OrthoDoc

The field of Orthopaedic Surgery is exploding!!

There is so much to learn today. All that we learnt during our post graduation is so out dated that sometimes I get frustrated. Constantly whenever I browse the net I keep my eyes open for material worthy of notice. Most of the material is of two main types: either a busy surgeon with a webpage that is loaded with information which is more of a web page filler rather than being informative or it is a big-notch company that is trying to sell its equally big-notch product. The latter are heavily biased in their delivery of information towards the product they sell. In other words, both the types are grossly inadequate. Of course there are exceptions, but they are rare or out dated.There is a need for more informative material for both the student and the patient. Someplace where the person can visit to collect reliable info. Something on the lines of an OKO or the emedicine portals. While the former is a paid site, the latter is very limited. There were a few learning materials available in the NEJM site but then this requires a subscription.

I have been looking at Wikibooks for quite some time now. A book on Orthopaedic Surgery is also listed but contribution is scanty and the book has lain empty. Wikiversity could be the ideal ground for development of some teaching material. Teaching today, goes beyond books. With the availabilty of digital cameras and excellent presentation software it should not be hard to create materials like slide presentations or even instructional videos. And once we have some material then we can have some basic courses set up as well.

But am pretty unsure about how to get collaborators onto the projects. The fact that there are so many open-source projects with community contribution in other subjects, it makes me wonder when we will have the same situation in Orthopaedic Surgery.

You may say I am a dreamer,
But I’m not the only one.
I hope some day you will join us,
And the world would live as one…
John Lennon.

Technorati Tags: Orthopaedic, Online learning, Wikiversity

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Right at the moment …ubuntu is the new love of my life. Its working fine with my PC and I am not too far away from chucking win xp out of my life. On second thoughts that may not be so easy… considering how bound people are with Windoze. Its taken the freedom out of their life.

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Technorati Tags: Ubuntu

I came across this new search engine and thought I should mention it.

From a long time now Google has been a de-facto search engine …and I have been using it almost always for hunting down stuff in the web. Its search results have been satisfying. However, sometimes in the past, I have used it to hunt down medical information and have been, more often than not left high and dry. Is that the reason why they came up with Google Scholar? I don’t know! But at that point of time I assumed that if I didn’t get it by googling then it probably did not exist. Now to think of it …what a dangerous thing to do!! I presumed that Google was not perfect and that missing out on information was not intentional. I was content with whatever it was dishing out …that is until I started blogging. The first blog was in blogger, who can go by this blog host especially when it is on offer from the mighty google and co! But then, being the restless guy I am I kept on experimenting until I hit upon wordpress. You could tweak it around until it hurt your fingers. I had a blog running immediately, and the fact that it was open source somehow made me think it was the alternative to blogger. But then the free host wordpress.com had its own limitations. So I went on my search again and finally settled for edublogs.org. In the end I had three blogs by three different hosts. The first month with all the pumped up enthusiasm I went on a blogging spree at the edublogs site. Suddenly I wondered about how my blog figured or rather ranked (am a measly human being after all!) in the search engines. What happened really threw me off the block. All the blogs had the same name and though I was not blogging so much at the blogger website, that blog seemed to top always in the google search. Hokay, maybe …google had not yet crawled through my other sites. I submittted the sites specifically to google. Gave it some time and checked again. No, blogger would always come out on the top. I skipped to Yahoo Search …and this time to my surprise the edublogs site, which I was actually using for blogging came out up front. And not until had I deleted the blog from blogger did the same happen with google.

That made me firm on two issues:

1. Keep my blog away from the blogger platform
2. To use other search engines as well

I am not saying google is horrible …it still remains one of the best search engines but somwhere along the line it is failing. If it continues to come up with biased information like this it is bound to fail miserably. I think this is what monopoly does to most of us. So when I hear about Google taking up YouTube or Jotspot something inside me tells me its not right …and makes me very uncomfortable.

So as far as blogging is concerned technorati beats google blog search anyday.

When I see search engines like Guruji …I feel all is not lost! What I like about Guruji is that it is India Specific. It can also deliver info that is city specific, this I believe has been possible through Infomedia (Yellow pages group). Guruji may never make it to getting even close to Google India but only time will tell if it will survive this big bad world that we so lovingly call the world wide web.

Tags: Google, Guruji

There has been a site I have looking into for quite some time now. When I first came across OR-LIVE, I was amazed at the possibilities in the net world. This particular site web casts surgeries live onto the web world, straight from the operating room. All types of surgeries involving disciplines like obstetrics, pediatrics to orthopedic surgery. The schedule is put up on the front page for everyone to see. The best part about it is that you don’t have to pay a dime to do so. You can watch the surgery from the comfort of your home, and any surgery for that matter free of any cost.

For Patients

You get to see more or less what your doc would be doing if you are planning to have a particular surgery done in the near future. Most of the surgical videos have a moderator who in conversation with the operating surgeon reveals the premise of the surgery. You get to know the details of an operative procedure as you keep watching it being performed. You can even mail in your questions for the moderator to answer live! This is not for the weak-hearted who feel queasy on seeing blood. But nevertheless you can switch off the screen when you like and listen to the commentary instead. A schedule is put up by about a month’s advance. Fear not, if you are busy or missed one. They have most of the surgeries archived …they call it OR-Replay. They even have a search box provided and you can pull out the surgical video if you know the surgery by its name. You need a Windows Media Player to run all the videos. Since it is a streaming video a net connection with decent speeds is necessary. Those with ordinary dial-ups can wait for the entire video to load before playing it. Otherwise they will have to watch it in bits. Mind you, the surgeries are quite long, more than an hour at least, so be prepared and keep yourself free. All of these surgeries are performed in the US so the intended audience is per se Americans.

For Surgeons

Most of the conferences these days have a live demo by a senior, experienced and trained surgeon. OR-Live is nothing but an extension of the same demo. The intended audience is world wide. This is most likely to appeal to juniors and students very well. Senior surgeons will always remain skeptical! For example, the two-incision MIS Hip replacement is yet to pick up in India. Seeing the surgery being performed live is a good introduction to the subject in question. But in no way is it sufficient enough to learn and start doing it on your own.

Pros and Cons

This is the age of information and any information is always welcome, especially about surgeries that have always been performed behind closed doors. Seeing it with your own eyes will beat any description of it. Is it informative? Yes it is, you have a moderator to make the sessions interactive. You also have a slide display by the side with diagrammatic representations of the surgery in progress. What I found disturbing is that most of the procedures web cast are relatively new procedures …the ones that involve new or difficult instrumentation. Ideally the site should be web casting the most commonly done procedures. It is not difficult to understand the reason behind this. Most of these procedures are sponsored by the companies involved. And the industry’s concern about selling a new product is only well known. But then on the other hand I can’t help appreciating their involvement in the educative process. Ultimately from the patients’ standpoint we benefit from the surgery more than anyone else. Surgeons require a more serious debate centered around the procedure in question. Such a web site is unlikely to provide the necessary platform. They are best served by conferences involving members of their own fraternity. Certain online journals, particularly New England Journal of Medicine, have attempted to host videos of procedures. But these are of the most basic nature and concern routine ward procedures. Others like Wikiversity have expressed intentions and hold a lot of promise to produce quality learning tools, but are still a long way from bearing any fruit. Until then surgeons have to do with sites like OR-Live.

Update: Those familiar with youtube.com can look out for the user ORLIVEDOTCOM. You will find most of their videos you want at You Tube. Good Luck.

Tags: Live Surgery, Orthodoc, Orthopedic Surgery

That was a long break I took. Sorry about guys who kept returning to find out about me. Apologies to Scanman for not having responded to his tagging. I am sure he has forgotten about it by now. I got caught in my work and staid away from the net just to prove to myself that I was not addicted to surfing. Apologies to Moof as well. Going off un-announced was uncalled for, whatever the reason maybe. There are those un-named people who make visits to my site. Sorry about not posting for such a long time. Of course, before I forget, interfer-on, I am sorry I could not reply to your comment earlier. My guess about you being in Australia was totally off the mark. I was trying to trace you down via your internet connection. Silly of me! I didn’t realise that all the internet connection in South India comes through a huge cable from Australia via Singapore.

Secondly form the middle of October, my site had been the target of comment spam. It was my host Edublogs rather that was the target. Our site admin attempted anti-spam measures that prevented me from logging into my site! My IP was being accused of being the source of spam. Goodness lord!! So I decided to lay off the site and the net for a while. Looks to me the site admin has installed akismet and things are back to normal.

I can log back in and thank heavens! I am no longer a criminal.

Back to blogging form the next week. I have a lot to catch up on.

Tags: OrthoDoc