Traditional medical journals allow doctors and researchers to find information on different medical conditions. These articles might take months or even years to publish, after a critical review process, and the journals in which their published often carry high subscription costs.
One doctor is trying to change the way medical information is published. Dr. John Adler, the neurosurgeon who invented the Cyberknife system, has created a new website to make it easier for doctors to publish and look up case studies or medical articles. He joins us today to discuss Cureus.com and how it’s changing the way people access medical information.
Usually, doctors turn to medical journals like The New England Journal of Medicine and The Journal of the American Medical Association to read about new studies, but they include expensive subscription fees and take a long time to publish new information.
Cureus is an online database started by Adler to not only get new information published faster but make it more accessible to the general public. He believes that crowdsourcing the peer review process not only ensures accuracy but speeds up the publication process.
“We use the community at large to help adjudicate what’s the great science from what’s the not so great science. And that little extra magic gives us a way to greatly accelerate the actual primary publication,” said Adler.
Articles in medical journals generally take a long time to write. Along with making it easier to get your article reviewed and published Cureus sets up a template for your article to make it easier on the author to write and submit.
“We also have a templated, structured way of the author entering the paper. You can alike it to TurboTax -- it makes the whole process much faster,” said Adler.
Because Cureus has no paywall, doctors aren’t limited to the information they get from the database. Adler hopes that Cureus changes the way people approach medical information and how they get it.
“There is a found of knowledge that’s locked up behind a paywall and this knowledge can change the lives of patients and a physician’s ability to treat patients,” said Adler.
