What a Year!

As the year comes to an end, we would like to present to you what we have accomplished and where we are going next. We would like to showcase the best stories, most interesting devices and the most fascinating discoveries, as selected by us: internet journalists and clinicians, the editors of Medgadget.com.
2005 was an extraordinary year for our website. In the course of the last 12 months, Medgadget was born, and became the most heavily trafficked and linked to medical weblog out there. Thank you, our dear readers!
It is our pleasure to cover the cutting edge of medicine, medical technology and the latest science, and to bring it to you with our clinical perspective. All our news stories are personally selected, cross referenced to their original sources, and many of them have appeared on our pages the day the discovery or the device is announced (not always easy, given our day jobs and night calls).
We are also proud of being a news source for the latest in the world of arts as it relates to medicine.
And so, on this note, here is our list of noteworthy stories from Medgadget, in no particular order:
1. Medgadget goes to Frost and Sullivan Medical Device Awards, and covers all the devices and technologies that were recognized by the “Oscars” of the biomed world. Rumor has it, that Medgadget is to go next year for the same ceremony. Details soon.
2. We learn that the overpaid leadership of the American Medical Association, bent on “branding” the organization to increase its membership, quietly decides to make American Medical News (AMNews)–“The Newspaper for America’s Physicians”–a pay per view internet site. Medgadget starts a campaign to pressure the AMA to drop its plans. The grass root action reverberates through the entire medical blogosphere. Benjamin Mindell, editor of the American Medical News responds. And the result? The important public policy journal is still hidden from the public itself (unfortunately still number one search result on Google for “medical news”!). Additionally, the AMNews does not generate any “buzz” within the blogosphere, something that it should have been, as there are plenty of blogs out there interested in public policy issues. The AMA membership likely has not increased. And pundits responsible for the debacle are still at the helm of the AMA.
3. Medgadget nicely illustrates a previously undescribed surgical technique: the Chopstick Surgical Closure Technique. Although most of our surgical coverage this year was given over to robots.
4. 64-slice CT scanners go main stream as diagnostic modalities. Even Oprah finds them fascinating and useful, and in the process sends us more than 4,000 visits on the day of the show, all looking for 64-slice scanners (the hardest part was to investigate where the traffic was coming from). The coronary artery disease can now be visualized “in a heart beat.” Medgadget covers Brilliance 64-slice CT Scanner by Philips, Aquilion 64 by Toshiba; Biograph 64 PET/CT by Siemens; GE’s LightSpeed VCT, all of them well before the mainstream media.
5. The future of medical monitoring and treatment is wireless! Our faves: the WEALTHY wearable health system, and NASA’s CPOD, and an untangled EKG (no “ICU spaghetti” system).
6. Medgadget’s The Good Old Days archive grows to more than sixty stories. There is always something to learn from history, especially if you share our preoccupation with drugs, alcohol, celebrities, and sexually transmitted diseases.
7. We are the first news outlet to report on the new AMA logo to the public (and put it in historical context).
8. The intersection of medicine and sports brought some new devices in 2005, and we were excited to learn about performance-enhancing contact lenses, heatstroke-monitoring sunglasses, and other nifty developments.
9. It was a great year for Art and Medicine. Edwin Smith Papyrus was displayed at the Met; medical kitsch was shown in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Alexander Tsiaras was shown at The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. And, yes, we are obsessed with Alexander Tsiaras’ art: this year’s winners of the Medical Weblog Awards will get a copy of his book: The Architecture and Design of Man and Woman : The Marvel of the Human Body, Revealed.
10. Sex and dirty toys were used to generate cheap traffic, of course. Selling sex, unfortunately, did not work for us. But here’s the list of attempts, nonetheless: the unforgettable Rape Trap and STD urinal, the Viagra Condom, and HarmonySystem for Sex Without (Physical) Pain, for paralyzed perverts, of course.
Did we forget something else? Of course, we did. So if you are new here, look through our archives.
What about the future? In the immediate future the task is a serious one: the voting for 2005 Medical Weblog Awards is in mere five days. We better buy some additional bandwidth!
Otherwise, we’re looking forward to another healthy, prosperous year bringing you news of medical devices and breakthroughs. Be in touch, send us your email: we love to hear from you.
Thanks for everything!