Warning! This is an Advertisement! (Using Web 2.0 for Health Information)

Well, it isn’t entirely an advertisement, but I didn’t want anyone complaining that I’d gone commercial on them without warning.

Here’s the excitement. 🙂 I have a new book chapter out. Hardly anyone knew I was doing this, and it was a lot of work at one point in time, so I am delighted to be able to share the information with you. Here’s the book cover, all nice and glossy.

I want to say that Peter and Paula, as editors, made this absolutely as painless as possible for me. I was going in for surgery around the time that they had deadlines, and they bent over backwards to be accommodating so that I was able to contribute. I deeply appreciate this.

I just laid hands on the book, so I haven’t read it yet and this is not a review (which would be pointless anyway, since I’m admittedly biased). I will say the chapter titles are good ones, and the books covers all the right topics. Here is the beginning of the Table of Contents.

As you can see, it starts off with emerging technologies, then shifts to education, research, crowdsourcing (one of my favorite topics), and patient care. It closes out the first half of the book with an useful overview of ethics and legal issues. The next section gives real world examples with RSS, Twitter and mashups in or for hospital libraries, staff development, and faculty/residents. The book culminates in a chapter by Allan Cho and Dean Giustini on semantic technologies and expected shifts in policy and culture online. Dean evidently received his copy shortly before I got mine, as I find he posted these slides about it yesterday.

It is a short book, very focused on what’s most important to know, what’s practical, and keeping those high points accessible in many ways. It even includes a helpful glossary! The entire book is short, around ~150 pages (not counting the index). The longest chapter is mine, at just over 30 pages, and half of that is the bibliography. So, folks, hopefully this is an easy intro and overview.

Now, my copy just showed up in the mail today. How do you get a copy? Here.

The publisher site (Facet Publishing): http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/title.php?id=731-9&category_code=950

Comment or review at the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/data/book/referenceandlanguages/9781856047319/using-web-for-health-information

In the US? Neal-Schumann is selling it over here: http://www.neal-schuman.com/using-web-20-for-health-information

And of course, there’s always Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Using-Web-2-0-Health-Information/dp/1856047318