Collaboration 2.0

Information technology is letting people around the world come together in unprecedented ways. Wikis, blogs and microblogs like twitter, 

crowdsourcing and crowd-task-solving sites continue to flatten the planet.  

Scientific innovation used to be a very private endeavor, with narrowly specialized scientists delving deeply into specific research areas.  The Internet changed some of this giving rise to Wikipedia  - now orders of magnitude larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica, and similar wiki resources for gene annotations, RNA libraries, radiology images, open-source software and other content.
 
Science funding agencies may appear to be crowdsourcing solutions too - as they employ broad calls for proposals and utilize peer reviews to evaluate the proposed ideas. Their models , however, are not very effective in triggering societal impacts. They impede collaboration in many ways as the researchers are not truly working together and the feedback is not constructive. Reviewers are experts but not direct stakeholders of  proposed projects . They add management overhead (Latour, 1996).

One may argue that science is highly competitive and will always be driven by egos and desire for personal vs collective success. Yet, as Johnston and Hauser note, these very human needs could be met by more efficiently designed open source models, extending beyond snapshots of consensus,  enabling to capture specific contributions of each participant and  permanent record of the life history of the project from conception to completion.

The ease of discovery declines every year - scientists have to search for smaller asteroids, heavier chemical elements and more complicated connections. This has to be matched with either exponential increase in the number of scientists or more innovative collaboration.

People take pleasure in synchronized activities - such as singing or marching together, folding proteins or syncing their brains in a conversation.  Could scientists have meaningful conversations on unimaginable scales, conversations including citizen scientists and people whose health needs could be solved by science?
Some researchers are already using help from crowds collecting their donations to support research - like the recently started open-source research project to develop cure for neglected tropical disease schistosomiasis.
Or the Open Source PCR project supported by the public.

Recent call for collaboration asked for a framework to exchange and disseminate information,  produce guidelines and summarize finding for Participatory health research (PHR) addressing local health issues. Government agencies are using twitter and expect crowds to supply epidemiological metrics to test health policy efficacy.

Meanwhile, many are already utilizing google docs in the quest for collaborators and exchange of ideas. See for example this Folder of Useful Google Docs including:

• Startup Ideas - Front page linking to Editable Table
• Innovators - Form to Submit Your Data to appear in this Table  (see HN Yellow Pages Thread)
• Entrepreneurs looking for Co-founders -  Front page linking to Editable Table
• Seed accelerators and their companies
• Startups Hiring - Form for Employers displaying info in this Table
• Software Contractors - Editable Table    (HN Contractors Thread about it)

Or check this call for collaborations in the microbiome and metabolome spaces, to solve neglected medical conditions.

Scientists, let's unite and start collaborating in even more creative ways!




References 

Johnston SC, & Hauser SL (2009). Crowdsourcing scientific innovation. Annals of neurology, 65 (6) PMID: 19562693 
Wright MT, Roche B, von Unger H, Block M, & Gardner B (2010). A call for an international collaboration on participatory research for health. Health promotion international, 25 (1), 115-22 PMID: 19854843

Auer S, Braun-Thurmann H. Towards bottom-up, stakeholder-driven research funding — open science and open peer review: Available at:  http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~auer/publication/OpenScience.pdf.  Accessed May 21, 2009 

Lawrence PA (2009) Real Lives and White Lies in the Funding of Scientific Research. PLoS Biol 7(9): e1000197. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000197


Marsh A, Carroll D, & Foggie R (2010). Using collective intelligence to fine-tune public health policy. Studies in health technology and informatics, 156, 13-8 PMID: 20543334 

Huss JW 3rd, Lindenbaum P, Martone M, Roberts D, Pizarro A, Valafar F, Hogenesch JB, & Su AI (2010). The Gene Wiki: community intelligence applied to human gene annotation. Nucleic acids research, 38 (Database issue) PMID: 19755503 

Latour, B. 1996. Aramis, or, The love of technology Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass 
Butler, D. (2010). Open-source science takes on neglected disease Nature DOI: 10.1038/news.2010.50
Facebook page, Just giving fundraiser page. 

Scientific collaboration: 

• Innocentive - crowdsourcing scientific solutions to organization's problems
• Science Commons - generic license agreements
• TekScout - crowdsourcing R&D solutions
• YourEncore - crowd of retired veteran scientists and engineers
• Biocrowd - social network for bioscience professionals
• Eureka medical - medical open innovation platform

Idea Generation and Solving:

• AddictLab - creative think tank
• Brain Reactions - post questions and get ideas/feedback on them
• Fellowforce - innovation challenge board covering many disciplines
• iBridge Network - platform for university innovation
• IdeaConnection - idea marketplace and problem solving
• Idea Crossing - organize innovation quests
• IdeaMagnet - powering idea generation
• Ideawicket - open innovation portal
• Innovation Exchange - open innovation market place
• WhyNot - idea exchange
• IdeaBlob - monthly contest for entrepreneurial ideas
• Bodyshock - call for ideas to improve health in the next decade 
• Incuby - online community for inventors
• Cofundos - open-source software ideas

Crowd-Task-Solving and Freelance

• World4brains, collaboration instead of competition for best ideas, advice and solutions - innovative payment system rewards all valuable input given
• TaskRabbit,  linking over-stretched consumers with runners for errands, tasks and other to-do’s
• oDesk - global marketplace for remote work
• Elance - freelance marketplace
• Guru - freelance community
• Ki Work - sourcing online work
• Amazon Mechanical Turk - micro-task crowdsourcing
• HumanGrid - small online tasks solving

 

Crowd-Funding

• A Swarm of Angels - crowdfunding a film
• Kickstarter - fund ideas and endeavours
• Kiva – crowdfunded micro-loans
• IndieGoGo - a collaborative way to fund ideas 
• WePay - ways to collect and manage money

 

Test your genes and loose the weight?

Do Your Genes Determine Which Diet Means Weight-Loss or General Health Success?
Can nutrition be optimized with respect to your genome?

Commercial genetic tests promising to provide personalized diet recommendations (there were 6 in 2005, not counting companies developing DNA nutri-chips to pinpoint an animal’s nutrition needs) are constantly offered and withdrawn. Interest in genetic testing over the past few years was going down (click on the right figure to see google trends), but continuously published findings cause bursts of interest (click on the right figure to see XRanks by Bing) .
Clearly, genetic variations determine how we absorb, filter, metabolize, store and eliminate nutrients and how these nutrients affect processes in our body. But should we get more vitamin B if our MTR gene carries predisposition to heart disease or have extra calcium and vitamin D if our VDR gene indicates possibly weak bones?
The use of this information may be premature, the gene-vitamin linkages may not be credible, and far inferior to your family health portrait with much higher cost-to-benefit ratio than self-evaluation and self-awareness through personal health management tools.

It Isn't Just What You Eat That Can Kill You, and It Isn't Just Your DNA That Can Save You--It's How They Interact, said a 2005 newsweek article. It is also about other environmental factors, your history of interactions, and microbes you cultivated in your system that determine what food is best for you.

Lactose intolerance, for example, may be derived from genetic tests showing how effective our bodies are in producing the lactase enzyme (the LCT gene). We can determine it in a much cheaper and reliable way, however, by drinking milk and looking at the symptoms. Same about FMO3 variations and trimethylaminuria. A study of lung cancer rates in China found that people at lowest risk were genetically deficient in an enzyme that metabolizes isothiocyanates in cruciferous vegetables, but crucifers don't seem to harm those with a functional enzyme either... except those who gets get intestinal gas from eating them. But this may not be because of the genes, but due to the lack of beneficial gut bacteria.

The weight-loss industry long admitted that one specific diet isn't likely to work for everyone. How do diet programs work? Forget about the ratios of carbs, fiber and protein, the most important factor is to burn off more calories than you're taking in. Behavioral factors rather than macronutrient metabolism are the main influences on weight loss, so it's more about mindful eating versus mindless eating. And here genes come into play again. Satiety mechanisms are complex and involve multiple sensors, operating differently according to underlying genetics. that's why a carb-heavy breakfast can leave you hungry in two hours but keep your neighbor full until noon, while high-protein diet makes you fill fuller.

This week (at the American Heart Association’s Joint 50th Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention – and – Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism conference, being held March 2-5 in San Francisco, CA) Stanford University researchers reported that a genetic test can help people choose which diet works best for them. The study involved 133 overweight women, who lost more weight on a diet that matched their genes - either low-carbohydrate or low-fat. Improvements in clinical measures related to weight loss (e.g., blood triglyceride levels) paralleled the weight loss differences.

The findings are also partially based on an earlier paper, called the A to Z weight-loss study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2007 and a small (100-person) unpublished study by Interleukin Genetics.

More than 6,000 genes may be affecting our weight, including multiple genes determining our taste preferences (e.g., to bitter foods, calcium, garlic or coffee) and behavioral predispositions. Genetic testing along with protein- and metabolomic-based diagnostics would provide invaluable data for understanding ourselves. Data-mining tools for health-related factors will allow integrated and holistic analysis and help to personalize diets, fitness and medical treatments.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Low-Fat Diets Beat Low-Carb Regimen Long Term (nlm.nih.gov)
• Low-fat or low-carb? Discuss. (timesunion.com)
• Gene test claims to show what diet works best (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• More Reason to Not Count Calories (naturalbias.com)
• A Cheek Swab to Choose Your Diet Plan? (nlm.nih.gov)
• Do Your Genes Determine Which Diet Means Weight-Loss Success? (health.usnews.com)

1st Generation Software Tools for Health 2.0

Mirrored from old Aurametrix web site  Check the new site for more info.

Aurametrix is developing next-generation (Health 3.0) systems for Personal Health Management. The following Health 2.0 software tools attempt to keep track of health-related information, including food & beverage intake, medications, weight, biometric measurements, medical tests, wheezing, physical fitness, mental health, job satisfaction, mood, sleep, brain fitness, creativity, menstrual cycles, sexual life, sleep, and diaper change among other things.

	Track your Foods, Exercises, Weight and Goals, body measurements, including neck, bicep, forearm, chest, waist, hip, thigh, and calf. Track your daily moods, including happiness, stress, anger, hunger, health, and mental clarity. Analyze relationships between your mood and diet. 2 million users (>4.2 mln members)
	Nutrition and exercise manager, diet diary, recipe book, diabetes log, APIs Food Database contains nutritional information for over 55,000 foods, including generic foods, supermarket brands, ethnic foods, over 200 fast-food and restaurant chains.
	Log and track the foods you eat, get nutritional analysis, share logs Log and track the physical activity and exercises you perform Get calorie recommendations based on your estimated metabolism Log and maintain a record of health benchmarks such as weight, waist / hip, cholesterol, and blood glucose
	Personalized diet & fitness plan, blog, expert answers Calorie counter & exercise tracker, recipes & videos 5mln users. Teen edition -SparkTeens.com; Pregnancy & parenting community - BabyFit.com
	Food groups, healthy eating tips, and more Supertracker - replaced MyPyramid menu planner for kids, preschollers, moms... Dietary Guidelines
	Log food, activity, weight. Create your diet, determine your profile & nutritional grades of foods, meet like-minded people. 88,000 foods, 199,000 recipes, 522,000 users
	Keep your food diary in pink steamer, calculate how much you should eat, exercise and life style change Another tool, Mealographer, allows to enter multiple foods separrated by commas. See also Fatsecret,Lifemojo,
	Find detailed nutrition information, plus analysis tools developed by Nutrition Data (Estimated Glycemic Load™, IF (Inflammation Factor) Ratings™, and omega-3 to omega-6 ratios, etc) that tell you more about how foods affect your health and make it easier to choose healthy foods.
	Medically-based program committed to helping you eat healthier and be healthier by optimizing nutrition. For example, optimize lipid profile to slow the progression of heart disease and reduce the risk of heart attack. An option to have your favorite meals delivered
	Track your daily food intake, Create your own foods and recipes, Track exercises and log daily steps, set uphealthy lifestyle goals and track your progress. Nutritional analysis on 20+ nutrients in over 30,000 foods.
	Tweet what you eat. Maintain a food diary through SMS, IM or web.Calorie counts are suggested based on earlier entries. Check also eat.lysite, Foodpad, and other iPhone apps to eat your heart out. Or use twitter to track your flowing data, including sleep, exercise, emotions, trips, unread e-mails and other things
	Track your weight and health notes, analyze trends, browse other accounts under fake IDs  See also Sensei, the digital weight loss coach
	An example of an off-online weight management and nutrition monitoring software - BalanceLog based upon RMR measurements from the MedGem/BodyGem device. Includes a database of over 4,000 foods and 300 exercises. See 2009 Reviews of other downloadable packages:  Fitness Products,  Nutrition Products; other tools include WeightWare (weight, exercise, calories, health history),DietPower (monitor 33 nutrients in your meals), DietOrganizer (31 nutrients, 6K+ foods, 200+ exercises, spreadsheet entries, body measurements), FoodDiary (17K foods, including fast food chain restaurants), Smart Diary Suite 4, a completely customizable personal information solution with graph plotting features, and many more.
	Get a nutritional snapshot of your Safeway Store Card purchases along with healthy alternatives to your choices.
	Track and monitor your medication, biometrics (weight, glucose, etc.), food, exercise, symptoms (from anxiety and mood, to sleep disturbance and wheezing), to understand what works and what doesn't work for you. Speech Transcription Service.
	Capture your health-related hypotheses and experiments, share them with the community and vote-up interesting and useful results.
	Track your sleep, weight, caloric intake, and exercise. Compare your symptoms and treatments for 212 conditions with the Community. Similar to: PatientsLikeMe and other sites listed below
	Track self-assessed personal health data, share real-time information with emergency, experts and insurance contacts. Another site allowing multiple trackers: MedHelp
	Record life's events and discover patterns with LivingTime. Import Public Event Timelines to view yourlife against the backdrop of world events. Even better, Be Like Ben, tracking Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues for good living. Set goals with Lifetick, remember things-to-do with reQall, Remember what's important to you with reQall ert Or just visualize and share how you are spending your time online (Nebul, Rescuetime)
	Plan and track yourexercise, drag-and-drop, add music, have fun. Use interactive devices such asExerspy to pump up your workouts
	Track calories, fat, carbs, and protein, generate shopping lists, share diets. Plan and log cardio workouts, build muscle, meet people with same goals.
	Interactive web based training and nutrition log to help individuals achieve their goals. Interact withcoaches, trainers and dietitians, customized meal plans. See also Skimble, or totaltrainer
	Track your health, diet, and exercise, visualize your progress.
	Track your menstrual cycles, symptoms, weight, share information with other members, set up reminders
	Use the calendar to track your cycles, notes and basal body temperature.  Generate statistics and predictions about your cycles, send reminders
	Track and analyze your monthly cycles, cervical biometrics, temperature, symptoms.
	The HealthyPlace Mood Tracker tracks your sleep, weight, moods, your feelings and actions behind them. It will send an alert to your doctor or therapist or a family member, when you appear depressed or manic.
	Simply log in after every time you have sex and fill out a few fields. Measure sex quality, frequency, duration, and share it with your partner.
	Trixie Tracker helps to uncover patterns in your baby's sleep rhythms, eating and other daily activity. Track introduction of new foods, medicines, diaper changes, create snack menus,  share it online. Check also Grow with me iPhone App
	Write down your goals and dares, track your food, exercise, symptoms. Share and celebrate your accomplishments. (acquired DailyPlate)
	Keep your Bills, Tasks, Meetings, Groceries, Shopping Lists, and reminders stored in your personal calendar. Color code for quick reference. Or track everything with TallyZoo,Dayta and other apps
	Monitor diet, exercise, medications, job satisfaction, menstrual cycles, sexual life, your kid’s height, and more. Share reports and pictures.
	To be launched soon: Track lab results, nutrition, appointment scheduling, interact with physicians. Theranos is another emerging company aiming to offer better health choices. Proteus' Raisin measures when and if a patient takes their medication and tracks vital signs. PhiloMetron promises to deliver a wearable device monitoring calories: in and out, while iPod + Nike are already doing it - their way.
	One of primary care practice platforms helping doctors communicate, document, and transact with their patients in person and online. Similar tools: Vision Tree Software to make appointments thru secure messaging system, American Well with  video tools,ReachMyDoctor iwith a coordinated care plan,  Relay Health for health information exchanges
	Games encouraging physical activity for a healthy heart (CryptoZoo),improving lifes of young patients with chronic diseases (HopeLab), helping veterans to cope with problems (Creative Technologies)
	Compare doctors and hospitals withHospital Compare, Vitals,HealthGrades and FindaDoc. Estimate costs with New Choice Health, Healthcare Blue Book,Ventanaf manage bills with Quicken Health.
	Import your medical records, track medications, refill prescriptions online, share your health information with your care network. See also 23andme, Navigenics for genomic data, SugarStats for diabetes, migraineliving for migrainers
	View your medical tests and medications, renew prescriptions,track allergies, manage appointments
	Track your mood, creativity, stress, sleep, love life. Compare your graphs to others.
	List your goals, share your progress, describe how you did it, cheer each other. See also manymoon.com - share google documents, tasked based emails, and team into one convenient project on the web.
	Keep track of money - The #1 cause of stress in America. See also expensify.com - your very own online accounting department
	Keep a personalised Sporting and Fitness record: enter your results for each physicalactivity to be matched to sports, rate yourself against the mental toughness tests to find your strength and weaknesses. See what others think about you.
	alphagrade.com - Help teens take a break from facebook! AlphaGrade is a tool to link school grades and chores to their weekly allowance.
	Monitor and Track your Brain Fitness progress. Mind Sparke: Brain Fitness Pro - Software that makes you smarter. Junior and Senior Versions.Many other desktop tools are also available such as  BrainFitness for up to 3 users.
	Play Brain Games, Track your Progress, Challenge Friends and make new ones. For other health games, check this site
	Tools for nutritional support, updates on the medical news, chat rooms, message boards and support communities to share information, advice and treatment experiences.
	Facilitates doctor-patient interaction via e-mail, provides graphic representation of how patients are doing
	Microsoft HealtVault allows toorganize your health information, with everything in one place and gain insight with data that helps to make informed decisions. Can be integrated with glucometers, blood pressure monitors, weight scales.
	A place to document your sexual history and map sexual connections. Features "spider-web style maps" that reveal the elaborate architecture of past and present liasons.
	Applications such as Daytum help you collect, categorize and communicate your everyday data.iPhone app is also available.  OhLife e-mails back snippets of your daily logs, IOGraph tracks the path of your  computer mouse and turns it into art.
	Location may be important for health outcomes. Bright kite is a location-based social network. In real time you can see where your friends are and what they're up to. Uses Google Earth and Cell Phone GPS.Foursquare makes it fun too.  You can also use Noteleaf to keep notes about your social encounters.
	iPhone/iTunes application to track bowel movements in real time. Uses Interactive Maps and Cell Phone GPS.
	GI Monitor  is an iPhone/iTunes application to help IBD patients easily track their symptoms and report them back to doctors.
	Another "great gift for the poop lover": the Poo Log (available on theApp Store) is a "digital timer and journal for recording and studying the wondrous uniqueness of each bowel movement". Now you can track and graph your digestive workings and gain great e-loo-cidating experience
	IBStracker (Simple means to track symptoms and triggers related to IBS and IBD/Colitis) is available for Android (check it here). Other apps available help to interrupt the cycle of thoughts and body sensations that fuel a panic attack, and eventually IBS-related issues (Let Panic Go, available on App Store)
	A tool to track gut functioning, post BM assessments as well as other assessments of feelings and symptoms. Graphs of symptoms and a text report can be e-mailed to friends and  doctors.
	Yet another diet and fitness tracking site on the web. With FoodScanner, a new app that scans package bar codes, calorie logging can be quicker and easier
	Wireless e-scale sends your weight online to monitor and share your progress, exercise ideas, recipes, motivate yourself and others.
	The Exerspy interactive system will pump up your workouts, and could make you healthy - but only if you make healthy choices by yourself. Similar: DirectLifefrom Phillips, Bodybugg. See alsoECG Necklace and Philometron GreenGoose allows to track not only your workouts (with a credit-card sized sensor) but other activities if you stick sensors on to things like a water-bottle, toothbrush or floss
	Track and analyze music listening histories with LastHistory.
	Sleep moniotring applications: Zeoheadband with a bedside display;  Also: SnoreMonitor;  Fitbit.