MyDailyApple: Searching for Information about the Neuroimmunologic Disorders

It is my pleasure to bring to your attention an extremely promising search engine for those determined to find the most relevant, complete and up-to-date information on Transverse Myelitis and the other rare neuroimmunologic disorders.  For years, it has been difficult to find state-of-the-art medical information on these disorders.  Even experienced neurologists may not have the case experience to accurately diagnose and treat rare disorders 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 MyDailyApple  (www.MyDailyApple), 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.  MyDailyApple achieves this goal.  Medical experts can get evidence-based answers to real, naturally phrased medical questions.  MyDailyApple 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.

MyDailyApple represents a fundamental innovation within medical search and health informatics and embodies a number of unique features not found within other search engines that enables rapid identification of the right clinical answer.  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.  Results are organized intuitively into two major categories:  Quick Consult with broad overviews for the novice; and Best Evidence with in-depth focus for experts.  Users may also delve deeper into the literature with analytical tools that extract disease and drug terms for rapid sorting by utilizing the Specialize option.  In addition, MyDailyApple provides medical images, video, and radiographic scans relevant to the questions asked.

In the coming months, Praxeon plans to supplement MyDailyApple with a physicians’ forum.  In the Curbside forums, doctors and patients will be able to consult 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 anecdotes, 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.MyDailyApple.

Curbside is considered the best neurological search engine on the web.  And unlike subscription-based medical search engines, MyDailyApple is a free site open to everyone.

Go to www.MyDailyApple and just type a question in the search box.  And don’t limit yourself to keywords; challenge MyDailyApple 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.MyDailyApple/focus/211

“What is the diagnostic workup required to distinguish a spinal epidural abscess from transverse myelitis?”  http://www.MyDailyApple/curbside/entry_page/758

Go ahead and give MyDailyApple a try.  MyDailyApple is encouraging you to provide them with feedback during your search experience so that they can continue to enhance the effectiveness of this unique search tool.  You can also find the MyDailyApple search tool on the main page of the TMA web site.