As part of our Notable Books series, Nicholas Christakis will be reviewing the interesting relationship between our social networks and disease burden (and related phenomena). This is in context of his recently published book:Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. Time: December 10th, 4pm. Place: Countway Library of Medicine, 5th floor, Ballard auditorium.
Just as Open Access is a threat to an unsustainable publishing model, so it seems are open source medical applications to the most of the closed-source offerings of the for-profit sector. In conjunction with the development of substitutable platforms, there is a new and widening opportunity for independent developers to innovate and disseminate their solutions and to let a larger and more diverse ecosystem of solutions to be adopted. What is most promising in this regard is the growing acceptance of open source solutions for implementation
Addendum: It's rewarding to see our efforts listed here as among the top 10 open source software projects changing medicine (i2b2 and indivohealth).
Who is more knowledgeable? The physician who remembers more diagnostic tests than any other physician or the physician who is the quickest and most savvy at online searching for the relevant tests? Who is the most technically expert surgeon? The one who has the most nimble fingers and the sharpest eyes or the one who can make herself most comfortable with robotically assisted micromanipulators? This story taken from athletics suggests that we are going to be uncomfortable with some of the answers to these questions for many years to come.
