Facebook, Science and understanding medicine.
May 15th 2008 21:57
Signature Tune
Science 2.0 attempts to use the networking power of the web- like My Space, Facebook, You Tube, or Twitter- to create new and useful knowledge.
Consider the classic problem of comorbidities. Some 17 million people in Britain have a chronic condition, and 40% of them have more than one. American data show that patients with three or more chronic conditions account for 89% of Medicare spending- and patients with five or more account for 66%. Yet most guidelines on treating patients with chronic disease don't mention comorbidities- which is not surprising because they are based on randomised trials that excluded such patients. Mike Rawlins, chairman of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, has shown how following guidelines for individual diseases can leave patients with several conditions on a dozen drugs- many of them contraindicated.
This is from "on Medica" and talks of Cases Journal, an open access journal that aims to publish tens of thousands, even thousands of thousands, of case reports each year. We will publish anything that is authentic, understandable, ethical and “complete enough.” Our bias is to publish, and your report doesn't have to be “original” or “important” because we- radically- believe that every case is original and important.
Personally I think numbers alone will defeat these efforts, and the many variables, too, it seems.
But the editor, Richard Smith, seems to find it worthwhile, and he edited BMJ, from 1991 to 2004.
That would equip him well for the task.
Something for you to think about.
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