Medical & Health Blogs (Medblogs)

Taking off from my work on political blogs I am now looking at health and medical blogs. I had noticed them over the years, especially ones by students and friends (see below). On March 26, 2008 I spoke to the "Grand Rounds" Public Health seminar at the KU Medical School and simulcast to online participants at other Kansas Public Health Departments. My presentation was titled "PAGING DR. BLOG! Nontraditional Sources of Health Information." It was a study of how blogs and other social-interactive media are changing the dissemination and reception of health information for both the public and health practitioners. Medical blogs (medblogs) fall into certain categories: (1) Personal Illness MedBlogs: blogs written or edited by people suffering from a specific disease, condition, or injury. These can be: (a) First-Person Focus is on self, really for personal processing of illness. Started by one or very few people who are ill. Emphasis is on personal "I" in writing style and topics. Often contains self-encouragement. Often contains a chronology or updates...
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Hippocratic Oath for Medical & Health Webloggers (medbloggers)

As noted in my previous post I am now looking at the world of medical & health weblogs (Medblogs). One very important issue for medblogs resonates with a controversy in political blogging world: codes of ethics. Mary Schoen, one my students and I did a study of ethics codes in among political bloggers. In brief, we found very few had formal codes or even thought that they needed to have them. For health care professional who blog, the ethical issues are much acute. So I am working on an adaptation of the Hippocratic Oath to apply to the medblogger. Question: Should professionas who are MedBloggers take a Special Hippocratic Oath? (more…)...
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Perlmutter Speaks about Medical Blogs to New England Journal of Medicine

While political blogging gets lots of attention, there are many kinds of blogging that are equally or more popular. I have posted here in the past about the types of medical blogs and even suggested a "Hippocratic Oath" for medical bloggers. I had the opportunity to twice speak on the subject for the New England Journal of Medicine. David D. Perlmutter. Featured speaker on "Medical Blogging: Challenges and Opportunities for Health Professionals," New England Journal of Medicine New Horizons Conference, Wellesley, MA, October 24-25, 2008. David D. Perlmutter. Featured speaker on "Building an Online Community for Professionals: The Lessons of Political Blogging." Massachusetts Medical Society & New England Journal of Medicine Committee on Publications, Waltham, MA, October 22, 2008.   Originally posted October 29, 2008 at PolicyByBlog ...
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Perlmutter at Kansas Governor’s Public Health Conference on Social Media

David D. Perlmutter was a keynote speaker at the Kansas Governor's Public Health Conference in Wichita. His two topics were: "Marketing Health Information: The Challenge of Online Social-Interactive Media" and "How to Tell the Story of Your Success Via Online Social-Interactive Media" Originally posted May 5, 2009 at PolicyByBlog...
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