For years, it has been difficult to find state of the art medical
information on rare neuroimmunologic disorders. Even experienced
neurologists may not have the case experience to accurately diagnose
and treat rare disease like transverse myelitis, neuromyelitis optica
and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis. The challenge -
particularly for physicians - is to find the right medical
information, at the right time, within the right patient
context. For the past several months, this unmet need has been
tackled by the Transverse Myelitis Association in a unique
partnership with Praxeon, a Boston-based healthcare startup. This
month, we announce the debut of Curbside.MD (www.curbside.md), the
first medical search engine devoted exclusively to neurologic disease.
"Curbside" refers to the medical practice of the curbside consult -
where physicians informally ask each other for advice on clinical
questions. Praxeon set out to replicate that model online, enabling
medical professionals to pose naturally phrased queries to real
clinical questions, and to get an answer from the best of
evidence-based medicine. Curbside.MD achieves this goal. Medical
experts can get evidence based answers to real, naturally phrased
medical questions. Curbside.MD utilizes a unique semantic
fingerprinting technology to enable search around complete sentences
and even paragraphs of medical information. Users are guaranteed
accurate and relevant results from only the best evidence based
information available. And best of all, this is a free site open to everyone.
Curbside.MD represents a fundamental innovation within medical search
and health informatics. The core technology is an underlying model
embedded within the language of medicine. This enables the search
engine to specifically understand medical terms and their
abbreviations, synonyms and hierarchical relationships. Curbside.MD
embodies a number of unique features not found within other search
engines that enables the rapid identification of the right clinical
answer. Results are organized intuitively into two major categories
- Quick Consult for broad overviews for the novice, and Best Evidence
for in-depth focus for experts. Users may also 'Specialize' by
delving deeper into the literature with analytical tools that extract
disease and drug terms for rapid sorting.
In the coming months, Praxeon plans on supplementing Curbside.MD with
a physician forum. In the Curbside forums, doctors will be able to
consult each other on difficult cases, while simultaneously reviewing
medical evidence - relevant to their conversation - in real
time. This will represent a tremendous advance in information
seeking for physicians treating all neurological disorders, including
the rarest ones. They will have the opportunity to share their
personal experiences and insights with treatment - within an evidence
based context. For more details on the forum and other updates to
the site, or to post your own comments, check out the curbside blog
at http://blog.curbside.md.
Give Curbside a try. Go to www.curbside.md and just type a question
in the search box. And don't limit yourself to keywords; challenge
Curbside.MD with a complete thought or question, even a paragraph of
something you're interested in. We think you'll be impressed with
the results and the potential for this new website. Here are some
sample questions to start you off:
"Is the neuromyelitis optica IgG status of acute partial transverse
myelitis predictive of longitudinally extensive transverse myelitis?"
http://www.curbside.md/focus/211
"What is the diagnostic workup required to distinguish a spinal
epidural abscess from transverse myelitis?"
http://www.curbside.md/curbside/entry_page/758
