Medical blogging may yet prove to be the most controversial publishing medium in medical history. But, like many aspects of the dynamic Web, the 80/20 rule – the pareto principle seems to apply: 80% of high quality information in the blogosphere is created by only one fifth (20%) of medical bloggers.
A case in point is Clinical Cases and Images – Blog one of the most influential blogs in medicine, managed by Dr. Ves Dimov of the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Dimov has received praise from mainstream media such as the British Medical Journal and Medscape. For me, a medical librarian with an interest in helping physicians stay informed, reading his blog helps me to stay current with hospital medicine (along with meeting my own UBC physicians here at Vancouver General Hospital.)
I’ve communicated with Dr. Dimov for a few months, but he was kind enough to answer some of my questions around how he looks for information these days, what are his favorite sources of information, and what he asks of his librarian colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic. Here’s a transcript of our interview:
1. Ves, you run one of the most popular blogs in medicine, and discuss how Google and Google scholar can help clinicians find the literature. How important are these tools and how often do you use them?
Dr. Ves Dimov: “Google search definitely changed the way I use the Internet. I do not type website addresses in the browser anymore; instead, I use Google to find them. This helps to avoid phishing due to misspelling since the top search result is usually the one that I want.
In addition, Google largely surpasses the searching provided by individual journals. Typing “NEJM, pneumoperitoneum” in a Google search box is often better and simpler than going to the NEJM website and searching for similar keywords. I use Google Scholar less than the regular Google search and find it is useful too. Its most valuable feature may be that the most reputable (& cited) source comes first.
PubMed is much more up-to-date than Google Scholar and therefore still feels more “professional” to me.
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2. If Google went belly-up tomorrow – what would you find the second most helpful tool that you have access to?
No doubt Yahoo! Search is the second best player in town. Google has a simpler and cleaner interface and continues to provide the best search results but I am very happy that we have 3 players [search engines] in this market. What I refer to on my blog as the GYM – Google, Yahoo, Microsoft.
3. How do you keep up to the latest research in your specific area of medicine?
I regularly read the “What’s new” section of UpToDate and I follow the specific journals in my field of interest. Medscape subspecialty pages are also helpful. I also enjoy reading the blogs of physicians with similar professional interests to mine, e.g. hospital medicine, nephrology, medical education.
As a suggestion, I advise busy doctors to check out the “big five” journals on the day they are published online; NEJM and JAMA on Wednesdays, BMJ and Lancet on Fridays and to mark the articles they want to read later (on the weekend?). It helps that many journals now have audio summaries of contents that you can listen to when you commute to work or exercise — iPod/iTunes have made CME portable. (See Dr. Dimov’s post on this issue here.)
4. Do you know about RSS feeds, podcasting, e-alerts, and other “sharing” technologies like wikis, blikis, teaching portfolios?
I am very much aware of these new technologies and regularly write about them on my blog. In fact, I am in the middle of a lecture series called “Web 2.0 in Medicine. RSS, Blogs and Online Collaboration”. The talk was presented to the Cleveland Clinic hospitalists, medical residents and professional staff and now I have scheduled presentations at the other teaching hospitals in Cleveland.
I am gratified to see that leading researchers are incorporating RSS use in their daily search of medical literature as a direct consequence of my presentations.
The Cleveland Clinic embraces IT innovation in medicine and it is a leading provider of free CME. The Clinic was the first major health institution to start video podcasting. The IT team incorporated my idea of “RSS feeds for the Cleveland Clinic in the News” and it is now featured on the front page of ClevelandClinic.org.
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5. Do you think your colleagues are opening up to these technologies? Or not?
Most physicians are curious by nature and they are willing to try new approaches if they can be useful and time-saving. After I introduced the concept of online word processing, Writely.com became the standard for article writing and collaboration at our section at the Cleveland Clinic.
6. Do you have access to a good medical librarian? If you could ask a medical librarian to teach you something, what would it be?
We have excellent medical librarians at the Cleveland Clinic but unfortunately I have been too busy to get to know them really well. However, my colleagues use the librarians’ expertise on a regular basis and they are very happy with them.
5. What are your favorite medical blogs?
KidneyNotes.com: Anything new in nephrology will be there. I like the fact that his blog is not limited to medicine only. Nothing beats columns like “Hilarious Journal Articles” and “Patient Quote of the Day”… 
KevinMD.com/blog: He always finds something new. In fact, I am guest-blogging for Kevin right now and I find it very difficult to keep up with his high-output style.
GruntDoc.com : A very honest look at medicine from ED perspective.
Over!My!Med!Body: Graham is a medical student and a blogging star. I don’t always agree with him – but his opinions are very stimulating.
Krafty Librarian: A medical librarian since 1998 and currently the medical librarian for a hospital system in Ohio.
DB’s Medical Rants – features the commentary on medical news by Dr. Robert M. Centor, an academic hospitalist and the president of SGIM – http://www.sgim.org/
Notes from Dr. RW – a hospitalist in Northwest Arkansas writing about clinical topics.
There are many other medical bloggers that I follow in Bloglines but I will miss the ones above the most if they stop blogging one day.
Yvonne Chan
lse721
Hi Dean,
Lowly first year UBC med student Jessica (you know, one of the student representatives working on the Biomedical Branch Library Committee with you) here; just followed the link in your e-mail.
I’ve recently become quite interested in medical blogging and some of the favourites listed are ones that I read regularly. I’ve started my own blog, To the Himalayas!, centering around international health and preparing for my upcoming medical work in the Himalayas.
If you are looking for more on med-info blogging, you may be interested in Health Care Vox (see especially the recent posts “New Site Grades The Media On Health Stories” and “What Are The Implications Of Google Health?”). Perhaps you’ve already read these?
Anyhow, thanks for posting this great interview; I plan to include a link to it (and your January report on Google Medicine) in my next update.
Take care,
Jessica
Dean
“It is interesting to see that all 3 of us recommend the “What’s New” section of UpToDate. The other trend is that, although we like Google Scholar, Pubmed is still the place for a comprehensive medical search. I think that Dean should do a formal survey among physician bloggers in order to detect interesting trends like the ones above.”
Ves