New space tourist Charles Simonyi (computer scientist and benefactor of Richard Dawkins) is having fun training to go up into orbit early next year.

He’s answering questions from website visitors on his site so if you’ve always wanted to talk to an astronaut, here’s your chance: http://www.charlesinspace.com/

A new text messaging service allowing patients to make appointments for treatment at a time convenient for them is to be launched at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London in the new year.

The hospital’s Genito-Urinary Medicine (GUM) and Sexual Health clinics will use the system to provide a 24-hour appointment service connected to the hospital’s existing database. The system is intended to reduce the amount of time patients spend waiting on the phone to arrange an appointment, and also help map and plan demand for sexual health services.

Link.

Medgadget, the top blog for learning about medical devices is running a competition for wannabe Sci-Fi writers:

While we’re blogging about all these great medical advances, we’re getting kind of anxious for the future to just show up, already. We can’t quite imagine what that future will be like… but maybe you can! Or, at the very least, you can tell an entertaining tale involving medicine, from the perspective of a few years from now… or decades, or centuries. Or, write about healthcare in a world just slightly different from today’s.

If you want to win the Digital Steth prize, click here to enter.

Review me is a new website that allows bloggers to substitute the odd blog post for a paid review or advertisement. This is one such advertisement! They don’t have any strict rules about what the advert should say so I think it’s a nice way of including ads in your blog without sounding too commercial.

Advertisers will probably want reviewers to write positively about their product but as long as it’s clear that the post is an advert I don’t think there’s too much wrong with that. There isn’t actually a requirement that the reviews be positive and ‘constructive criticism’ is suggested but I would have thought savvy bloggers will sway the sponsored posts in the positive direction if they want repeat orders for adverts.

For this particularly advert, I would say that Review Me is a nice idea for bloggers to raise a small amount of cash, especially if they are interested in reviewing websites or products.

The downside is that people might criticize your blog for going too commercial or accepting ‘bribes’ but I think that as long it’s obvious that you are posting an Ad then it’s not much different from any other kind of advertising.

Anyway, this has been an advert paid for by www.reviewme.com! If anyone buys any adverts from me, you’ll see the posts clearly labeled: ‘Advertisement’.

The BMJ recently published a paper written by a team of Australian doctors testing the use of Google as a diagnostic tool.

The article concluded that “Our study suggests that in difficult diagnostic cases, it is often useful to “google for a diagnosis.”Web based search engines such as Google are becoming the latest tools in clinical medicine, and doctors in training need to become proficient in their use.”

The study found that the correct diagnosis was found in 58% of cases.

At first glance only finding the correct diagnosis on only half of cases seems pretty poor (especially compared to what you would expect from a real life doctor).

However, getting any diagnosis correct is a considerable achievement for a tool not built specifically for this purpose and getting over half right is certainly significant. It may even be useful practically in difficult cases where experienced doctors may be looking for suggestions they hadn’t thought of.

It will be interesting to see how this figure progresses over time. How long will it take (if ever) for a search engine like Google to approach the accuracy rate of healthcare professionals.

Google currently doesn’t have access to the range of databases and research available to other diagnositic engines such as Isabel. Perhaps when more databases and research papers are indexed it’s rate of correct diagnosis will increase.

There has been a wide ranging discussion on this paper on the blog-o-sphere:

The IT for Healthcare Blog highlights the authors concerns about patient’s self-diagnosing with Google and points to this counter argument in Modern Healthcare.

The Clinical Cases weblog wonders whether the “wisdom of the crowd” basis of search engines is good enough to be relied upon for diagnosis making.

Tom Roper and Phil Bradley wonder why more medical librarians aren’t publicly commenting on the issue.

The Krafty Librarian has answered this call pointing out that the 58% success rate is only marginally better than flipping a coin.

BBC producer Stuart Hughes lost his leg in Iraq and has since been given one of the most advanced prosthetic feet available.

The bionic foot has a microprocessor built into mimic some of the actions of a human foot that allows the prosthesis to adjust to different terrains.

Read the story on the BBC Website.

Researchers at Manchester University have found that using a 3D Virtual Reality program to trick the brain into believing amputees can see and move a virtual reality limb can help with the problem of ‘phantom limb’ pain.

Read the story on the BBC website

If you like your Jazz to have a medical flavour, check out “The Arrhythmics“…

The Arrhythmics are a jazz, blues and swing band based around Edgbaston in Birmingham. From Relaxing laid-back grooves to Rat-Pack classics, funky jazz to full-on rhythm and blues, all musical tastes and entertainment requirements are catered for. The band was formed by members of the orchestra of the annual University of Birmingham Medical School musical and each member of the band is either a medical student, medical researcher or fully qualified doctor studying at, or having graduated from University of Birmingham Medical School.

There’s a new social networking site with a medical slant called Daily Strength.

The idea is to provide a support community for people facing similar life challenges by sharing stories, advice and support.

The site has been started by Doug Hirsch from Yahoo and has a range of health experts who act as advisors to the site.

Via TechCrunch