Thursday, September 25, 2008

The future of Z

While I am not going to rush out to get the first web-enabled washing machine, I am keen on Google's vision of the future, and commonality of scientific data:

Scientific measurements and experimental results will be blogged and automatically entered into common data archives to facilitate the distribution, sharing and reproduction of experimental results.

I have not yet given up on the idea of the common database of reference values for pediatric echo...

I hope to have a working mock-up soon. On second thought, maybe I will wait a bit.

It seems that the "Pediatric Measurements Writing Group of the American Society of Echocardiography and Congenital Heart Disease Council" is indeed making headway. According to the council's Fall 2008 Newsletter:

The current plan is to have a first draft of the document available for review at the American Heart Association meeting in November.

Members of the writing group include SD Colan and T Geva from Boston Children's Hospital... So this should be the definitive "how-to" for pediatric echo z-scores.