Posted by Marty on August 13, 2008, at 16:18:36
In reply to Re: Is Babble Dying? yup, posted by AbbieNormal on July 19, 2008, at 6:37:38
To discuss this idea I started a new thread at http://dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20080719/msgs/845970.html.Here's the first post. I welcome you to reply in the new thread so that everyone discuss in the same thread.
------------------>PBabble needs to EVOLVE or risk extinction, gradually fading into the web history. While the value proposition of the competitors always increased in the last couple years, the value proposition of Dr.bob.org has not.
As a software developer I always thought there was an incredible lost of value generation on this site. With so many people willing to participae in finding something that works for them and help other and feed so much data about their experiences with their illness and medication experiences.. Think about it.. all the datamining and realtime statistics that we could do/have if this site would have (or would, never too late) offered.. just some possibilities :
- A user profile section including a biological background(age, sex, etnicity, disease running in the familly, everything related to health and experiences/reaction with prescribed and street drugs) and an historical background (personality as a child, familly history/problems, traumatism/adverse life situation) and diagnostic history.
- A journal which would include affect/mood/motivation/sexual functionning/cognitive functionning/...every pertinent symptoms. AND a medication journal with the drug/supplement/therapy, prescription (dosage, frequency), benifical effects assesment, SIDE EFFECTS assesment, rating on some aspect of the subjective experience (cost vs effiency etc).. also when a med is added or withdraw a more detailed questionaire could be offered/'requested' after sometime and would be an opportunity to gather even more data on a varity of aspect that you wouldn't want to include in the 'day-to-day' journal.
- Patient bloggin to allow him to express itself freely without a rigid format but every post linked to the other journals. Allow video blogging (Vlog).
- A wiki (like wikipedia: an open encyclopedia) on everything related to mental disorder:
- Medication basic info page (like the one already on wikipedia) + associated research paper + realtime statistics generated by the journals + user experiences + Experts (Docs and Scientists) experiences with the med + Experts theories about synergictic/agonistic/antagonistic relation with other drugs and user rating of those relation.
- Knowledgebase comprised of empirical data (Research paper backed), data generated by this site journals/rating/pools/theories etc (filtered to avoid inputing NOISE -> Garbage in, Garbage out!) + any thing that can be tagged/parsed for keywords like a website or document (note: very weak weight in analysis or can be turned off in datamining/analysis query). The entities would be organized by multiple dimension (subject, tags, medication, condition etc) and linked between each others which would allow to search/detect some possible links between a varity of entities (disease, medication, neurological knowledge, news, every recognized medical field papers/report ... etc), which are usually difficult to see because of the of the multiple 'degrees' between them. (just like there is 6.6 degree between every human, there could be something interesting to for scientist to study that they dont see yet because they are separated by many degrees .. 6, 10, 43 .. well formated data input and multidimensionally well linked, the computers could see some potential interesting links in about 2 to 4 years (of knowledgebase enrichment/development by volunteers) what scienctists from many different fields could finally see in 15, 20 years or just NEVER see because of the slow pace at which links are made between fields and subfields/areas of research). Note that there's already some database system in place that are facilitating research of those links... Check for Pubmed fellow MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) as an example. I'm not sugesting to do better than those system but doing something different that would use those systems to enrich itself and it analytical quality greatly. Without such systems, and other type like Pubmed as example, already in place and public this part of the project would be a lost of time.
SO........even with just a fraction of those idea developed, if well thought and well done, the possibilities are just short of MINDBLOWING on many different level. I wont describe all that could get out of this project as there's ALOT of possibilities. This all couldn't happen in a couple months but alot could be done in 1 or 2 years and a decade could be sufficient to develop the whole thing to a mature level so that it would become a favorite of Patients/Clinicians/Researchers in the psychiatry field. This, obviously, wouldn't never get as much attention as Wikipedia and would never have more than 2% the amount of Wikipedia contributors: Everybody needs an encyclopedia but not everyone has something to do with mental health (lucky b*st*rd!!). Just saying before someone think I'm manic .. (lol) I think the community could grow enough to happen. I could imagine the year 2014: ~10000 patient members, ~2000 clinician members, ~200 researchers.... what do you think ?Keep in mind that the data input wouldn't be exclusively by patient/sufferers but enriched/verified/corrected by all kind of experts willing to participate to what would be for neuroscience/psychiatry what SETI@Home, Folding@Home, Wikipedia, or Open Source software are for other fields: a platform to exploit the collective knowledge/experiences of a massive community of willing contributors where, because of the platform good data gathering/data relationing/Analysis and datamining, the total value generated would become with time bigger than the sum of the individual contributions. The created value for the users and the researchers would be many time more than the actual value generated/offered and would allow Pbabble not only to survive but become one of the best if not THE best site for mental disorder sufferers.
Who's with me ? Think I'm going manic with those potential ideas of grandeur ? I'm not. Just being ambitious when I don't feel sick. MANY incredible and just plain groundbreaking Internet community based projects wouldn't have seen the light of day if it wasn't for a couple ambitious and optimist fellows -c-r-a-z-y- enough to not only believe in the success of their ideas but also had the courage to gather around them and work on them together ! Think of Wikipedia for instance .. HOW crazy does someone looks in 2001 and announce that by 2008 his community based website would have become the biggest encyclopedia in the history of mankind with several million freely usable articles and pages in hundreds of languages worldwide, and content from millions of contributors !!! Keep in mind it wasn't a Bill Gates or a Rockfeller, an Eistein or a Philippe Pinel .. OR what about Open Source ? How the hell so many people from many different background, country, age group etc work together on the web without even actually seen each other let alone know the credential/talent of the other contributors and create succesfully something as complex as a computer operating system (Linux) in a couple years without much money/sponsors .. seens the different variation of Linux lately ? Every billions of Microsoft COULD NEVER beat that quality of engineering and product.
Dr-Bob.org was groundbreaking a couple years ago and could recycle itself/evolve to something as much, if not much, groundbreaking again in 2008.
I, for one, would be willing to work on this project if I could get some sponsorship/risk capital/financing and the participation of a couple clinicians/researchers willing to share their ideas as to how this platform could generate optimal value for them. Dr.Bob would without a doubt be someone very interesting to talk this project with as he must have put alot of thoughts into those kind of ideas since he created this website.
Anyone who had the nerve to read my post to this point (my written english is awful. I speak french) and is interested in dicussing this fantasm is welcomed to babblemail me!
/\/\arty
PS: RemedyFind (RevolutionHealth) ideas are good, but not great and they are implemented in a way which is very far from giving what I have in mind. That said, I think it would already be a good target to aim for this kind of simple implementation in a possible next version of Dr-Bob.org.
poster:Marty
thread:840132
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20080719/msgs/845972.html