We've long used this page to post progress notes about the concept, the content, the contributors, and the technological context supporting this project. As of April 2009, however, we're moving much of this chronicle to the World Wide Med Blog (wwmed.wordpress.com), where visitors will have the option of sharing their comments. We may continue to post brief updates on this page.
To receive occasional updates about what's new here, you can follow World Wide Med on Twitter (twitter.com/wwmed).
And of course, you can always reach us via e-mail (input@worldwidemed.org).
Thanks for visiting! --Cal Pierce
Progress Notes
April 17, 2009:As mentioned above, the World Wide Med Blog (wwmed.wordpress.com), is now open for visitors who'd like to read about the progress of World Wide Med and related topics. The option for visitors to share their comments there will be a real plus.
April 14, 2009:
Hoping to encourage interaction with our visitors, we've set up the World Wide Med Forum (forum.worldwidemed.org) where people can exchange ideas about global health issues, suggest physicians to profile, and give us feedback.
April 10, 2009:
We're happy to report that the site is gaining traction both in terms of Google relevance and visitors. We remain #1 in a Google search for "World Wide Web" (no surprise there, though our new Twitter URL turns up unexpectedly at #7) and have moved up to #3 when the phrase is not in quotes. The latter result has been steadily climbing.
In terms of unique visitors, our monthly traffic doubled in 2008 (below left) and has continued to climb in 2009.
This week, our daily unique visitor count spiked (above right) after I set up a World Wide Med Twitter account and began following it from my own Twitter account and the IM News Twitter and Hospitalist News Twitter accounts. I have to note, however, that some of that traffic was my own, since I was visiting the site a lot while making multiple revisions.
April 8, 2009:
We continue to hear from doctors interested in sharing their experiences, including two who contacted us recently about their work in Uganda, Ukraine, and Zambia. We expect to publish their accounts in the May and June issues of IM News. Many thanks for all of those who have volunteered to be contributors!
We've been watching the exponential growth of Twitter, a free "social networking and micro-blogging service" -- in other words, an online method for receiving brief text messages, or "tweets," on a request-only basis (no spam). Twitter, which seems to have reached a critical mass that's close to overwhelming the service, is now scrambling to provide adequate bandwith and software to handle the increasingly heavy traffic and make the service more user-friendly. Twitter is an interesting concept that seems likely to evolve rapidly in coming months, so we decided to jump in and test the use of World Wide Med tweets as a way of getting the word out about the progress of this project. Please follow our tweets if you're interested in receiving an occasional heads up about what's new here.Jan. 30, 2009:
Following the inauguration of President Barack Obama, it appears that health care reform efforts are likely to gain momentum in coming months. Obama's own international background and his interest in reshaping U.S. foreign policy seem likely to strengthen interest in global health issues. These factors seem likely to make the perspectives shared here at World Wide Med even more relevant as citizens, policy analysts, and legislators consider strategies for reforming health care in the United States and throughout the world.
June 24, 2008:
We received a kind thank-you note from a member of the staff at ServeHAITI (www.servehaiti.org), which was featured in the June 1 issue of Internal Medicine News. This was reporter Heidi Splete's first installment of the column, so she really appreciated the positive feedback.
The handwritten text reads:
"Dear Heidi,
Thank you so much for the wonderful article in your June issue featuring Dr. Charmaine Lewis. ServeHAITI is, indeed, fortunate to have her at the helm.
Again, thank you, not just from myself, but the entire group that is ServeHAITI and the people of Grand Bois."
______________
Thanks for sharing the note, Heidi. Keep up the good work!
Note: The card bears a fitting quote by the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi:
"Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love."
June 18, 2008:
We continue to hear from physicians who have visited the Web site and are interested in sharing their experiences in international clinical practice. Among the e-mails reaching us at input@worldwidemed.org, several have included extensive comments that lend themselves to development into finished columns. Reporter Heidi Splete is continuing the process of following up with these physicians, and we're looking forward to seeing the results. Many thanks to all of the visitors to this site who have gotten in touch with us!
Also, we remain open to the idea of letting the column and this Web site evolve to include a wider array of topics relevant to global health care issues. Exactly how to implement that concept is still open to discussion.
June 6, 2008:
The column is in good shape, having reached its ninth installment in the June 1 issue of IM News. I've been taking an extended hiatus from this update page, a pause prompted in no small part by the April launch of Hospitalist News, a publication that's being sent as a supplement to readers of Internal Medicine News who work in hospital settings.
We welcome suggestions for new physicians to contact for future monthly installments. Senior writer Heidi Splete recently assumed responsibility for interviewing physicians and writing the column.
Nov. 12, 2007:
We've published the second column in the Nov. 1 issue of IM News, featuring Dr. Michael Chung in Kenya, and we're now getting the third installment ready for publication in the Dec. 1 issue.
We're still hunting for leads about U.S.-trained internists with practice experience in Europe or other developed regions. We'd like to include physicians with experiences in a wide variety of practice settings, including those that may more closely parallel medical practice in the United States.
Oct. 8, 2007:
Our first column, featuring Dr. Boyd Shook, is now in print in the Oct. 1 issue of IM News. From here on, Montreal Bureau Chief Kate Johnson will be playing a valuable role by continuing the process of identifying contributors and putting together the monthly columns.
Aug. 20, 2007:
Vacation time and deadlines have slowed my technical progress, although my roster of planned contributors has grown. We've placed a promotional announcement on p. 48 of the Sept. 1 issue of Internal Medicine News, inviting readers with international practice experience to visit this site and share their thoughts. The print column is slated to start in the Oct. 1 issue of IM News.
Aug. 8, 2007:
Today I received an interesting communique from Dr. Michael H. Chung, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Washington, Seattle, who also works at the Kenyatta National Hospital and the Coptic Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya. Among other things, he has some cautionary advice for U.S. physicians considering humanitarian service in developing nations. More later.
Search engine update: Last Friday, a Google search for "world wide med" (in quotes) turned up this site as the first hit. That's logical, since the phrase matches the domain name and is featured prominently here (unlike the sites of squatters who own some of the related URLs). Last week, a Google search for the phrase without quotes left worldwidemed.org buried among 245,000,000 hits, but now this site shows up in slot #10.
Also, when I first set up this site, I was pleased to find that my initial subtitle--"Global Perspectives on U.S. Health Care"--was a Googlenope. (That's a phrase unknown to Google.
The term was coined by Wash. Post columnist Gene Weingarten in a May 2007 Below the Beltway column in the Washington Post magazine.) I just changed this site's subtitle to "Global Perspectives on Medical Practice." (That's also a Googlenope, at least until this site gets indexed again. In contrast, "Global Perspectives on Health Care" yields 1,700 Google hits. Go figure.) The new subtitle encompasses non-U.S. aspects of medical practice and global health, and relates directly to my own physician audience.Aug. 5, 2007:
I've spent some time learning about hosting a wiki, based on a suggestion from an editorial colleague who is excited about the social networking possibilities of World Wide Med. At this point, I'm not sure what kind of collaborative documents would be the most germane to this project--maybe some kind of FAQ about global health issues, international medical practice, and health care reform? In any case, it's an idea worth exploring.
On a related note, a Web-based discussion forum would let visitors give feedback and share ideas in an informal way. Dedicated blog software that accepted comments would be another way to support interaction.
Adding any of the above would require a plunge into deeper waters, starting with an upgrade to a Web hosting plan that supports more features. That's moving up higher on my to-do list.
Aug. 3, 2007:
Corresponding by e-mail with potential contributors is getting complicated as my contact list expands. It's *relatively* easy to locate U.S.-trained physicians practicing in developing nations because of their involvement in medical service projects. U.S.-trained physicians working in Europe or other more-developed nations seem to be more elusive. I'd like to include perspective from a wide variety of settings. Suggestions welcome. What about U.S. doctors who marry someone from another country and decide to settle there?
By day six, Google had begun to list this site as the first hit for "World Wide Med" (in quotes).
Aug. 2, 2007:
Dr. Boyd Shook, of Bethany, Oklahoma, who frequently participates in medical projects in Nicaragua, has kindly sent me his responses. I'm looking forward to posting his comments after preparing them for publication.
I was surprised to find, on this site's fifth day, that Google had already indexed it, even though I didn't submit the URL. I noticed that Google found the URL at a forum where I'd posted a query mentioning this site.
Aug. 1, 2007:
I'm lining up my first contributors to the World Wide Med column, relying initially on suggestions from the IM News editorial board, other personal contacts, and e-mails and phone calls to relevant organizations.
I continue to tweak this prototype Web site, which I know is humble by current Flash or Java standards. Still, it's a start--and not too shabby, considering that it's purely homemade and so far has cost me just $5.99 for a one-year Internet domain registration fee. Oh yeah, and maybe 59.9 hours of my spare time.
July 2007:
When I decided to get the project moving forward this summer, I was initially thinking only about a print column in IM News. Bicycling to work one day in late July, I finally came up with a name for the column--World Wide Med--and wondered whether it might already be in widespread use in a related way. Surprisingly, there wasn't much going on around the phrase on the Internet. I was stunned to find that the domain name worldwidemed.org was available. I went into fast forward, figuring that a dedicated Web site could provide a forum for ideas about international medical practice and health care reform, and also support the new print column.
So on a Friday night, I embarked on a 6-hour crash course on how to register the domain name, selected a domain name registrar, and staked my claim. As I cobbled together a rough draft of this Web site during the following weekend, I thought about some current factors that make international medical practice more relevant than ever.
For starters, health care reform is emerging again as a key political issue as the 2008 U.S. presidential race gains momentum. The health care debate often involves comparisons between health care systems in the United States and other countries. Meanwhile, Michael Moore pressed hot buttons in his
controversial documentary, Sicko, by profiling U.S. patients whose medical insurance had let them down, and by painting a rosy picture of universal free health care in Canada, France, Great Britain, and even Cuba. No matter how you view the accuracy and slant of Moore's film, it focused attention on the deficiencies of the U.S. health care system, and on the potential value of learning about what works in other countries and applying it in the United States.April 2007:
While attending the annual meeting of the American College of Physicians in San Diego, I got together with a family friend who recently moved from the United States to practice general internal medicine in New Zealand. Hearing him talk about life and medical practice in New Zealand was so fascinating that I began thinking later about ways to capture such insights in a column focusing on a U.S.-trained physicians who practice in other countries. As things turned out, the idea required some time to germinate....
