s).

Do you know someone who isn’t reading any of the health and medicine blog carnivals? Click on the “ShareThis” button below this post and share on Facebook or email this article to a friend so that they can learn how to follow the biomedical and healthcare blogosphere.

About the Author

Walter Jessen, Ph.D. is a Data Scientist, Digital Biologist, and Knowledge Engineer. His primary focus is to build and support expert systems, including AI (artificial intelligence) and user-generated platforms, and to identify and develop methods to capture, organize, integrate, and make accessible company knowledge. His research interests include disease biology modeling and biomarker identification. He is also a Principal at Highlight Health Media, which publishes Highlight HEALTH, and lead writer at Highlight HEALTH.