Over my morning cup of tea I had a quick read of the latest tweets on the HIVE feed. One of the tweets mentioned a medicine and social media course… well that looks interesting I thought and with a quick click I started learning all about a site called Webicina.
Webicina.com is a free service that provides curated medical social media resources in over 80 medical topics in 17 languages. Their mission is to let empowered patients and medical professionals access the most relevant social media content in their own languages on a customizable platform. So how does it work? Well you simply select your condition and the form of social media you’re interested in – news, blogs, podcasts, videos, twitter feeds, etc. – and Webicina gives you a nice little list of everything available on those platforms. Currently the site covers a range of medical conditions from acne to arthritis and cancer to epilepsy. Amazing. They obviously have this whole social media and healthcare thing wrapped up.
This brings us back to course they’re running: The Social MEDia course, the idea being that “digital literacy must be in the medical curriculum globally”. The course was launched two weeks ago; it’s online and Prezi-based, with tests and gamification. The best part? It’s free!
On the site there is also a list of interesting presentations on topics such as health search engines, e-patients, medical blogging and virtual worlds. You could spend the whole day on there and still come back for more.
Have a look for yourself at www.webicina.com and www.thecourse.webicina.com/
You’ve probably seen it hundreds of times and you almost definitely have one somewhere in your closet but have you ever taken the time to really appreciate it? The Woolmark logo, designed in 1963 is considered by many as the greatest logo of all time. Seemingly inspired by a skein of wool, the Woolmark was the winning design of a global competition to create a graphic identity for wool. Organised by the International Wool Secretariat, now called Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), the Woolmark is credited to an Italian designer called Francesco Saroglia.
There is almost no information on who Francesco Saroglia is and to date no one has been able to find any other examples of his work. Although he’s mentioned by numerous sources as the designer of the Woolmark, the Alliance Graphique International (AGI) attributes the logo design to Franco Grignani (1908-1999). The site suggests that he entered the competition under a pseudonym because he was a member of the jury charged with selecting the winning design. Another theory that has been put forward is that the logo was submitted by another of the panel’s judges – Spiriti.
It’s thought that Grignani was approached by Spiriti, an owner of an Italian advertising agency, and asked to design the Woolmark logo several months before the competition. Shortly afterwards, Grignani was invited to be on the judging panel only for him to see the very work he’d submitted to Spiriti months before entered by an unknown designer called Saroglia. The story goes that he was so embarrassed that his work had been stolen that he decided to conceal the fact that it was his design. When the other jury members chose it as the winning logo, he tried to overturn the decision but in the end it was his logo that was chosen.
Years later in an exhibition on his work he displayed a sketch from his diary with nine possible Woolmark designs that he’d given to Spiriti, and which had been entered into the IWS logo competition. Furthermore Grignani’s previous work shows that he was clearly interested in Op Art and played extensively with arrangements of black and white stripes.
The Woolmark is a timeless icon, beautiful in its simplicity. It looks clear and neat when it’s shrunk right down to fit on a label and powerful when enlarged on a billboard; most importantly it’s a great graphical mystery. And that makes it my favourite logo.
Around 2,000 teenagers and young adults in the UK are diagnosed with cancer every year. These vulnerable patients often feel isolated, bitter, confused and afraid as they struggle to come to terms with and overcome a life-threatening disease.
In recognition of the difficulties young cancer patients face, eyeforpharma are hosting their first annual Mobile Health Competition. Applicants must submit an idea for a phone application that will help teenage cancer patients manage their condition and make their lives easier. To help pick the winning idea eyeforpharma have created their very own super panel, comprised of teenage cancer survivors and charitable bodies.
The competition is open to anyone working for a pharmaceutical company, advertising agency, healthcare organisation, as well as patients themselves. The winner will have the opportunity to develop their application and see it launched. They will also win $5,000, which they can donate to a cancer charity of their choice.
The Teenager Cancer Trust, PatientsLikeMe, LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance, and a host of other charitable, patient, and mobile specialist companies have partnered with eyeforpharma for the competition.
Here at Hive we welcome any initiatives aimed at improving patient care and engagement, so we urge you to get involved and spread the word.
The closing date for entries is January 3rd 2012.
http://www.eyeforpharma.com/mobilehealth/
A few months ago, a new programme called Ngram Viewer graduated from Google labs. This tool, which sits within Google books, allows you to see how often phrases have occurred in the world’s books over the years. Google have digitalised over 15 million books, that’s almost 12% of all books ever published. With Ngram viewer you can now graph the occurrence of phrases up to five words in length from the year 1400 through to 2008 across 5.2 million books. With the Ngram Viewer you graph and compare phrases from these datasets over time, showing how their usage has waxed and waned over the years and rapidly quantifying cultural trends.
There are lots of different things you can check but you need to careful when interpreting your results. Experts warn that some effects are due to changes in the language we use to describe things (such as ‘The Great War’ vs. ‘World War I’). Others are due to actual changes in what interests us (‘slavery’ peaks during the Civil War and again during the era of the Civil Rights movement.)
So what can the Ngram viewer tell us about healthcare? Well it seems that the words ‘doctor’ and ‘hospital’ have had a similar cultural presence from 1800 to the present day. In comparison the use of the word ‘patient’ has steadily increased with a massive boost post-1950. Most interesting is the word ‘health’, which had a huge cultural presence in the 1600s followed by a dramatic slump in the early 1700s. It’s been increasing ever since.
Go and try the tool yourself, or have a look at what other people have searched for on the Ngrams Tumblelog.
