Traditional medicine relies on peer reviewed journals to announce medical breakthroughs or developments. Blogs now challenge that model. MedRounds is  a new for profit company started by a doctor. A standard design has been mashed together for a group of 7 medical blogs (written on Blogger) all about eyes. The information is literally last minute stuff. 

July, a specialist called Rosenfeld, presents a single case of a drug where change in use helps fix macular degeneration.  By October, the eye world is buzzing. The Age Related Macular Degeneration Blog is running lengthy technical articles about Avastin treatment, amongst all the other good stuff on how to treat patients with macular  problems. The blogger is a noted ophthalmologic professor at the University of Iowa.

It's the speed that blogs can put information together and into circulation that will trump more traditional scientific models. Blogs give the consumer, public access to the same material doctors use to update themselves.

Medicine is well suited to blogging. Doctors like to circulate stories of what works and what doesn't. Doctors (and patients) like to read about real life examples. Peer reviewing and ethical issues remain important, as they do in every other area, but once solved, blogs speed and immediacy will inject new vitality into medical discovery and knowledge.