The First Fifteen Months:

On May 22, 2007 Cancer Research Journal published our first post. September 30, 2008 marked the end of the last full calendar quarter that we have user data for. So with those two endpoints in mind, here’s a chart that tracks the growth in unique visitors to CancerResearchJournal.com during that time period, broken out by calendar quarter.

Digging a little deeper, the numbers suggest that 76% of these visitors arrived here via a search engine — with 87% of this search engine traffic from Google, 5% from Yahoo and the rest from Live, Ask and a few others.

Other sites or email messages which contained links to this site accounted for about 12% of traffic. These are sometimes called referrers or referring sites, and Bloglines, del.icio.us and Inspire led the way in this category.

That leaves about 12% of you who arrived here directly by entering CancerResearchJournal.com into your browser, or by using a previous bookmark for return visitors. And regarding browsers – 69% of all visitors used some version of Internet Explorer, 24% Firefox, 5% Safari, with the remaining roughly 1% split among Opera, Chrome and a few others.

During this span, and among all types of visitors, these 10 posts generated the most page views:

Cuba Approves CimaVax EGF Vaccine for Lung Cancer
Kanzius Machine Uses Radio Waves to Kill Cancer Cells
Fighting Cancer with Social Media
Canine Cancer Patients Benefit from Cliff Book
KRAS is Key to Choosing Colorectal Cancer Chemotherapy
Five Year Old Eye Cancer Survivor Excels At Golf
NSF, IBM and Google Collaborate to Give Scientists a CluE
Mayo Clinic Oncologists Answer Cancer Questions Online
Yale Uses Rabies-Related Virus to Target Brain Tumors
Korean Cancer Patients Battle Blues With Laughter Therapy

These figures imply that 1,296 unique users, or roughly 17%, visited here more than once. Combined, all visitors generated 16,975 impressions with each user spending an average of 2 minutes and 13 seconds here per visit.

What do these numbers mean for Cancer Research Journal?

While the global mix of visitors and a sustained growth rate in readership of about 100% a quarter are encouraging, the relatively modest unique visitor total makes clear there remains much work to do.

A Look Ahead to 2009:

In the second half of 2008 Cancer Research Journal began adding new features that reflect a greater commitment to locating and delivering quality video content regarding cancer research, as well as aggregating content related to cancer research from other publications. Look for those areas to continue to grow in 2009 as well as an effort to become a more effective advocate for the use of modern information sharing techniques to be applied to the distribution of news and information regarding cancer research.

This publication believes that the same energy and effort devoted to SEO and other Social Media techniques that commercial businesses put into helping you find information about their consumer products and services can be utilized by organizations and individuals involved in fighting cancer to help make it easier to share and find high quality information about the latest breakthroughs that are important to you.

Moving knowledge out of silos and into systems is key.

Whether by serving as a place to try out some of these new ideas, sharing success stories about how others in the field of cancer research are adopting forward thinking information distribution strategies, or by consulting directly with organizations to assist in implementing fresh approaches — Cancer Research Journal will be working to help cancer patients, families, legislators and medical professionals locate the new information they need.

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related links: caBIG; Alliance for Taxpayer Access

Bethany Dawson, who is a little over one year old, was born with a medical condition known as gastroschisis which required her to undergo 15 surgeries before her first birthday. Her doctors put her on the liver and intestine transplant list in March 2008, but a suitable donor has yet to be found.

Dr Girish Gupte, the consultant at Birmingham Children’s Hospital in charge of her case, reports that Bethany’s case is complicated by the fact that she needs a complete liver and intestine transplant from a donor weighing less than 66 pounds or 30 kilos – the approximate weight of a child 10 years old or younger.

When doctors told the couple their daughter couldn’t survive to her second birthday without an organ donation, they decided to set up a web page on Facebook telling her story and urging people to join the organ donation program.

Worldwide networking platforms, like the one used by Bethany’s parents on Facebook, and other social media tools like MySpace and YouTube, are not only helping patients and caregivers get in touch with others in similar situations, they’re helping raise international awareness about organ donation, cancer prevention, and other important health issues.

ABC reports nearly 30,000 people logged on to Bethany’s Facebook page during the past week. Much of the site traffic is from the United States which currently has more than 99,000 patients (including cancer survivors) on the transplant waiting list. When asked about the Facebook initiative, Bethany’s physician said,

“As a doctor, any family that is encouraging organ donation is good news for the transplant team simply because of the shortage of organ donors in the UK.”

Dr Girish Gupte
NHS Birmingham Children’s Hospital (UK)

To learn more about the organ donation program in Britain, visit http://www.uktransplant.org.uk/ukt/. For information about programs in the US, go to http://www.organdonor.gov/.

Source: abc NEWS

Related Links: United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS); Donate Life America; Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program (MOTTEP)

Technorati Tags: birth defects; pediatric medicine

The 28-page report, entitled The Wisdom of Patients: Health Care Meets Online Social Media, was prepared for the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF), a nonprofit organization based in Oakland.

The report provides some key statistics on health-related internet use. It also discusses how networking in online communities is transforming everything from doctor-patient relationships to data collection for clinical trials.

The Wisdom of Patients explores the potential risks and benefits of using wikis, blogs, and other social media platforms to conduct personal or professional research. There’s explanations for a terms like “prosumers” and “Health 2.0″ which are popping up more frequently in the health marketplace, plus some insightful comments provided by people who’ve founded popular health-related web sites.

While this report isn’t going to give a current patient any specific answers about the science of cancer, it’s certainly worth the read if you’re a cancer advocate, patient, researcher, provider or IT professional who uses — or is considering using — the internet to share the information you’ve learned during your cancer journey. As the report’s author wrote,

“When patients managing the same chronic condition share observations with each other, their collective wisdom can yield clinical insights well beyond the understanding of any single patient or physician. Similarly, when physicians share information with each other online, the results go far beyond the doctor’s lounge…”

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, MA, MHSA
Health Economist

If you’d like to read more, you can download the free report at www.chcf.org/topics/chronicdisease/index.cfm?itemID=133631.

Source: California HealthCare Foundation Chronic Disease Care

Related Links: National Cancer Institute; American Cancer Society

Related Podcast: Internet Health Records: Convenience at a Cost? from NPR

Technorati Tags: MySpace; YouTube; Facebook; I’m Too Young for This!; health IT; chat rooms; patientslikeme; digg

During online research for articles on emerging cancer technologies and treatments, I’ve come across some entertaining and informative sites offering high quality science podcasts tailored to young listeners. Many of these segments provide a quick, convenient way to help kids learn more about key scientific concepts like mathematics or biology without piling more homework on their plate.

While these sites aren’t specifically tailored to cancer or medical technologies, they are valuable resources for the parents, educators, mentors and others who’ll encourage the budding researchers of tomorrow. They can also help young patients understand more about their own bodies and some of the treatments or tests they receive. Here are a few of the audio and video offerings I’ve recently added to my favorites list:

Bytesize Science from the American Chemical Society

Clear Voices Podcasts from EarthSky.org

DragonflyTV from PBS Kids

60-Second Science from Scientific American

Why? Science Podcast from the Youth Science Forum

These brief podcasts are primarily targeted for children and young adults, but many older adults who haven’t set foot in a science classroom in a while will find them interesting too. They’re also easy to download so you can listen whenever you want to – like during a workout or waiting for an appointment.

If you know of any other reliable web sites offering free health or science downloads for our audience, please send me an e-mail at lisa@cancerresearchjournal.com and I’ll add it to our journal’s del.icio.us bookmarks so other patients and professionals can benefit from your surfing. If you’re scientist with some time on your hands, we hope you’ll consider sharing some of what you know in a similar fashion — you may inspire a future breakthrough.

And thanks to everyone involved with creating these innovative broadcasts – we look forward to enjoying more of them!

“The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you’re learning, you’re not old.”

Rosalyn Yalow
Nobel Prize for Medicine, 1977

Source: CancerResearchJournal.com

Related Links: OER Commons

Technorati Tags: elearning; health literacy; teaching tools

Compiled by CancerResearchJournal.com from mainstream media sources like CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, the BBC and CBC, along with video content from leading medical organizations like the Mayo Clinic, the feed is designed for patients, health care professionals, legislators and others interested in learning about advances in cancer research.

You can access the video news feed directly by going to http://cancerresearchjournal.com/cancer-research-video/ or by clicking on the Video Feed button in the menu bar at the top of this page.

If you have a cancer research related web site and believe the feed may be of value to your users, you can find out more about how to share it with them by clicking on the embed button in the upper right hand corner of the video player.

Please be aware that the feed may at times include preroll, postroll, or other styles of sponsored messages.

Source: CancerResearchJournal.com

Technorati Tags: viral video; thenewsroom.com; msm

Two new web sites might be able to help you fill in the blanks.

GeneTree and Ancestry.com are two new online genealogy research services utilizing DNA testing to assist those who have trouble tracing their roots using conventional methods. To get started, users submit results of genetic tests they’ve already taken or send back DNA samples using mailed kits sold by the companies.

Once the individual’s genetic profile has been captured, the services compare it with information contained in immigration, military and other databases to trace a family’s origin. An online family tree is created and then social networking features similar to those of Facebook and MySpace are used for making contact with other members of the user’s tree.

The companies report they have implemented special security measures to protect the privacy and personal information of individuals born in the last 100 years, but only time will tell whether those protections are enough to attract customers leery of sharing their DNA information.

As added reassurance, company officials point out that the segment of DNA analyzed for genealogical research isn’t of much value to insurance companies and employers trying to establish one’s predisposition for certain diseases or to law enforcement officials looking for criminals.

Proponents of online genealogy point out it can be particularly useful to population groups with fragmented historical records caused by forced relocation or war.

For those trying to assess their personal health risks, it should be mentioned that these DNA testing services aren’t designed to look for known disease biomarkers—you should consult a qualified genetic counselor for that type of support. But these research services, and others like them, could prove to be a useful tools for supplementing and sharing knowledge about your own family history (health or otherwise).

Source: abc news

Related Links: NCI; Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation; USA TODAY; Interpol; AOL News; BusinessWeek.com; Genetics Society of America

Related Video: Genome Ethics from WebMD Cancer Health Center

Related Podcast: October 2007 Episode from Heredity, official journal of the Genetics Society

Spanish Links: Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (Spanish National Cancer Research Center)

Tags: James Lee Sorenson; Sorenson Genomics; Provo; Salt Lake City; Utah

Dr. Pausch’s sense of humor in the face of his bleak pancreatic cancer diagnosis along with the warm spirit with which he delivers some wisdom learned during his journey combines to create a story that resonates with those who experience it.

Here’s a short piece that captures some of the highlights:

The full lecture lasts about an hour and a half. You can watch it on Google Video or click here for the transcript.

Source: Wall Street Journal

tags: Brightcove; Entertainment Technology Center; Alice

CancerResearchJournal.com thinks so.

From cancer patients and their family members searching for new developments related to a recent diagnosis; to local, state, and federal legislators seeking to make better decisions on how to allocate funding; to the wide variety of professionals looking for ways to improve efficiency in their own administrative, marketing and other critical support roles; and, yes, to even the busy healthcare provider, scientist or student wanting to keep up, the blessing of vast amounts of new knowledge can become a burden when it comes time to put that knowledge to work in your life.

So, with that reality in mind, ask yourself –

Is there a better way for all those living or working anywhere on the continuum of cancer research to more easily access the knowledge and experience of all the others?

We believe there is. And it is that core belief that sparked the genesis of CancerResearchJournal.com.

Here’s the dream, plain and simple:

Once a person is hit with the diagnosis you have cancer, they are immediately empowered with the knowledge and tools to locate and subscribe to a digital stream of up-to-date, high quality information about their particular disease.

Ok, that sure sounds nice. But what exactly does it mean? And what will it take to get it done?

Great questions.

To help you visualize how this process could work, here’s a re-creation of our initial back of the envelope outline of the strategy behind the idea.

Though it may be a rather crude roadmap for such a complex journey, it is our relentless passion for the kind of information exchange this diagram illustrates that provides the precious fuel for CancerResearchJournal.com’s twofold mission –

To inform and inspire.

First, the mission to inform expresses our desire to build a publication you can turn to for regularly updated information about cancer research. You no doubt know of others already working on similar efforts and they deserve your support. Still, the hope here is to create our own distinct niche by presenting stories in an easy to understand style that includes relevant links designed to provide you with a more comprehensive understanding of research-related news in less time.

Second, the mission to inspire means encouraging those impacted by – or having an impact on – cancer research to adopt new publishing platforms and strategies. It can be disappointing to see a premier cancer research or treatment facility devote valuable portions of their web site to brochureware when leaders like these could be using their online resources to share important information about their scientific discoveries and innovations.

To promote progress in this area, you can look forward to articles focused on how patients and professionals can use – and are already using – Social Media tools like WordPress, RSS, del.icio.us, Creative Commons and others to open up bottlenecks and break down barriers that keep information out of the hands of the people who need it most. The reasoning here being that the more people who adopt – and demand – these methods be put in place, the greater the possibility that a network effect will take hold.

The greater the possibility of a world without cancer.

If you believe that empowering patients and professionals with better tools and techniques for sharing information can be a valuable weapon in the fight against cancer, we look forward to working with you to help make it happen.