1-22-10 Community E-Newsletter/Call

Hi, how's your decade going so far? At OurMed we are rolling into an historical year! This article serves as E-Newsletter as well as proposed agenda topics for today's OurMed Community telephone call. A lot of news and projects have been buzzing around the community and I'd like to try propose something different: Because many of the recent community calls have been running over, I'd like to pause at the 30minute mark and allow participants to drop off and continue for another 30minutes--Just for today to see who's ok with that. All in favor?

This non-profit community approach seeks unbiased contributions to medicine and consumer knowledge on healthcare.

 

Time: Friday (Today!) : 2 - 2:30pm EST (pause) 2:30 - 3pm (new 2nd part)

Call in Number : 712-775-7000  Passcode : 634011#

If you would like to opt out of these emails, please let me know. Thank you for your continued interest in the OurMed initiative--we couldn't make this happen without your participation and are grateful for you pitching in!

Greg Miller, Executive Director at OurMed.Org

(212) 740-1850

Watch our OurMed YouTube Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqgYfFxEkLk

A: Weare.Us – A Patient support website
To date, many of the OurMed Community Discussions have been focused on how to write articles, organizational development or what is wrong with the biasedhealthcare information models found on the internet. There are many good things happening out there too and OurMed has done significant work to benchmark against those websites and approaches as well.

WeAre.Us is a website that is built for patients, one area of constituents that OurMed hasn’t addressed much. Take a look at www.weare.us and tell us what you think!According to their site, they “aim to empower patient communities to take control of their condition and their lives by providing knowledge, social resources, and tools in a place of paramount relevancy.”

Co-Founded by one of OurMed’s early sponsors, Dr. Declan Doogan of Pfizer, Head-Global Research &amp; Development brought a basket of corporate sponsors with him to provide an original $50,000 of seed funding to the project. WeAre.Us implements Web 2.0 Technology in the form of Social Support Networks. Often compared to MySpace and Facebook, they are patient-led, positive, and private health and lifestyle communities dedicated to patients, family, friends, and caregivers of those coping with chronic, life-shaping illnesses and conditions.

Do you like the site? Looking at how they developed successfully this was their history of organizational development as reported by:  http://www.crunchbase.com/company/weare-us At the time of this writing, it is not clear if they are profit or not-for-profit organization.

1) Chris Seta as Chief Architect, Co-Founder.

2) Dr. Declan Doogan as President, Co-Founder.

3) WeAre.Us received $50k in Seed funding. (8/08)

4) Carlo Rizzuto as VP - Business Strategy.

5) Stephen Doogan as Business Development.

6) Kev Burns as Senior Engineer.

7) Robert Anton Patterson as Chief Marketing Officer, Co-Founder.

8) Valerie Chavez as Head of Community Management, PR Contact.

Analysis: Upon launch, weare.us received 50,000 unique visitors per month due to publicity campaigns. During the first quarter of 2009, they achieved 25,000 unique visitors with traffic dropping off significantly towards the end of the first year. (file://localhost/Source http/::www.crunchbase.com:company:weare-us)

B: Input (and eventually your vote) solicited for The Pepsi Refresh Grant Project&lt;/span
Oleta McHenry, former accountant for the Wikimedia Foundation that made Wikipedia and current OurMed Board Director and Treasurer, suggested that we apply for the Pepsi Refresh Grant Project.

Greg Miller, OurMed Executive Director, in addition to the goal of writing 100 proposals to major Foundations this month alone, created the application with the below chief elements in the description. Please return comments and edits by January 27th so that we can submit at the first possible date 1 February 2010. If you have an OurMed user account, you can edit the grant on the OurMed website here:

http://ourmed.org/index.php/Pepsi_Refresh_Grant_Project

Online voting for the project is the key driver for success. Oleta suggested that Susan Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director, might be able to rally votes with her community.

There are many elements to this grant proposal including budget details and organizational specifics but the main thrust of the grant proposal are these:

BRIEF BIO: (300 Character Limit)
OursMedicina (“OurMed”) was created as a response to the lack of unbiased and well organized information on the internet. While many health websites already exist, the information they provide is often times cluttered and biased by advertisers who support the site and influence its content.

ABOUT THE PROJECT:
MAIN GOALS: (70 character limit each)

1) Create a Physician verifiable portal to instil a trustworthy Wiki

2) Re-design OurMed.Org with a sleek non-wiki design

3) Add a new layer of including user preferences and experiences.

4) Rally 200 medical pioneers in a community of innovative reformers

DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT PLAN (1000 Character Limit):
The "Democratization of Healthcare Information" project seeks to further the development of our free Medical Encyclopedia that has been a “Wikipedia Model” for health information. Our plans go beyond the public wiki approach and include a physican verifiable mechanism that will offer an accurate, non-partisan and free source of information that users can trust.

Working with the former head of Wikipedia and reform minded healthcare professionals, we are convinced that our revolutionary proposal has attracted the most innovative technology partner in the world that will enable all health and wellness participants to sort through unreliable, outdated and irrelevant information.

Addressing the need to improve disparities throughout the healthcare system, user ratings will establish dynamic standards of accuracy andl allow location-specific queries of the most effective drug and treatment options.

C: The OurMed Symbiosis Project:&lt;/span
Following up on last week’s news, Richard Knipel, President of the New York City Chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, has created a five-part plan to jumpstart Ourmed by developing positive symbiotic relationships with existing open content communities, in particular the Wikipedia community, and then building on and improving health and medical topics derived from that content on OurMed itself.

We would much appreciate the opportunity for Richard to share his plan today to:


 * 1. Ensure our MediaWiki and WYSIWYG configuration is compatible with Wikipedia
 * 2. Import high quality health and medical topics articles from Wikipedia: Featured articles and Good article
 * 3. Collaborate with Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine and its member
 * 4. Incentives for expansion of high quality content by Wikipedia editors through Wikipedia:Reward board and other model
 * 5. Develop blue-ribbon OurMed content based on expert review and improvements by health and medical professionals, with Flagged revisions system and Citizendium-like model

== D: Wikipedia 9 year Anniversary Celebration:== (Wikipedia Day NYC: This Sunday Jan 24th!)&lt;/span We have much gratitude for the help of our Wikipedian friends, first and foremost Florence Devouard (Former Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation that made Wikipedia) and Oleta McHenry, former Wikimedia accountant and current Treasurer at OurMed. Both Florence and Oleta are Board Memb with OurMed. More recently Dr. Stephen Press and Richard Knipel (President of Wikimedia New York City Chapter) have been recent members to the OurMed Community Forum and helped reduce spam and suggest protocols and strategy for developing the OurMed’s content.

This month Wikipedia celebrates their 9th year anniversary—To see what Wikipedia looked like nine years ago click here:http://web.archive.org/web/20010303221706/www.wikipedia.com/wiki/HomePageIn comparison, more than a few OurMedians think OurMed looks pretty good!

Richard has invited OurMedians to Wikipedia Day NYC. The event will be held at NYU's Kimmel Center at 60 Washington Square South from 1 PM to 7 PM onSunday, January 24th.

To register, sign up here: http://bit.ly/wikidaynyc

The free event, sponsored by Free Culture NYU and Wikimedia NYC, and joinedby eKindling Philippines OLPC group, will include tutorials and all kinds of discussions, and is especially oriented to newcomers and people who are interested in Wikipedia's unique community-driven model of an encyclopedia.

Information here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_DayAny questions about the event can be directed to Richard Knipel to: pharosofalexandria("at"}gmail.com

E: Building content on OurMed one article at a time – What to write about?
Changes or additions can be made easily with our WYSYWIG editor (what you see is what you get), making it much easier than Wikipedia and cutting the volume ramp up rate to the new site significantly faster.

At times posting new material my be difficult to give attributions for so it may be easier to publish previously published work Alternatively, you can choose content from one of the many free content ("copy left") sites such as much of the content on:


 * 1. NIH's National Library of Medicine and PubMed
 * 2. Wikipedia.org
 * 3. Medpedia.com
 * 4. GanFyd.org (original medical wiki site that says Medpedia copied them and boasts 2000 site visitors per day)
 * 5. PubMed.org
 * 6. Medline.org
 * 7. Others?

To post a new article, simply goto:
www.ourmed.org/index.php/ARTICLENAME

F: OurMed Policy Development:
Dr. Stephen Press has had a lot of experience writing on Wikipedia and has founded his own Wiki website (Wikichiro.org). He has used a template to lay down a structure for a collaboration on OurMed's Content policy: http://ourmed.org/index.php /Ourmed_policyhttp://ourmed.org/index.php/Ourmed_policy Additions to this page can be added here: http://ourmed.org/index.php/Talk:Ourmed_policyhttp://ourmed.org/index.php/Talk:Ourmed_policy

To begin, three aspects of Online content development behavior are: be polite, be bold, be referenced

As the OurMed community have spoken much about the medical wiki's need to have even more disclosure than Wikipedia, we all agree that a strong Conflict of Interest Policy will be necessary to realize the OurMed vision of integrity and credibility. A draft has been presented by Board Chair Stan Kachnowski.

G: NIH/NLM’s PubMed Licensing / NLM Mobile MedlinePlus
Last week, we were joined by Rob Logan, Senior Staffer from the National Library of Medicine to support us in finding out PubMed's content licensing policies in regard to using them in bulk on the OurMed website. We are currently awaiting confirmation as to the depth and scope of such usage. In the mean time, here are some recent developments on mobile phone technology using PubMed content:

NLM Mobile MedlinePlus

NLM is pleased to announce Mobile MedlinePlus (http://m.medlineplus.gov/

&lt;https://securenet.rfmh.org/,DanaInfo=m.medlineplus.gov+&gt;).

Wondering what the side effects are for your new prescription? Go to Mobile

MedlinePlus while you're waiting for the pharmacist to fill your order!

Visit Mobile MedlinePlus during your train ride to work to read the latest news

on diabetes.

Or, the next time you're in your doctor's waiting room, visit the "Talking With

Your Doctor" page on Mobile MedlinePlus to learn how to get the most out of your

visit.

Mobile MedlinePlus is available in English and Spanish (http://m.medlineplus.gov/spanish

&lt;https://securenet.rfmh.org/,DanaInfo=m.medlineplus.gov+spanishhttps://securenet.rfmh.org/,DanaInfo=m.medlineplus.gov+spanish&gt; ) and includes

a subset of content from the full Web site. It includes summaries for over 800

diseases, conditions and wellness topics as well as the latest health news, an

illustrated medical encyclopedia, and information on prescription and

over-the-counter medications.

There is a link to Mobile MedlinePlus from the MedlinePlus&lt;http://medlineplus.gov/

&lt;https://securenet.rfmh.org/,DanaInfo=medlineplus.gov+&gt;&gt; homepage, as well as

an FAQ at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/faq/mobile.html

&lt;https://securenet.rfmh.org/medlineplus/faq/,DanaInfo=www.nlm.nih.gov+mobile.html&gt;

that includes special instructions for Blackberry users. Use the Contact Us link at the bottom of any page on Mobile MedlinePlus to send us feedback.

Wherever you are, Mobile MedlinePlus puts reliable health information at your fingertips.

Thank you,

The MedlinePlus Team

Naomi Miller

Manager, Consumer Health Information

National Library of Medicine

Email: Millern ”at symbol” mail.nlm.nih.gov

H: Technology Update:
We are crossing our fingers about an annoucement about awarding the OurMed development contract. Kudos to Vincent Navarro, and Board Members Alex Fotopolous and Stan Kachnowski all their work over the last 7 months to crystalize the OurMed vision into technical specifications that our qualified vendor can execute. According to Stan, we aim to have a design meeting within the next two weeks.

I: Open Source Medical Computing Initiative in Europe:
Thanks to Professor Tony Wasserman (Carnegie Mellon, Silicon Valley), his initial relationship with this movement has connected OurMed across the Atlantic. Most likely we won’t be able to touch upon this in our Community Call today but we did want to post this news about a European initiative to Open Source medical computing in Europe.

J: Accounts with OurMed – Has everyone got one? What’s your ID? Have a Talk Page?
OurMed's accounts are free, easy to get and really make you apart of the community. Be one of the early pioneers to own one.

Click here to get started now: http://ourmed.org/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin&amp;type=signup&amp;returnto=Main_Page

Once you have one, you can share your background with the community by filling out a bit about you on your Talk page.

K: Posting on OurMed.Org:
Now that you have an account--Use it to nudge the OurMed movement forward! You can write about nearly anything, just keep your comments about new ideas,health and medicine.--It's really important that OurMed gets off the ground using a communities collaborative approach to building it, just as Wikipedia did nine years ago.

Please click on this link to make a small post about whatever's on your mind. You can suggest articles, design or features that you'd like to see on the site. http://ourmed.org/index.php/New_Ideas_for_Site

Most Active Authors in the past month are:


 * Savealife
 * Gmiller
 * T1
 * Drsjpdc
 * Anthere1
 * Pharos
 * JWSchmidt
 * Tarun.singha

L: OurMed Pioneer Bios:
Just like the Wikimedia Foundation that created Wikipedia OurMed will mostly be driven by volunteers. In addition to the occasional business or technology consultant, the profile for OurMed’s volunteer community will be talented professionals that want to make bring forward the OurMed mission to the end-goal of having a global impact.

To incentivize our founders, we have created the Founding Framer Program. To date, the following folks are eligible and working toward a goal to volunteer more than 100 Communty hours:

Vincent Navarro (OURMED TECH)
212 444 2633

vnavarro”at”pipeline.com

Research Specialist @ Weill Medical College

Online Database Manager @ Scientists Without Borders

I have done basic science research for over 15 years in the area of prostate cancer. During this time I have had the privilege of working on the development of monoclonal antibodies targeting prostate cancer from concept through clinical trials. This has afforded me a keen insight into development process of therapeutic drugs. In addition, a strong interest in computers has seen me pursue a graduate degree in computer science in addition to my undergraduate in Chemistry. As a result I have designed and developed a clinical trials management system in my laboratory. I am currently the Online Database Manager for Scientists Without Borders. There, I am responsible for the administration of the database and development of the web portal.

Eileen McGinn, MPH
Certificate in Aging (OURMED CONTENT) qedeileen”at”aol.com

Worked in international health and development for 25 years, including several years living in Africa and Asia. Currently PT Research Manager for Nathan Kline Institute, working on the interrelation of poverty and mental health and health equity for persons with disabilities. PT tutor for immigrant high school students at Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School. Volunteer work for many different agencies, including health, disability, immigrant, women's, peace, international. Have written for various websites on health issues. Especially interested in translating technical work into comprehensible language, community-based participatory research and the Capabilities Framework for development and justice.

Geoff Hayden, MD (OURMED CONTENT, RECRUITMENT)
Geoffhayden”at”gmail.com 615.479.6499 (Cell)

I am a practicing Emergency Physician, splitting time between NYC and South Carolina. I have been in academic practice since 2005 (Residency at Vanderbilt University, Fellowship at University of Pennsylvania), with an emphasis on resident education and emergency ultrasound. My interest in OurMed.org stems from a dissatisfaction regarding the abysmal state of preventive care and a general lack of health care coverage in the U.S. I see OurMed.org as an essential resource to connect patients to health information and health providers.

I imagine my role with OurMed.org in terms of producing content, recruiting other physicians for ongoing contribution, and assisting Greg with the development of a user-friendly, comprehensive clearinghouse of useful health care information.

Geoffrey E. Hayden, MD, FAAEM, FACEP

Adjunct Clinical Professor

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Department of Emergency Medicine

Nashville, TN

Piedmont Medical Center

Emergency Department Attending

222 South Herlong Ave

Rock Hill, SC 29732

Vanessa Moore (OURMED RECRUITMENT)
MVanellen”at”ourmed.org 914-665-4534 (home) 914-751-9758 (cell)

Vanessa Moore is a native New Yorker who brings 7 years recruiting experience to the Ourmed recruitment effort. She would like to leverage her experience recruiting volunteers to Ourmed, a forward thinking and progressive approach to disseminating unbiased healthcare information to the public. She has worked in both corporate and nonprofit settings including a consulting engagement for the Department of Education and most recently at the Westchester Independent Living Center, an advocacy group for people with disabilities. She studied Social Sciences at the Lincoln Center campus of Fordham University.

Dr. Stephen Press, DC, PhD, CCSP, FACSM, FICC, ICSSD (OURMED CONTENT COMMITTEE)
A practicing Chiropractic physician (33 years). Was chief physician for the "Unified Team" (former USSR) at the XVIth Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France in 1992. Founded the World Governing body for sports Chiropractic known as "FICS", for Fédération Internationale de Chiropratique du Sport, now headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland at the Maison Internationale du Sports, and administered in Toronto, at the World Federation of Chropractic offices. I served on the Medical commission of two IOC recognized World Sports Governing bodies; 1st as Chairman for the Fed. Int'l de Roller Sports, and then as Vice-Chairman for FIDE (Chess). Founded the website IAOCO.org, and co-founded WikiChiro.org. Today, I serve as advisor for the International Sports Chiropractic Association, which is the liaison body interacting with the World Olympian's Association. I speak, English, French, Russian and Spanish, play the cello and clarinet, compete in pool, and follow biblical archeology and do artist blacksmithing, making swords and medieval armor as hobbies.

John Volpe (OURMED TECH)
johnvolpe1”at”yahoo.com 516-221-4692

My background is primarily in accounting, finance and business operations, primarily in the financial services industry. While I'm not a technical professional, I have participated in and managed numerous technical and business projects, primarily involving financial systems. I also worked as a management consultant for a Virginia based company that I did consulting work for the federal and state governments. I am currently retired. In addition to playing tennis and engaging in other physical activities, I volunteer my time and an Account Director with an NYC based organization that provides service grants in the form of a volunteer project team that manages strategy, financial, marketing and development projects for non-profits. My interest in this project is really from the perspective of someone who is a consumer of medical information and is interested in the efficient delivery of medical information to the public.

Greg Miller, ED
at OurMed greg.miller@ourmed.org 212-740-1850

Have 17 years of Corporate Finance and Marketing experience for Fortune 500 companies including nine years abroad (Germany, England and Japan). I've been here in New York since 1996, always passionate about developing new brands, ideas and products. Did Marketing Analysis for ANA, a Japanese Airline, Finance for Cablevision's HD Satellite business and Revlon. Since 2005, I've been inspired by non-profits, created New York's Dance Parade and have worked on OurMed since the Fall of 2008. I'm inspired by the transparent, non-profit approach to the democratization of healthcare. OurMed has a small office at Columbia Medical Center's Audubon Business and Technology Building--Come by and visit us!

3960 Broadway (Entrance on 166th Street) Suite 301

o (212) 740-1850

c (917) 627-7155

greg.miller@ourmed.org

Watch the OurMed Presentation: http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ad4ohgeyfGzCZGRoNnFuNW1fMzljMmh2OW5jdw&amp;hl=en

Florence Devouard
OurMed Board Member fdevouard@anthere.org

Florence Devouard served as one of the elected representatives to the Wikimedia Foundation Board starting June 2004, and was the Chair of the WMF Board from October 21, 2006 until July 16th, 2008. Florence was born in Versailles (France). She grew up in Grenoble, and has been living since then in several French cities, as well as Antwerpen in Belgium and Tempe in Arizona. She holds two masters, one in Agricultural Sciences (a 5-year degree in agronomical engineering (Diplome d'Ingénieur Grande Ecole) from ENSAIA and the other a postgraduate degree (DEA) in Genetics and Biotechnologies from INPL.She has been working in public research, first in flower plant genetic improvement, and second in microbiology to study the feasability of polluted soil bioremediation. She was employed until 2005 in a French company, to conceive decision-making tools in sustainable agriculture. She is now a consultant in Internet Communication Strategy. She joined the Wikipedia adventure in February 2002 and is known as a contributor under the pseudonym Anthere. Florence is 39, and lives in Clermont Ferrand with her husband Bertrand and her three children, Anne-Gaëlle aged nine, William eleven and Thomas two. On May 16 2008, Florence was made a knight in the French National Order of Merit, proposed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as "chair of an international foundation"

Alex Fotopoulos
OurMed Board Secretary alex@broadwaylawoffices.com

Alex Fotopoulos has served on the board since October 2008. He attended Rutgers College in New Brunswick, NJ and then received his Juris Doctorate degree from Southwestern Univesity in Los Angeles, California in 1990. He has experience as a litigation attorney and as an entrepreneur. He has held held positions as an attorney and as part of the management team of such high technology companies including AT&amp;T Wireless, T-mobile, Nextel, Metricom, GTE Internetworking as well as small local start-up ventures. He is a licensed Attorney in New York, New Jersey and California.

 

Stan Kachnowski
OurMed Board Chair swk16@hitlab.org

Stan Kachnowski is one of America’s distinguished scholars in healthcare information policy and management having taught e-health and healthcare e-business for nearly 20 years. He has authored over 100 scholarly papers and presentations for the world’s leading journals and societies in healthcare technology management, informatics and e-governance. In 2003 he was elected as a Fellow in the Royal Society of Medicine in the United Kingdom for his research with the National Health Service in using handhelds to track patient data. In 1996 he was elected to the US-based College of Healthcare Information Management Executives. Stan is currently a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India.

Oleta McHenry,
OurMed Board Treasurer Newsgirl_fl@hotmail.com

Oleta McHenry was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Ohio. After graduating high school, she briefly attended Wright State University in Dayton, studying Political Science. She transferred to St. Petersburg College in St. Petersburg, FL and received her A.A. degree in Liberal Arts. Oleta earned her B.S. in Accounting from Florida Metropolitan University in Clearwater, FL in 2006.

Oleta worked for the Pulitzer prize winning newspaper, St. Petersburg Times as a circulation manager. After receiving her degree in accounting, she worked briefly in the insurance industry before joining the Wikimedia Foundation as the fulltime accountant of record. While at the Wikimedia Foundation, Oleta helped put in place accounting practices that would help the company in growth and development. She did not follow Wikimedia to San Francisco and now works for a large medical supply company managing the General Ledger for several regions within the United States. Oleta resides in St. Petersburg, FL and works as an accountant.