Tag Archives: OCIN

Stepping Foot in Wikipedia 1

by • LCOI • Tags: , , , ,

Have you ever wondered how various disease conditions are managed in different regions of the world? From prevalence rate to the treatment regimens used, the standards by which each disease state is tackled and viewed upon can vary quite significantly from region to region.

Surfacing this sort of information can take some time, unless you are currently living within the respective region in question; what is the most readily used medication to treat hypertension in Scotland?

That’s where the power of the crowd can help. Who better to help surface this sort of information than the people who are on the ground level, locally, within that region? One could envision a regional standards of care knowledge map to look similar to the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, but on a global scale. More…

It’s All Fun and Games 7

by • LCOI • Tags: , , , ,

Game Controller

Growing up as an avid gamer, I can’t help but feel thrilled about the surge in gamifcation; the concept of incorporating game elements into non-game contexts. The ideas of gamification motivated me to recently take a course on gamification.

The course was taught by a reputable gamification expert, Professor Kevin Werbach, from University of Pennsylvania’s renowned Wharton School of Business. He was recently depicted in Daniel Pink’s blog post, “The How’s and Why’s of Gamification: 4 Questions for Kevin Werbach.” (By the way, whether you’re an avid gamer or not, I highly recommend you take Professor Werbach’s next offering). More…

The Power of Crowd Curation: We Investigate Wikipedia 1

by • LCOI • Tags: , , , , , ,

How many times have you utilized Wikipedia as a source to learn a topic? If you’re like me, quite extensively. It’s hard to pass up since Wikipedia is almost always at the top of the list in search results. So why does this matter for the Lilly COI team? In our quest to stimulate an Open Clinical Intelligence Network (OCIN), we found that Wikipedia demonstrates a unique ability to engage the crowd to curate content, aligning well with our 4C model.

The free online encyclopedia has demonstrated the unique ability to attract crowd participation while maintaining sustainability in its open platform.

Research demonstrates its awesomeness as well. A recent study shows that Wikipedia ranks highest in customer satisfaction of online properties, ranking above Facebook and even Twitter.

A robust content library

It’s astonishing that Wikipedia now has 23 million articles with 4 million in the English language alone. As one can see, Wikipedia is a wide-ranging and rich content library, maintained by a passionate community of over 80,000 users who make five or more edits on the site in a month. That’s a lot of folks maintaining a lot of content.

More…

Patient-Driven Research Relies on Open Web Info 1

by • LCOI, Clinical Trials • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ben Harris is a medical physicist from Indiana and an example of a patient conducting a Do It Yourself (DIY) study.    Diagnosed in January of 2011 with ALS (amyotropic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), Harris became both the clinical researcher and the single-patient subject in his search for effective treatment of the disease.

It was six months after his diagnosis that Harris took part in a sponsored clinical trial for a new experimental drug.  The treatment gave him some relief from his ALS symptoms and hope that the progression of the disease could be inhibited.  Other patients had similar results.

“Accounts similar to Ben’s began to emerge in the chat-rooms,” says Harris’ brother, who is documenting the events surrounding the ALS diagnosis and the pursuit of this new treatment. “There’s one small problem: the FDA’s process would take between 5 and 7 years before [this new drug] would be approved and made available.  My brother could be dead by then.”  In clinical research, time can mean everything, particularly to patients.

Harris began an intensive Internet search for information about the compound used in the trial. More…