1-29-10 Community E-Newsletter/Call

Hello and Happy Friday.

This article serves as E-Newsletter as well as proposed agenda topics for today's OurMed Community telephone call. As our web technology and knowledge of MediaWiki software grows, so does the quality of our content. It might be easier to track discussion via our website here. As we push forward with a newly signed contract with Blueliner Marketing, we are humming along at a stepped up pace and we could use your input! In constancy with our mission, our non-profit community approach seeks your unbiased contributions to medicine and consumer knowledge on healthcare. A few new guests to the community will join us today from theUniversity of Michigan's Open Source initiative--we hope that you'll join us to welcome them.

 

Time: Friday (Today!) : 2 - 2:45pm EST

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

OurMed's Technology Update
This week, Blueliner, a top notch web development and marketing firm signed the OurMed Phase Two contract and Vincent Navarro will be heading up the Technology Committee. Meeting seperately, we'd like to include several members from this core community into a Tech Community, a few of which may be needed as liasons between the content committee and the design committee. OurMed pledges to honor anyone that puts in over 100 hours of volunteer work as aFounding Framer.

Here's what the Tech Committee might look like:


 * Vincent Navarro - Committee Chair
 * Elise Passikoff project manager/liason with Blueliner?
 * Gary Diopinto - quality assurance candidate
 * Bob Mawussi - quality assurance candidate
 * Sampada Paranjape - quality assurance candidate
 * John Volpe - advisor/liason?
 * Terri Moore - wiki advisor?
 * Tony Wasserman - open source advisor?
 * Stan Kachnowski - architecture and healthcare advisor
 * Florence Devaourd - advisor? (or content committee?)

Members are not set in stone yet but Stan Kachnowski (OurMed Board Chair) and Vincent will be aranging a design meeting with Blueliner in the comming weeks. If a representative from Blueliner is on the call today, feel free to say a few words!

WeAre.Us – A Patient support website
Last week we examined the website [|www.WeAre.Us] that focused on patient communities. We will hear a summary from John Volpe abouthis review of their site. 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.”

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.

Traffic 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. 

As it appears that their focus is only on a few disease groups, there traffic is rather low. 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.

Input (and eventually your vote) solicited for The Pepsi Refresh Grant Project
Last week we presented a grant opportunity and we are poised to submit it on Monday. Oleta McHenry, former accountant for the Wikimedia Foundation that made Wikipedia and current OurMed Board Director and Treasurer, had the original idea to apply for this grant and has a strong network to tap for votes.

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 29th 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.

The OurMed Symbiosis Project:
Following up from the last few weeks, Richard Knipel, President of the New York City Chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation and member of OurMed's content committe created a five-part plan to jumpstart Ourmed by developing positive symbiotic relationships with existing open content communities.

We will examine the first two points here.


 * 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

In order to best understand how to leverage the use of free content license, we will examine Medpedia's article H1N1 and see if we can eitheruse their introductionor expand on the current one.

Medpedia's Content Policy is quoted here:http://www.medpedia.com/terms

The Content, the Site and any associated software, and all Intellectual Property Rights (as defined below) related thereto, are the exclusive property of Medpedia and its licensors. Except as explicitly provided herein, nothing in these Terms shall be deemed to create a license in or under any such Intellectual Property Rights, and you agree not to sell, license, rent, modify, distribute, copy, reproduce, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, publish, adapt, edit or create derivative works from any Content except as expressly provided herein.

For the purposes of this Agreement, "Intellectual Property Rights" means all patent rights, copyright rights, moral rights, rights of publicity, trademark, trade dress and service mark rights, goodwill, trade secret rights and other intellectual property and proprietary rights as may now exist or hereafter come into existence, and all applications therefore and registrations, renewals and extensions thereof, under the laws of any state, country, territory or other jurisdiction, relating to the Content.

Medpedia's License to You

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, Medpedia grants free access to the Content in the wiki section of Medpedia, which is licensed to you and the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License (CC-BY-SA). The Content may be copied, modified and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the Medpedia Editor community as the author of the article. A prominent direct link back to the article satisfies this requirement.

Content on the "Accredited" sister pages that accompany some articles on Medpedia are not editable by the broad Medpedia community. They are there to allow for the case when organizations and physicians want to contribute to The Project but either want to retain their copyright and/or do not want their content edited by others (other than being deleted altogether). Therefore, content on "Accredited" pages is not part of the (CC-BY-SA) license of Medpedia and the copyright is solely held by the authors of that content, whose name appears on that page. Those pages are clearly marked at the top and bottom of the article as protected by the authors' copyright.

If you violate any of these Terms, your permission to use the Content automatically terminates and you must immediately destroy any copies you have made of any portion of the Content.

Links to Medpedia Content

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, Medpedia hereby grants you a restricted, non-exclusive, and revocable license to use hyperlinks or otherwise refer to the Content (collectively, a "Link"), provided that (a) Links may not suggest or imply in any way that Medpedia promotes, sanctions or otherwise approves any Web site, organization, individual, product, service or information; (b) you do not misrepresent the Medpedia Service or your relationship with Medpedia; and (c) you may not include a Link on any Web site that that could be construed as, or that a reasonable person may consider obscene, offensive, or inappropriate. Medpedia reserves the right to require you to remove any Link at any time in Medpedia's sole discretion.

Wikipedia 9th year Anniversary Celebration
Congratulations to Richard Knipel for putting on a great event last Sunday January 24th! Richard, Greg and Stephen will give a quick recap of the days events.

Richard, President of Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) New York Chapter and his strong Board of Directors, organized and executed a six hour conference at New York University with class. We have much gratitude for the help of our Wikipedian friends, including Florence Devouard (Former Chair of WMF that made Wikipedia) and Oleta McHenry, former WMF accountant and current Treasurer at OurMed. Both Florence and Oleta are Board Members with OurMed. More recently Dr. Stephen Press and Richard have been recent members and stellar contributors to the OurMed Community Forum. They have helped reduce spam and suggested protocols and strategy for developing the OurMed’s content.

We celebrated Wikipedia's 9th year anniversary with 18 Italian cakes, ok--call them pizzas, had lots of great presentations and break-out dicussions—To see what Wikipedia looked like nine years ago click here:http://web.archive.org/web/20010303221706/www.wikipedia.com/wiki/HomePage This is heartening for our team as we embark on launching a blockbuster as well.

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. Open.Michigan.edu
 * 8. Others?

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.

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 January 2010 have been:


 * Savealife (Stephen),
 * Gmiller (Greg),
 * T1 (Tushar),
 * Vnavarro (Vincent),
 * Anthere1 (Florence),
 * Pharos (Richard),
 * Johnvolpe (John),
 * JWSchmidt (JW)

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 Committee Chair)
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 (OurMed Content Committee)
MPH/Certificate in Aging, 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 Committee)
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 Committee)
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 Committee)
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.

Richard Knipel, OurMed Content Committee
I have been a volunteer for Wikipedia and other free culture efforts for several years, with a special focus on outreach initiatives to New York area cultural institutions, such as Wikipedia classes at the New York Public Library, museum photography with Wikipedia Loves Art, and urban photography with the TOPP nonprofit with Wikis Take Manhattan. I have served as President of the nonprofit Wikimedia New York City since September 2008. I hope to bring these experiences in helping to build Ourmed into an innovative and rich online healthcare community along the wiki model.

Elise Passikoff, OurMed Content Committee
Hey Elise, need that Bio!!

Greg Miller, OurMed Executive Director
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 Doctor degree from Southwestern University 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 health-care information policy and management having taught e-health and health-care e-business for nearly 20 years. He has authored over 100 scholarly papers and presentations for the world’s leading journals and societies in health-care 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.

Gmiller 05:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)