Wolfram Alpha and Its Medical Powers

'Stephen Wolfram, the British physicist and mathematician behind Mathematica software launched his latest project on Monday (May 18th), Wolfram Alpha. The site, now in public alpha after much hype and fanfare, calls itself a “computational knowledge engine,” and wants to “make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.”'


'Dr. Schwartz, over at A Disease a Day recently profiled 5 searches on Wolfram Alpha that'll make you healthy. These include quickly calculating your BMI, seeing how many calories you've burned doing exercise, knowing your risk for heart disease, interpreting your medical test results, and estimating your birth due date. It's even good for better understanding of your own blood pressure. Just try entering the query "blood pressure 145/90."

Wolfram Alpha may also be useful to the practicing clinician. A search for "creatinine=0.9mg/dL, adult male" returns the 95% reference ranges for the test, a histogram of the general male USA population distribution for the test, and even the CPT codes and test panels. Centralizing this sort of medical data and making it quickly available may prove highly useful. At the very least, it's quite a lot of fun to play with.

For a more detailed introduction to the site, watch Stephen himself walking through a sample of what it can do.'

Fuente y noticia completa: Medgadget.com 22/05/09