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The Book  Download 66 pages, PDF, 1.4 MB Preface 1. BSK 2. The Amedeo Story 3. HIV.NET 4. HIV Medicine 5. Flying Publisher 6. Free Medical Information 7. Amedeo Textbook Awards Perspectives The Awards Preface Rationale Awards Rules and Conditions Application Books Exclusive Sponsorship Donations
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The Amedeo Challenge back
Amedeo is a medical literature guide that provides its subscribers with weekly newsletters about new scientific publications (see example). To the non-initiated, the concise nature of the Amedeo listings - interminable "Authors, Titles, Journals, Years of Publication, Volumes, Pages" - may appear to be among the dullest things in the world. To the initiated, Amedeo is a formidable time-saver. Due to its very content, Amedeo subscribers are typically clinicians and researchers working at the frontline of medicine. At the beginning of 2007, Amedeo covered 100 topics, had more than 130,000 subscribers and was among the most popular medical websites worldwide. It is an entirely free service due to unrestricted educational grants from numerous pharmaceutical companies. The men behind Amedeo are Bernd Sebastian Kamps (BSK), his brother Stephan Kamps, and several dozen physicians. Genesis The story of Amedeo goes back to 1997. In August of that year, while browsing the Internet for HIV news to be included on his website www.hiv.net, BSK discovered that single abstracts of scientific articles could be directly addressed at the PubMed website (see example). This discovery prompted him to generate weekly lists of HIV and AIDS articles published in 20 scientific journals and send them to some of the authors of his AIDS textbook AIDS 1991ff (the predecessor of HIV Medicine). In November 1997, BSK started publishing his weekly literature lists on HIV.NET and offered free subscription to a mailing list. Iris Wiesel (Figure 2.1) and Torsten Hoof from Hoffmann-La Roche agreed to contribute an educational grant, and over the following 6 months, 200 people subscribed to the mailing list. At that time, the weekly message was identical for all subscribers and was sent out from the desktop computer of BSK.
Figure 2.1. Iris Wiesel with her daughter Lena.
Things would probably have remained this way if, in December 1997, Stephan Kamps had not studied a 1,000-page book regarding a software package called Cold Fusion. This software allowed on-line database management and it appeared to be able to send emails directly from an Internet computer rather than a desktop computer. Stephan informed his brother about the abilities of the new software. Break-Through A month later, during the night of January 22nd to January 23rd, at about 2.30 a.m., BSK suddenly realized the potential of semi-automatic email delivery. If the single components of an email (i.e., address of the recipient, subject, message, etc.) could be combined via software, then the message itself could be produced on the fly. Consequently, not all new articles would need to be included in each newsletter, but only those published in a subset of journals previously selected by the subscribers. Hence, the idea of Amedeo was born: offer several dozen topics such as HIV, ischemic heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, breast cancer and Alzheimer's disease - each with an associated listing of up to 50 specific scientific journals - and let the individual subscriber make topic and journal selections. The subscriber's weekly newsletter would then only include the desired information: the clinician would skip virological articles, and the virologist would skip clinical articles. In summary, Amedeo simulates a virtual walk to the campus library. Using the My Amedeo option, subscribing to additional newsletters, changing email addresses, unsubscribing from a topic, or defining a new journal selection is now just a few mouse clicks away. In February 1998, BSK convinced a dozen colleagues to participate in the weekly scanning of new articles, while Stephan Kamps undertook the task of developing the software that would make the new web service work. On May 22nd, 1998, Amedeo was officially launched with 33 topics and huge expectations - but over the next five months, the average number of new subscribers was a disappointing 2 to 3 per day! By October 22nd, 676 people had subscribed.
Figure 2.2. Cagliari, Sardinia - the place where Amedeo was born.
Then, between the 22nd and 30th of October 1998, the number of new subscriptions exploded and continued to grow steadily over the following months. For years, the reason for this sudden change in subscribing activity remained unknown; however, it is now assumed that it was due to the launch of a new search engine, which was first presented to the public in September 1998. The name of the new search engine was... Google! During the following years, up to 500 people subscribed to Amedeo each week. On November 12th, 1999, the 10,000th subscriber joined Amedeo and the 100,000 mark was reached on September 30th, 2003. The topics that attract most subscribers are Diabetes, HIV Infection, Critical and Intensive Care, and Breast Cancer. In 10 years, Amedeo has delivered more than 40 million emails to its subscribers. Sponsors Early on, the Amedeo effort was supported by educational grants from the pharmaceutical industry. After support by Hoffmann-La Roche, Pfizer joined in May 1998, and over the years, many other companies followed (GlaxoSmith Kline, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lilly, Schering AG, Bayer, Novartis, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca). Their contribution was essential for the development of Amedeo. Due to the very nature of the information presented in Amedeo - new scientific publications in medicine - the presence of these companies has to be as discrete as possible. Whereas the company logo may be displayed on the Amedeo website, the logo of a pharmaceutical product may not. Likewise, the weekly newsletter may mention the name of the sponsoring company, but not the name of a specific drug. The Power of Amedeo Today, 130,000 people are grouped around Amedeo and constitute a formidable work force. When BSK and Christian Hoffmann removed the copyright of HIV Medicine, SARS Reference and Influenza Report, a short message sent to the Amedeo subscribers was sufficient to find colleagues willing to translate the textbooks into various languages (see the translations of HIV Medicine, SARS Reference, Influenza Report). Likewise, when BSK created the Amedeo Textbook Award, numerous applications were submitted for the tuberculosis, hepatitis, and antibiotic therapy awards. Subscribers to Amedeo are obviously susceptible to the philosophy of Free Medical Information. Amedeo is a typical Internet story of the 90's: it was almost unintentionally created and launched as an experimental website. It is more the incarnation of its creator's own surprise and excitement than the result of straightforward reasoning and dollar-driven business models: "Hey, look at what we have! Look how cool it all can be!" "Of course, I hope to continue Amedeo for at least another 30 years", says 53-year-old BSK. "But the most exciting thing about Amedeo is that there are many more developments ahead we can't even anticipate today. In 1998, nobody could have imagined the copyright removal concept or the Amedeo Textbook Awards." The worldwide success of Amedeo is most probably due to the formula: "By doctors, for doctors". It comes as no surprise that Amedeo is one of the top Internet websites for medical researchers and clinicians. For Amedeo to be an independent information source, it is vital that it be in the hands of physicians. In 2005, the Kamps brothers received a 1.2 Million-Dollar offer to sell Amedeo. Two considerations were used while evaluating the offer. Firstly, the offer was submitted by an intermediate who did not want to disclose the identity of the buyer; this left the Amedeo creators without any guarantees as to the future of Amedeo as an independent scientific information tool. Secondly, and most importantly, the direct contact to 130,000 persons of excellence among the medical community may one day prove the all-decisive ingredient for the development of even more exciting Internet projects in medicine. The Kamps brothers declined the offer.
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