PeRSSonalized Medicine

Dr. Bertalan Meskó, PhD student of the University of Debrecen has created a free access resource base for those interested in health related information, both medicals and lay people. We have conversed with the young doctor devoted to strengthening the link between physicians and Web 2.0 about his university course entitled Internet in Medicine.

What is PeRSSonalized Medicine and what makes it personalized?

Webicina.com is a freely accessible resource base for those who wish to read useful medical web pages, but cannot decide which ones are reliable and which ones are not. PeRSSonalized Medicine analyses the quality of Hungarian resources on health and diseases from a medical perspective, and presents them to the readers in a form that is easy to follow and does not require experience in informatics. The latest publications and posts in professional papers, medical blogs, news pages, video channels are made accessible on a surface that is as easy to handle as possible. We have collections categorised by diseases and professional fields, and we also have German, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish and Hungarian collections, which means that the best up to date resources of the given language can be followed easily on a platform translated to the given language. Everyone can set the resources they wish to follow with a single click and without registration, creating, so to say, a personalised medical journal. This is where the name PeRSSonalized Medicine comes from.

How is the information compiled on the website collected? Can the reader recommend or post new content or his or her own articles?

We have devoted a lot of time to elaborating a system that takes into account several criteria of quality (such as access information on the web site, actual author, etc.), and we rank the best pages in the given theme by these aspects, in order to include in the final collection only the ones that achieve the highest scores. The point is to create a medically reliable segment of the web, so that users need not hunt for adequate information in the multitude of Google search results. Anyone can recommend pages, moreover, we encourage our readers to do so, but each site will go through this final filter before getting incorporated into the collection. On the other hand, readers' own articles may not be included, as the aim is to select neutral articles that present a disease or treatment in the adequate way.

Who do you aim to reach through the site? Is it also recommended for interested lay people to follow it, or is it especially targeted at experts?

Half of the collections is targeted at interested lay people, while the other half was made for doctors, as neither of these groups can be neglected in collecting information. When a patient visits the doctor claiming that he or she has read something about a disease on the Internet, the physician has to be able to respond to this from the perspective of the web (he or she has to be able to judge whether the site is reliable medically, or to recommend other, more professionally reliable pages). On the other hand, patients also have to be provided with quality resources, so that they can really become partners in their treatment. In my opinion, it is unacceptable that all the data influencing medical decisions cannot be made available in 2009 without restrictions and expertise in informatics. Everyone interested in health provision should be enabled to access data contributing to the success of their treatment (statistics of hospitals, descriptions of diseases, publications on the latest treatments) easily, in their own language.

Do you agree with the common notion that the proportion of physicians who can use the Internet is not icreasing? If so, what can be the reason for this, and how could they be encouraged?

This is in line with the experiences of my own lectures, and the survey of the Pew Internet Research has also produced a similar result. There seems to be much more to encouraging them than to simply demonstrate the need on behalf of the patients. Indeed, there is an increasing number of patients who ask their physicians about the websites they can recommend with relation to a given disease. Should the number of such cases, such patients increase, sooner or later the medical society will also recognise that change is necessary at least in part, and that they have to open towards opportunities provided by the Internet. This world has its own dangers, but they can be handled with already tried tools. It is true, though, that the majority is not aware of these tools. This is why I have launched my course at the University of Debrecen, covering the relationship of medicine and the Internet.

What is the course about, and what are the experiences gained so far? Have you received feedback from students?

It is the end of the third semester with 115 students. This course comprises 20 lectures held within 10 weeks, covering everything a medical doctor needs to know about the Internet, the world of medical blogs, the modern challenges of being up to date, but also touches on subjects like virtual worlds, mobile applications, medical online resources and search engines before the final lecture discussing the future of the Internet. Students fill a questionnaire before and after the course, by which I intend to survey their habits of Internet use, and the way their attitudes and opinions change in relation to these themes. I will soon publish the results in a professional journal through an international collaboration. Students can find the material of the course at the course blog. The fourth semester will launch in English language in February.

What other opportunities are there in getting physicians to familiarise with Web 2.0?

It is difficult to highlight the prospects of medicine in a few words. I could mention the mobile applications with which a doctor can do an ultrasound examination in the patient's home, and then send the data to the clinic to find out if the patient needs to take the trip for doing a special examination. I also frequently mention the advantages of virtual worlds that enable us to organise international medical conferences almost free of any costs. In addition to this, we should not forget the continuously increasing amount of new medical information, a multitude that is easy to get lost in. Moreover, the tools of Web 2.0 make it a child's play to be up to date, I myslef follow 260 medical journals, devoting just a few minutes each day to this activity. The aim is to make the Internet a useful tool in everyday medicine, and help the patient become an equal partner with his or her doctor in the treatment.