Insidermedicine to Distribute Latest Medical News Through Voxant's Viral Syndication Network

Physician News and Video Available to Web Publishers and Blogs Through TheNewsRoom

RESTON, Va., Feb. 7, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) (PRIMEZONE) -- Voxant today announced the addition of Canada-based Insidermedicine to the extensive library of health and medical content available to members of its Viral Syndication Network(tm) through TheNewsRoom(tm) (www.thenewsroom.com).

Insidermedicine, a leading health and medical news service created and run by a team of world-class physicians, offers daily, multi-language medical and health news in both written and video format, as well as in-depth segments on over 100 medical conditions. Insidermedicine's video content also is syndicated by many medical schools and libraries across the world.

"Insidermedicine is delighted to collaborate with Voxant on a new method to deliver our unique video content and educational messages," said Sanjay Sharma M.D., M.S., a Queen's University Professor of Ophthalmology and Epidemiology, who also serves as Insidermedicine's Editor-in-Chief. "Most doctors are used to reading journals to stay on top of the latest medical breakthroughs. Insidermedicine was created for patients to get access to the same information at the same time their doctors are receiving it. We believe that joining TheNewsRoom will significantly increase our reach and assist us in getting cutting-edge medical information into the hands of those who need it the most."

Insidermedicine's content will be available to members of Voxant's Viral Syndication Network through TheNewsRoom later this month. A U.S. version of Insidermedicine can be viewed at www.insidermedicine.com. The Canadian version is located at www.insidermedicine.ca.

Voxant's Viral Syndication Network makes it easy to distribute fully licensed video, print, audio and still photo content to millions of Web sites and blogs. Content obtained from TheNewsRoom may be redistributed through viral mashing(tm), Voxant's unique process of embedding news content and advertising on an infinite number of sites. Voxant's advertising-supported network is free to Network members and provides a new revenue stream to originating content providers and everyone who mashes the content.

"Insidermedicine is an invaluable addition to TheNewsRoom's health content, which is one of the most sought-after types of information on the Internet," said Voxant CEO Jeff Crigler. "This is health and medical information delivered directly by leading physicians to people who need credible information for their Web sites and blogs."

About Voxant and TheNewsRoom

Voxant's Viral Syndication Network(tm) for online news unlocks new markets for news organizations and advertisers around the world, helping them get their content found, played, and paid for on the millions of Web sites and blogs that comprise the "long tail" of the Web. Through TheNewsRoom(tm) (www.thenewsroom.com) and its unique viral mashing(tm) technology, Voxant distributes and promotes news for Network affiliates such as the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Press, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Denver Post, Newsvine and HowStuffWorks, as well as a variety of Web publishers and bloggers. Our affiliates represent more than two billion page views and 150 sources of credible, licensed content. For more information, please visit www.voxant.com.

MEDIA: Insider Medicine Web site battles health misinformation
December 05, 2006 | Patricia Nicholson

MDs and med students update site with video news stories five days of the week

For patients surfing the Web, there’s no shortage of information on health topics, diseases and treatments. But the quality or sources of the information may be questionable.

That’s why Drs. Sanjay Sharma and Susan Sharma launched the online video health news site Insider Medicine (www.insidermedicine.ca): to provide patients with accurate, up-to-date, evidence-based health information.

“A lot of people come into my office and they’ve got lots of information that they’ve generated from downloading. And a lot of it is terrible misinformation, or is being written to push a particular service or product,” says Dr. Sanjay Sharma, associate professor of ophthalmology and epidemiology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and chief editor of Insider Medicine. “So we thought, let’s see if we can actually create high-quality video news stories that are really unbiased and are really evidence-based.”

He notes a survey published last month by Pew Internet and American Life Project found that despite the large number of people using the Internet to find health information, few check the source of the information or the date it was posted.

“That’s a huge issue because people are basing decisions for themselves or their family members on information that’s either not current or not really citing clinical scientific data,” he says.

Dr. Sanjay Sharma started the Insider Medicine project with his wife, Dr. Susan Sharma—a family practitioner with Queen’s University’s Health, Counselling and Disability Services who is also the anchor of Insider Medicine’s reporting team-. They have since built a team of physicians and medical students who update the site five days a week. The team shoots and uploads several videos daily, covering health news from peer-reviewed journals and medical symposia.?

Insider Medicine is searchable by keyword, disease or health category, and its bank of video feeds covers conditions ranging from SIDS to Alzheimer’s disease.

Much of the information is aimed at an audience that has a strong interest in the condition or therapy in question, and the presentations lean toward the more sophisticated end of the patient information scale.

“It’s not so much a daily health news thing as much as it’s for people who have active medical disease,” Dr. Sanjay Sharma says of many of the Insider Medicine stories. However, the news team plans to cover general health topics as well.

The video format was chosen for its presentation potential and the immediacy it provides by giving patients health information directly from medical experts.?

For instance, in a recent segment on macular degeneration, Dr. Sanjay Sharma used a model eye to illustrate the information and reviewed a retinal angiogram. Other segments will show minor procedures shot in the hospital or other clinical settings.

“I think that for people to be able to see that, and the fact that these are all physicians or medical people talking about it, I think it’s certainly an improvement over print alone.”

The doctor is In(ternet)

Ian Elliot

The Kingston Whig-Standard

Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 00:00

The Internet is good for a lot of things, but getting an accurate medical opinion is not among them.

And faced with the amounts of often contradictory and inaccurate medical advice on the web, a group of Queens physicians and medical students have set up a site that they hope will offer patients peer-reviewed and up-to-the minute information.

I would say 30 per cent of my patients come in with information that theyve downloaded from the Internet, said Dr. Sanjay Sharma, one of the driving forces of the site along with his wife, Dr. Susan Sharma. Sometimes it was good information, other times, lets say the proper filter wasnt used.

Other doctors and medical students were equally concerned by what they were seeing on a daily basis in their own practices, so they have become the filters for the Insider Medicine site

(www.insidermedicine.ca).

The multilingual site in English, Chinese and Spanish carries information on a wide range of diseases, conditions and treatments, as well as illness prevention and healthy-living topics.

To set it apart it from competitors, the site is built around short video segments on particular topics of interest, most narrated by Susan Sharma. New content is added nearly every day.

The information comes from trusted sources such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and is as up to date as possible.

That separates it from other sites that lack people with medical credentials overseeing the information presented.

A lot of websites out there are to market a specific treatment or a specific point of view, said Sharma, who is a professor of ophthalmology and epidemiology at Queens and a family doctor.

This is essentially a news site and were trying to have the latest straight-from-the-podium information.

The site has been running for about a month and is being bankrolled by the doctors involved, although Sharma noted it has already caught the eye of pharmaceutical and other companies in the medical industry.

It carries no advertising and does not attempt individual diagnoses of patients.

Since its quiet launch last month, the number of visitors finding their way to it has been steadily climbing, Sharma said.

And as many drugs and treatments may be available in the United States but not Canada or vice versa the reports strive to make that clear so people are not misled.

We just did a report on a macular degeneration study, and theres an American medicine that shows promise, he said. While it has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it wont be available in Canada for about eight months.

Sharma said the next step the founders are looking at is to add a registration feature and perhaps some forums where people can discuss the information being presented and make contact with others who may suffer from the same conditions.

It would be a way for patients to know that theyre not alone, he said.

Id like to think that doctors know it all, but they dont, and from a pragmatic point of view, patients often have a pretty good understanding of what things work and what dont.

Dr. Sanjay Sharma discusses Insidermedicine on CBC Radio's Ontario Morning.

City docs go global on the web with news-style program Doctors get into show production to bring public lively medical information online, translated for world use

These doctors are in. All the time. Kingston doctors Sanjay Sharma, an ophthalmologist, and Susan Sharma, a family physician, have launched a website that provides accurate, timely information for patients who love to Google. Insidermedicine (www.insidermedicine.ca) is a daily news program that is written, reported and produced by the husband and wife duo, with input from Queens University doctors, residents and students. Its been in the works for some time, says Sanjay, going back about two years. But since last December, the physicians realized the potential of videos on the net and decided to jump in. Hes got the camera. Shes got the delivery. And, between the two of them with help from the latest in research and journals they provide cutting-edge health information at the click of a few keys. Topics range from disease prevention to breaking news pertaining to specific diseases.

Patients today often visit a doctor already armed with some information, they explain. Some of it is accurate; some is not. We started the service because more patients were coming into our offices with information that they downloaded from the Internet, says Sanjay. The problem, says the professor of ophthalmology and epidemiology at Queens University, is that much of it wasnt correct. If people are attempting to make health care decisions for themselves or their loves ones on incorrect information, it may affect their health, he says. Getting the message out has also meant delivering it in a user-friendly manner. Aside from easy to search tools, they have translated Susans video reports into Chinese. More translations are being arranged.

The family doctor says she never anticipated being seen and heard on the Internet when she started out in practice. We wanted to have multiple inputs to get the job done and hit on a variety of ways of learning. They seem to have made their point. Since the site was launched in early November, there have been tens of thousands of global hits. Sanjay is keen on being able to update the site with the latest from medical conferences and something perhaps from The New England Journal of Medicine. As far as they know, this is the only daily news service for health information.

Husband and wife doctor team provide healthy alternative to “Googling”
Friday November 17, 2006

Husband and wife doctor team – Sanjay Sharma, an ophthalmologist, and family physician Susan Sharma – have created a new website that provides accurate, timely information for patients looking for medical answers online.

Insidermedicine (www.insidermedicine.ca) is a daily news program that is written, reported and produced by Queen's doctors and medical students. It seeks to bring accurate and cutting-edge health information to consumers. The daily program covers topics ranging from disease prevention to breaking news pertaining to specific diseases such as cancer and heart disease.

"We started the service because more patients were coming into our offices with information that they downloaded from the Internet. The problem was that much of the information wasn’t correct,” says Dr. Sanjay Sharma, the Chief Editor of Insidermedicine and professor of Ophthalmology and Epidemiology at Queen's.

The site began with Dr. Sharma handling the camera and his wife, Dr. Susan Sharma, handling reporting duties. The team has grown significantly to involve 15 people, including Kate Pulman and Maria Radina, both medical students at Queen’s.

A recent research study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a non-profit think tank, showed that while millions search for heath news, only 15 per cent of people seek out the source, and only 1 in 4 look at the date to see how current the material is. This could have major implications for your health.

“If people are attempting to make healthcare decision for themselves or their loved ones on incorrect information, it may affect their health," says Dr. Sharma.

"Our goal is really to get information into patients’ hands at the same time that doctors are reading about it,” says Dr. Susan Sharma. “On a daily basis, we have a team of doctors talking to researchers, talking to editors of the major scientific journals and attending medical conferences to create our breaking news stories. In the end we want to take evidence-based medicine directly to the patient."

Each weekday, four to eight videos are filmed to cover topics ranging from health promotion and disease prevention to breaking news pertaining to managing specific diseases like, heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

A U.S. version of Insidermedicine can be viewed at www.insidermedicine.com

For more information contact Molly Kehoe, molly.kehoe@queensu.ca, (613) 533-2877, Nancy Dorrance, nancy.dorrance@queensu.ca, (613) 533-2869

Attention broadcasters: Queen's now has facilities to provide broadcast quality audio and video feeds. For television interviews, we can provide a live, real-time double ender from Kingston. 

If you were to pick between coming to Insidermedicine and letting Insidermedicine come to you, what would you choose?

For those who prefer the latter, RSS/XML feeds are available free for individuals and non-profit organisations. Subscribe to Insidermedicine's RSS feeds to get news delivered directly to your desktop!

Free membership on Queen’s University site, with FPs focusing on referrals while specialists get evidence-based update- by: Patricia Nicholson.

There’s no shortage of Web sites that can claim to give viewers an eyeful, but it’s nice to see one that can make that claim in an educational sense—and even offer CME credits.

In this case, the eyeful is, in fact, an eye case: an evidence-based ophthalmological case study at www.ebeyecase.ca.

“Every month we develop a new case,” says Dr. Sanjay Sharma, associate professor of ophthalmology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and chief editor of www.ebeyecase.ca. Cases can range from eye trauma to diabetes, and take the form of interactive modules in which doctors make diagnostic choices. They also include an evidence-based medicine piece reviewing the latest literature, and links to online literature searches. Video editorials or videotaped surgical tips and techniques are also presented.

At the end of each case, there is an online test. Then members can download a CME certificate.

Site membership is free, and every case study is accredited through Queen’s University for between 1.5 and two hours of MainPro for family doctors, or the specialist equivalent.

The site was launched in mid-September with an initial complement of nine case studies. Dr. Sharma estimates that about 250 people signed up within its first three weeks. Membership is split about evenly between family doctors and specialists.

“The emphasis for family docs is when to appropriately refer, and the emphasis for the ophthalmologist is how to treat in an evidence-based fashion,” Dr. Sharma says. “We really want a good mix of cases, and we’ve been able to establish a really strong national editorial board to help us out in certain areas. So we’re really drawing on the collective experience of a lot of great minds.”

The site will cover common eye conditions, as well as more esoteric diseases.

“Half of them will be kind of bread-and-butter: cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration,” Dr. Sharma says. “And then the other ones are rarer birds that people in regular practice would rarely see.”

The goal of the site is to provide physicians with another tool to help keep abreast of clinical information.

“Theoretically I’d like to have everyone out there who is interested in learning about eye disease coming to this site, and this being a definitive portal for them,” he says.

Administrative procedures and technology come together to present these cases on the site. The accreditation for each case study through Queen’s CME office can be a long process, but presenting the cases on the Web site provides a perfect opportunity to make use of online media.

“We’re pretty excited about the ability to do video. We’ve actually set up a production studio here, so we’re trapping people in the corridors—some of the other editorial members—to give us their wisdom on how do we treat a particular case, or sometimes we have our video-grapher up in the operating suites videoing things,” Dr. Sharma says.

“We’re having fun with it. We’re sort of playing with the technology, and the feedback we’ve had is excellent.”
Dr. Sharma is also using that technology to educate patients and lay people. See Media Watch in November to find out more about his new medical Web site for the general public.