The Common Vein

The Common Vein

What is ?The Common Vein??

The Common Vein is a web based medical educational system that uses principles as a foundation and a starting point to build an arborised tree of medical knowledge that progresses in step wise fashion to advancing complexity.  Within the word ?heart? for example is an encyclopedia of information.  How do we take the medical student (or even the lay person for that matter) from the word to the complex information.  The progression from the word to the sentence, then to the paragraph , chapter,  and finally book all  housed in one product enables layering of the information and facilitates progressive learning.  The dogged attention to principles of structure, function, disease, diagnosis, and treatment, and uniform application to all the organs, allows this complex to be built in a logical manner.

A second tenet of The Common Vein is the extensive use of images and art to facilitate learning.  Traditional text book education has lacked pictorial augmentation due to the expense of publication.  The Common Vein has  14,000 images on the web and at least 100,000 images collected over 20 years that need to be uploaded.  A picture speaks a thousand words and also speaks all languages.  The use of images to educate those who learn more effectively with images, as well as educate non English speaking, or poorly educated third world cultures through images, is a natural extension and potential.

Units to unity is a central philosophy of the project.  Parts make up the whole, which is more powerful than the individual parts, but is only as powerful as the integrity of the parts that make it up. The extension of this philosophy into spirituality allowing some insight into the wonder of the power of the bigger whole is a driving force that sustains my interest and passion to see it to its completion.  I will not rest till it is seen to fruition.

What does it need?

The Common Vein needs organizational help.  A medical school would be a perfect partner.

Current Direction and Attempts to GAin Exposure and Connections

A proposal for a book outlining the idea of The Common Vein, directed to premedical students, is in progress and will be submitted to Oxford Press in the next two weeks.  They have expresseed in an interest in the project.  The intent is to introduce the concept in  book form in the hope of gaining recognition and understanding.

?The Heart? will be presented to an International meeting in Chicago in December 2009

Global South African Initiatives under the direction of Eric Stillerman have expressed an interest to explore possibilities

Art Exhiibition The Beauty of  Form and Function to be held in Newton Library October 2009

Potential Alliance with Tufts Medical School ? Under Consideration

7 Brides with 7 Lives

Ashley Davidoff

Copyright 2009

May 5th 1989

The bridal building is a twenty story continuum of bridal fashion rising from the corner of 38^th and Broadway in New York.  Where else in the world could one find such an institution- filled with the maidens of America all trying to formalize their coming event as tastefully as they know how?

They came in all sizes, shapes, and ethnic origins.  They came with their mothers, sisters, grandmothers, and friends- and sometimes even their children.  They came dressed in their mink furs, their sneakers and jeans, and sometimes in their half undress, as a size 14 pranced around a mirror in the uniformly available size 10.  Exposed bra straps and sometimes panties were not a concern for these maidens, whose epicenter of concentration was the mirror.  I must admit, however, that there were not many men there beside me.

Interactions, reactions and conversations were a delight to behold, and thoughts of writing a book entered my mind.  My imagination ran wild.  I wondered about the hopes that had been dashed and fulfilled by the decision of marriage.  I wondered about the potential joys and the potential disasters that were going to befall all these hopefuls.  I wondered about the children that were to be the product and the future.  I even wondered about sex.  Most of all I understood the human need to do as society and culture demand, even if it means one has to borrow much needed money to look special for a single special day ? and I felt rather fortunate to have had this little life experience.

If only I could

If only I could gert a script writer and movie producer to create the story of ?7 lives of 7 brides? prior to marriage ? diverse backgrounds ? 7 weddings that have similar purposes and similar vows,  and then 7 lives lived post marriage

Medical Electronic Diary

Ashley Davidoff

Idea Conceived  2006/7

Presented to Satish Tadikonda

Copyright 2009

Medical Electronic  Diary  (MED) and Alpha Medicine

 

?MED?  is a web-based medical information management tool that enables the student or scholar of medicine to accumulate, personalize, organize, store, and retrieve medical knowledge gained over a lifetime.

Three major tools form the core of the product:

1)      The personalized cyber medical journal (PCMJ) and

2)      The cyber medical journal knowledge  base (KB)

3)      Third Party resources

The Personalized Cyber Medical Journal (PCMJ)

PCMJ is a web-based personalized journal that enables the user to easily record medical information at any time and any place throughout their career.  At the outset it consists of thousands of empty pages that are proactively named and coded in anticipation of the span of medical information that the individual will come across through his or her career.  Medical subject headings (MESH) with associated keywords as created by the National library of Medicine form the basic infrastructure of the names of the pages.  The template document  is known as a ?free form document? (FFD)   Each FFD allows the user to enter personalized text, and to form relevant links to the web, licensed medical texts, medical journals, PubMed, and text in the KB.  The user can create, import or embed graphics into the page.  These graphics can take any form, including images, graphs, diagrams, slide shows or videos imported from either the web or from the collection in KB library or from a personal library. Digitally recorded sound files, as may be recorded from a lecture, can also be linked to the page.

The format of knowledge delivery has formerly been non pliable as designed by the authors and publishers, not taking into account individual learning habits of the user.  The PCMJ understands that different individuals have individual learning techniques.  The user can assemble the pages, and create and organize the material in any format that suits his or her individual learning style.  ?MED? provides the user a personalized and growing bank of their selected medical knowledge that evolves with them as their career progresses through a lifetime.

Cyber Medical Knowledge Base (KB)  

aka The Common Vein

 

KB is an integrated medical knowledge resource that focuses on the organization and integration of the basic medical sciences with the clinical sciences.  This knowledge base has been developed over 15 years with an emphasis on organizing and integrating medical information, and serves as a value added component to the PCMJ. The reason it was developed was to fulfill the need of educators, students, and scholars of medicine to have a semblance of organized control over a field of explosive information growth.  Knowledge Base incorporates 5 major branches as the infrastructure of its information system, from which all other information stems.  These include structure, function, disease, diagnosis, and treatment.  This format allows the student and scholar a single site where the basic sciences and clinical sciences are integrated.  Such a text is not currently available.  The database contains a deep rich and rapidly expanding library of images from all disciplines of medicine including medical art created from the group.  Currently the library has nearly 12,000 images.

What needs does the Cyber Medical Journal fill?

A medical career usually spans 50 years of continued learning, during which time there are infinite instances of educational opportunities.  In the medical school years, there is intense study using books and lectures, while in the years of practice teaching and research, learning opportunities are in the form of practical experience, conferences, and through the reading of books and journals.

            Although any one of the experiences is an opportunity to learn and improve, the human memory is finite.  In the past we have attempted to aid the memory and recall processes by taking and highlighting notes, collecting and archiving journal articles, building a library of books, and attending lectures and conferences.  In general this method of information collection archival and retrieval is inefficient. Each is stored in a different location ? the notes in books or in files, journal articles filed in a cabinet, and the books on a shelf.  To retrieve a specific piece of information is sometimes frustratingly impossible.  A paper discussing cardiomyopathy in alcoholics with cirrhosis and portal hypertension living in Asia in a lower socioeconomic environment where rheumatic fever is prominent can only be practically stored in one section in the filing cabinet.  If one needs to refer to this paper in three year?s time one could look for it in one of six or seven of the categories mentioned.  It may never be found.

  Despite the significant strides made in electronic information, the current practicing generation is still dominantly dependant on paper as the medium of choice to store their knowledge base. Book vendors are still one of the most popular booths at medical conferences.   Medical students are increasingly transferring their peripheral memory to the computer, as are other students.  Thus tools for this generation that will fulfill the known need of accumulating knowledge over a 50-year career must be developed.  The personalized cyber medical journal is the first known tool in the field of medical knowledge tools that addresses this need.

What needs does the Cyber Medical Knowledge Bank fill?

The early years of medical education are daunting because of the sheer volume of information that has to be learned and the lack of context for the information that the student has to learn. Each of the subjects in the curriculum is dealt with by different departments, each of which has a responsibility to cover a certain amount of material, but none of which has the responsibility to ensure that an integrated learning environment exists.  The New Pathway developed by Harvard Medical School was an attempt to solve this problem, but a text with all the subjects integrated has yet to be developed.

The subjects learned in medical school take on a different meaning in the clinical years as the lessons learned reveal their relevance.  Once again the ability to recall those lessons is limited unless they are easily accessible.

The KB fulfills the need to allow a full and integrated medical text with an extensive image library to be available for the user.  No similar integrated text is available elsewhere.

What service or product does your business provide?    

The product provides a safe environment for the accumulation, organization storage retrieval and use of personalized and tailored medical knowledge that is available anywhere and any time as long as internet service is accessible.  Patient information can also be incorporated with cognizance of  HIPAA standards.

The product is  enhanced by providing updated medical information made available either through  links to selected sites, use of the unique KB which now has almost 12,000 multidisciplinary medical images, and knowledge bases that will be licensed from third parties, such as ?Up to Date?, and medical texts such Harrison?s Medical Text.

Prestablished searchable empty FFD pages that have already been coded with expected titles, preempt the need to type the title of the page and code the page, though the system provides an ability to create new documents that may not have a template in the system.

The ability to create libraries of sound bytes that are searchable and linkable allows the user to record a lecture, link it to a FFD and store it.  This is a time saving measure for the user who may be otherwise preoccupied with the taking of notes.

Other tools can be added over time such as an email service to experts in the field, and patient records.

Who are the potential customers for your product or service?

The initial market includes (but is not limited to) all members of the medical and paramedical profession, including students, nurses, physician assistants, and physicians.  The format of the diary can be used and applied to any profession where a lifetime of accumulating knowledge is part of the profession. In fact a personal web space that will allow a person or fanily to store their multimedia and personal information safely outside the confines of their own computer may also be an attractive customer.  

How will you reach your potential customers?

For the medical profession, it may be prudent to provide all first year medical students the program free or at very low cost in order to introduce the program far deep and wide in the world.  It would require demonstration at medical education conferences, and through personal contacts and communication to deans of schools.  Thereafter the product could be advertised through the medical web sites, and can secure a presence by creating a booth at any of the well attended medical conferences.

Source of Financial Resources.

The product should be launched with the aid of venture capital support.

 Growth of the Company

The establishment of a business group that will decide on the direction and growth of the company.

Company vision

The vision is to move rapidly ahead with the development and introduction into the market in order to establish the brand name and place in the market. The audience once captured is potentially a customer for life.  As their database grows the cost of membership can potentially  increase.  Physicians are usually in a position to bear the cost particularly when it could be related to the tools of their work and be a tax deductible item.   The tool in general as stated above can be applied to other professions and also to the layperson who may have a wealth of multimedia data that needs security, accessibility, ease of ?search and find? and storage.

 Number 4 on the list of Unfinished Business

Art Biology and Medicine

Bringing the beauty of Biology to the World of Art