Medical Communicating

Staying up-to-date the easy way

renshaw01 — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:27:07 +0000

If developments in your field are rapid or if you need to keep an eye on several areas at once, then keeping up-to-date may be a challenge. This blog posting reviews a range of free and easy-to-use tools to make keeping abreast of changes simpler.

Most of the tools reviewed on this post make use of RSS (really simple syndication) or Atom technology that can be used to ensure you receive notification every time fresh information is added to a website (commonly called a news feed).

Before you begin
Before you begin signing up to your RSS feeds, you may wish to consider where you receive the news feed. If you don’t want your email inbox filling up with journal current contents information, you can choose to receive the information delivered to another location, including: a news feed aggregator, podcast aggregator, Twitter, Skype or a designated, personalised ‘home’ (or other) webpage (sometimes called a news aggregation website).

For people who are attracted by the idea of managing (modifying, adding or deleting) news feeds from one central point, aggregator technology is preferable. Choosing an aggregator will allow you to instantaneously download and manage, in one location, a range of media, including news feeds, current contents of journals, regular PubMed searches, and new blog or Twitter postings from various sources.

News feed aggregators
In general most news feed aggregators allow you to download of fresh information in mixed media from various sources in one location (see diagram).

A key advantage of news feed aggregators (or feed readers) is that you can filter the news feeds using key words, which is crucial to exclude extraneous information. Using the Vienna news feed aggregator (just one of many types of these aggregators), embedded videos can be played within the aggregator (there is no need to switch to your internet browser to view the webpage). An example of a newsaggregator window is shown below. Clicking on the article headlines (unread headlines are in bold) will give you further information (see box below the list of headlines).

The reader can then choose to visit the webpage of the article for further information.

Podcast aggregators
People on the move may like to receive updates by Podcast (several journals provide good Podcast summaries of current articles, as well as interviews with authors and researchers providing expert interpretation of the studies). Podcast afficionados may therefore like to use a Podcast aggregator or receiver (in tandem with itunes) to collect and manage all their Podcast subscriptions from a central location.

News aggregation websites
Another method of staying up-to-date is to create a personalised ‘home’ (or other) webpage in which you download all your journal content feeds, news sources, podcasts and other methods of staying up-to-date. These websites use the same or similar technology to websites reviewed on this blog previously, when we looked at using them for other applications, such as keeping links to all your favourite websites on your home page or learning about current trends in a selected therapy area. This time, this blog posting will consider these sites as aggregators. As before (see Are personal webportals useful for medical communicators?), the ability to colour-code the headers is useful to categorise your newsfeeds (see example of a webpage below, where the BBC health newsfeeds have red headers and the Lancet newsfeeds have grey headers).

The detail in the news aggregation website example shown above is unclear, so anyone interested may wish to link to the pdf of this image (see below).

Netvibes news aggregation website example. –

The above example used Netvibes but similar mixtures of information are available with Pageflakes, Protopage and iGoogle. However, you might wish to read Are personal webportals useful for medical communicators?, which looks at the ease of use, pitfalls and advantages of these websites.

Choosing a news aggregator or webpage
The number of different news feed aggregators and webpages appear to be multiplying faster than a pathogen in a drug-resistant, immunocompromised patient. To further complicate matters, your choice of aggregator will not only depend on personal preferences, but also on your browser, operating system and the type of media you will be monitoring with news feeds (i.e. predominantly podcasts, journal current contents or videos). For these reasons, only a few examples of news feed aggregators and webpages are shown in the table below. Comparisons of some these technologies are available on the Internet and, to help you choose, a couple of the comparison websites are included in the table.

Links to the comparison websites:

http://www.aggcompare.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_feed_aggregators

How to subscribe to rss feeds

Finally, how do you subscribe to the newsfeeds? After all the complexities of choosing an aggregator format and technology, you’ll be delighted to know that it couldn’t be simpler to subscribe: just click on the orange RSS button…

Calling all readers: your feedback is requested

renshaw01 — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:23:45 +0000

There are so many new developments (including Web2.0/Medicine2.0 tools) that are applicable to medical writers and medical communicators that it is difficult to know what would be most useful to write about next. Perhaps you can help out by letting me know which articles you found most useful. Take the poll:

View This Poll

In addition, I’d be happy if you’d take the time to let me know what you’d like me to look at next:

View This Poll

Many thanks for your feedback.

Inhaling the web – UPDATED

renshaw01 — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:33:00 +0000

Seed Newsvine

NOTE: this posting has been updated to include reference to HealthMash, which went public on 7th October 2009. Health on the Net Foundation search tools are also mentioned.

“Instantaneously create a custom page with the latest buzz on any topic” is the strap line for Addict-o-matic. And it’s true, you can rapidly create a webportal to social media relating to your target topic. In the space of time it takes to type “human papilloma virus + HPV” I created the webpage on this topic: try the link. It is as easy as ‘inhaling the web’. However, Addictomatic is not the only tool available to give you an over of a particular area. This posting looks at some of the available options.

With Addictomatic, the sources for the HPV page include posted news articles, Twitters, videos from Youtube and other filesharing sites, blog mentions, links from Wikis and flickr images. No sign up is necessary. Of course ‘hard data’ (such as journal articles) are missing from this single-topic webportal but if you only want to gather opinion and comment on a topic to which you are new, what an amazingly rapid way to do it!

Alternatives to Addictomatic
Similar applications include Squidoo (create your own ‘lens’ on a topic), twine and now HealthMash. Squidoo provides all that’s new on a topic on one webpage. Twine helps you track one strand (twine or topic) or multiple strands (two Twines, or strands, are shown in the image reproduced here).
Both Squidoo and Twine take longer than Addict-o-matic (or HealthMash) to set up – you really need to go to the trouble of signing up for an account – but they are more customisable and interactive. For instance, with Twine you can add your own sources of information (webpages), view twines on the same topic by other people and even interact with like-minded people. Nevertheless, although there is virtually no customisation available unless you sign up, you can do a quick Squidoo topic search without an account and I liked the feature where you could refine your search (the ‘Get picky’ box on the right hand side of the image reproduced here).

Health/medical tools
The reason for updating this posting is to include the recently public HealthMash tool, which is said to provide relevant health information from trusted sites. For more information on the unique features of HealthMash, try reading medical librarian Hope Leman’s interview with HealthMash CEO Endre Jofoldi.

I am still unsure exactly why the sites found with HealthMash are ‘trusted’. For the purposes of this blog, this is not its main feature because, after all, it is not the only searchtool that provides search results from trusted sites – for example we know that sites found with SearchMedica are ‘handpicked’ by doctors or nurses and the Health on the Net Foundation HONcode certified sites adhere to basic ethical standards in the presentation of information as well as ensure readers know the source and purpose of the data they are reading.

The advantage of HealthMash searches over HONcode certified sites found with HONsearch is the range of media searched – including twitters and blogs. This means that HealthMash (like Addictomatic, Twine and Squidoo) provides glimpse of the current ‘buzz’ surrounding a topic, rather than a ‘drier’ perspective derived from a Medline search.

Nevertheless, users of HealthMash should be aware that all the ‘trusted information sources’ appear to be almost exclusively US sites. For those looking for information with a more international flavour (ex-US information), SearchMedica or the HONsearch facility (aimed at patients) may be useful. You can even install, through HONtools, an HONcode search bar plugin for your browser. Although the range of media searched by HONsearch is not as comprehensive as HealthMash, it does have some useful features. For instance, it is possible to view only information from congresses or switch between information aimed at healthcare professionals and that aimed at patients at the click of a button.

Finally, although it is previously noted that sites found with an HONsearch are likely to be more international than those found with HealthMash, it is striking that both these web-based tools found similar sites with the test search: “human papilloma virus + HPV”. Many of the sites found were FDA or CDC sites, for example.

Are personal webportals useful for medical communicators?

renshaw01 — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 09:35:02 +0000

Seed Newsvine

Is your web browser bookmark bar overcrowded and do you find it difficult to quickly locate your favourite or most useful websites? If so, why not have as your browser homepage a personal webportal with links to all your favourite websites?

When used for leisure, webportals are often used to show links to (among other items) your email, photographs, yellow sticky reminder notes, calendars, your local weather, a Facebook page or similar social networking site, and msn or other chatting applications. However, I suggest that medical communicators could use webportals to easily access favourite or most frequently used websites directly from the home page. Obviously you can make your own personalised page and most webportal applications allow the option of keeping it private. However, to test the feasibility and utility of such portals, I have created few public webportals for this blog so that you can link to them from this page and assess the utility for yourselves.

Please feel free to feedback your thoughts on which set up you prefer (webportals from Netvibes, Pageflakes and Protopage – providers of webportal technology – are tested here). The test webportals can be accessed from these links: Medical communicating1, Medical communicating2 and Medical communicating3.

You should be aware that you may be able to use other webportal technologies, such as iGoogle and MyYahoo!, to create a similar kind of portal. I have not created a public Medical Communicating test portal for these technologies.

A word about the test and the terminology

The aim of the test was to create a webportal with easy-to-find links to a selection of websites (including links to the EMEA site and search tools), current contents of selected journals, podcast and video links. The webportal would, ideally, be viewed on one screen (without the need for scrolling) and with an architecture or other method of easily finding similar websites (e.g. search engines grouped together). I thought it would be essential that the links on the webportal open in a new window or tab so that user has the option of returning easily to the portal page.

One of the first webportal technologies was the Pageflakes technology, so the selection of modules (comprising website thumbnails and headers) on a webportal may sometimes be referred to as ‘flakes’. The tools to make the flakes may be known as flakes, widgets or web gadgets.

There appear to be pros and cons for all the different technologies tested. I have tried to make similar webportals with each of the applications tested. However, I suspect the reader will be able to spot where this poorly computer-literate writer struggled. I was not able to find parallel features for all the test portals but I cannot guarantee that a particular portal technology lacks the feature, just that I could not locate the correct widget or gadget for that feature.

Netvibes

The Netvibes portal allows you to collapse down (or minimise) your selection of modules to header bars (or expand them to get a glimpse of the content). The advantage is this allows you view a large number of website links very quickly at a glance on your portal.

You can change the colour of the header bars and thus colour code different types of links to websites very easily (e.g. brown for search engines, red for journals and green for other useful sites). Clicking on the header bar opens the page in another window, which is useful.

Podcasts can be added and played on the portal (or downloaded). The only downside was that I was unable to locate a widget or function to import all my current bookmarks. Therefore, bookmarks needed to be added one-by-one, which was time-consuming. Widgets were available to enable import of bookmarks from a Delicious account. This widget was not as easy to use as the Pageflakes widget (see below) and of course can only be used provided you have bookmarked your websites with Delicious.

Pageflakes

With Pageflakes one useful function is that you can import all your current bookmarks and specify that they open in a new window when you click on the link. This saved so much time! It was easy to add new bookmarks too.

Pageflakes appears to be geared towards including rss newsfeeds. Feeds from various sites can be added to your portal very easily. Adding the two videos I had selected in a Youtube account was also simple.

It seems to be difficult to just make a flake from a website you like. Unless it already exists, you have to first submit the website to be approved by the Pageflake police. Most scientific and medical sites do not yet exist as flakes, so this could be tedious. However, it is not essential to add links this way, if you want you can import your currently bookmarked sites in batches, so that you have different flakes for particular categories of website. Alternatively, by using the ‘Top links’ flake you can add in links to your useful websites.

A disadvantage with Pageflakes* is that you don’t seem to be able to colour-code the headers.

Protopage

With Protopage it is slightly irritating to have to: 1) expand the header and then 2) shift + click to get a webpage to open in a new window. Adding new webpages to your portal is slightly trickier than with Netvibes. I could not find a widget to import all my current bookmarks.

Like Netvibes, you can colour-code the header of the websites and other items that you add to your webpage and you can collapse to a single header, and therefore view a large number of sites at once. One difference with Netvibes is that merely hovering the cursor over the header provides a preview expansion of the header on your portal. Also, it was relatively easy to play podcasts from the portal.

iGoogle

With iGoogle, it was easy to add videos (particularly as I wanted to add two videos). It was also simple to add rss feeds (eg journal contents from The Lancet) by just clicking on the Google button. Each added module or flake could be collapsed to a single header.

A major reason for not creating a public medical communicating testportal with iGoogle was that I was unable to find gadgets that allowed the links on the iGoogle portal to open in a new browser page or tab. One gadget (Bookmarks) could add links to your bookmarked websites but the links did not open in a new window. Although the ‘Include gadget’ gadget added website links, these also did not open in a new window.

General comments

Overall, it was confusing that each provider of webportal technology had slightly different terminology – widgets on Netvibes and gadgets on iGoogle, for example. Adding a website link to a portal requires one kind of widget and adding a video link requires another. The ease of finding the best gadget or widget for my needs varied widely among the providers, with iGoogle being the most difficult. However, new widgets and gadgets are being posted all the time by developers and, if the right widget becomes available, it may (provided you can find the widget) transform a webportal application from being difficult to use to being a dream.

Summary

Although there were advantages and drawbacks with each of the applications, overall it was much easier and quicker to compile the portal with Pageflakes. Being able to import your current bookmarks directly onto the webportal was extremely useful. I could not find a similarly easy-to-use function for the other portals (but that does not mean that it does not exist). It was also easy to add videos. Webportals in Pageflakes look different from those in Netvibes and Protopage due to my failure to find out how to colour-code the headers (or the lack of this feature).

Netvibes ran a close second to Pageflakes, followed by Protopage. It is simple to link to websites from the Netvibes webportal and they all seem to open in a new window.

The colour coding options for Netvibes and Protopage help you easily locate the link you want. Protopage had the advantage of a greater choice of colours for colour coding headers than Netvibes. The disadvantage with Protopage was the need to shift + click (on the expanded page) to link to your site and the difficulty in adding a specific video to the page.

In conclusion, if all you want on your portal are links to the newest information (by rss feeds), then iGoogle is perfectly adequate. However, if you want links to websites, then I suggest using Netvibes, Pageflakes or Protopage. Pageflakes* comes out on top if you have a lot of bookmarked websites you want to see on your webportal.

*Since first posting this blog it has become apparent that there is an intermittent problem with the Pageflakes server. If this problem persists then I suggest that Netvibes is a better option as a webportal technology than Pageflakes.

Harnessing the power of Web 2.0 for medical writers

renshaw01 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:38:10 +0000

Seed Newsvine

As mentioned previously [see A look at (free) medical and science search tools, below], I recently put together an article on Web 2.0 for medical and science writers. This has now been published in the European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) journal The Write Stuff (TWS).

EMWA and TWS have kindly provided this link to the article (journal articles are only normally available to access by EMWA members). Please follow the link below to read the article.
www.emwa.org/JournalArticles/JA_V18_I2_Roberts1.pdf

I realise that there are many other Web 2.0 applications that could have been incorporated into the article and that the article may soon be out of date. I would be interested to learn of other Web 2.0 applications and services that anyone else has found useful. I look forward to hearing from you!

Search tips

renshaw01 — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:14:30 +0000

Check out some good tips when searching with Google, available at: www.journalism.co.uk/insite/?p=578

PLos debates professional writers

renshaw01 — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:53:28 +0000

Three viewpoints on the role of professional medical writers are presented in PLoS Medicine.

1. Ghostwriting is scientific misconduct and should be handled accordingly

2. Ghostwriting is difficult to define, we need more evidence of its frequency and impact

3. Professional medical writers can be legitimate contributors to manuscripts but ghostwriting is dishonest and unacceptable.

Even now many people who are happy to use the services of a professional statistician will not acknowledge if they have used a professional medical writer. This situation is common despite the recommendation to acknowledge professional medical writers in the Good Publication Practice Guidelines, which was published 6 years ago.

It seems that the general mood appears to be moving towards transparency in the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and other professionals. Examples include:

Senator Charles Grassley’s investigation into unreported payments to US physicians by pharmaceutical companies

More pharmaceutical companies announcing that they will disclose payments to doctors

Greater transparency in clinical trial registration and reporting of results

RCP statement on the relationship between the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry (see “hot of the press’ 4th February post).

So, perhaps it is time for universal disclosure when professional medical writers are used.

“Bad scientists”, MMR, LBC and Ben Goldacre

renshaw01 — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:40:20 +0000

For anyone who is not yet aware of the whole Bad Science – MMR – LBC saga, it rumbles on yet more. Please visit www.badscience.net for the latest.

In a nutshell, LBC radio presenter Jeni Barnett waxed (may be not lyrically) on air about the ‘dangers’ of MMR vaccination. Ben Goldacre at BadScience.net posted an audio recording of 45 minutes of her show on his website as an illustration of “every single canard ever uttered by the antivaccination movement”. Please see Jeni Barnett’s wikipedia entry for another description of events. According to the Barnett wiki, even an MP is expressing disappointment “that ill-informed comments by presenters such as Jeni Barnett on her LBC radio show will continue to cause unfounded anxieties for many parents and are likely to result in some parents choosing not to vaccinate their children …”

For anyone reading this who not British and has no idea why British parents wouldn’t protect their children against measles, mumps and rubella, see here.

Ben Goldacre explains more about the issue in a recorded interview on www.journalism.co.uk.

LBC accused BadScience.net of infringing copyright and the audio clip was taken down. Although BadScience no longer has a clip posted, it may be possible to listen in somewhere in the blogosphere.

Amusingly, LBC is calling anyone supporting BadScience.net a “bad scientist”. A list of blogs supporting Ben is available here.

A look at (free) medical and scientific search tools

renshaw01 — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:58:26 +0000

Seed Newsvine

I used to use the same little stable of search engines to find what I need on the Web (such as PubMed, Journalseek, a metasearch engine, occasionally Google…). But now I’ve been turned on to a host more search engines that are sweet to use, easier on the eye and deliver as good, if not better, results.

Why bother looking into search engines?

There is no denying it, Web 2.0 has changed the way we use the Internet. We spend more time on-line because more of our resources are on-line. With more resources on-line, there is more to filter through to find our chosen nuggets of vital information. Therefore, tools that make searching easier and faster have got to be a bonus.

Search engines are not infallible. They will miss some sites and some articles. To ensure that we’ve done the best search, it may be worth using more than one search engine, trying synonyms, or looking at a search from a different angle. Paid for search tools/databases (like EMBASE, Scopus and Ovid) can help fill some gaps but (unless your institution or company has a subscription) this route can be expensive and not without problems (for example, see the Librarian’s Rx blog on OvidSP’s basic search). Another consideration is that sometimes we are not looking for a scholarly article but for something less tangible – an idea or inspiration, perhaps, which might be found in a video clip, a blog or a news article. Therefore, creative searching strategies with more than one search engine can often help find those elusive ‘ideas’.

The experts are the medical librarians

There are a large number of search engines out there. To help me understand a little about searching in science and medicine, I found help from the experts. These seem to be the medical librarians and those that need particular acknowledgement include Emerging Technologies Librarian, Patricia Anderson for tips on searching, Margaret Henderson at Virginia Commonwealth University for her article on PubMed search engines, library technical specialist Hope Leman (particularly her articles about life science search engines and the Altsearch engine blog’s Top 10 health search engines of 2008) and David Rothman (http://davidrothman.net), who writes a blog “exploring Medical Librarianship and Web geekery”. In addition, although it also mentions paid-for search engines, a preview version of Acharaya et al. 2008 paper, which reviewed 21 search engines, provided further insights.

Some useful search engines

Although it contains nearly 100 search tools, the table shown here is a “work in progress”, so any tips about other engines and comments will be gratefully received. In the table, the search engines have been given a category (general, general medical and medical/science, for example). The categorisations are basic and relatively arbitrary. At the time of compilation, the links to search engines/directories worked; those that did not work, such as the link for Alibaba, are not included in the table.

The descriptions of the search engines are usually taken from the website’s “about” description. However, where search engines were shy of descriptions and I have cobbled one together. In other cases, a succinct description or comment is taken from that provided by a reviewer (e.g. altsearchengines or Margaret Henderson’s descriptions that I can not improve upon).

To view the table of medical and scientific Internet search tools, click on the link below. It is best viewed in full screen mode. You should be able to hyperlink to the websites from the embedded document. Remember to click on the back button of your browser to return here.

Medical and scientific search tools

Learnings
Given the rapid developments in search engine technology and availability, periodic reviews of the search engines we use may be useful. The overall table provided here is a starting point but, importantly, as stated before, it should be viewed as a work in progress.

Other learnings are that we should test out new engines. A key engine to test is Mednar, which is the number 1 medical search engine in Hope Leman’s top 10 health search engines of 2008 at Altsearchengines.com. In addition, given that there are several variants on PubMed its best to try them before plumping for one to use regularly. The kind of engines you use will probably be based on personal preference and your most usual search strategy. For more information about search strategies, try Yale Medical School’s informative videos, a summary of which is found here.

Using more than one search engine for each search you do may prove valuable. When using different search engines, choose ones with different formats, for example, for ‘general’ searches, choose one with a list of results (like Google or Ixquick), one with a map of results (like Grokker or Kartoo), a table of results (like EBIMed) and one with a alternative graphic representation of results (like MedStory). A key advantage of the different formats is that they: “allow us to see beyond the ‘top ten’ [results of a search] and expose[s] the depth and quality of the search results.”

You can customise some search engines to suit you (such as Soolve). If you’re a radiologist, for example, you’ll probably want to search images more frequently than some other specialities, therefore a customised engine focused on flickr, youtube and other image sharing sites may be appropriate for you. If you want to search through patents, then Scitopia may be useful. For molecular biology searches, BioHunt or GoPubMed might be good options.

PubReMiner has some features that may help identify the best in which journal to publish your article. Kfinder can even suggest a list of keywords for your article and putative reviewers. Engines focused on authors (such as Author-ity and Authoratory) may help identify key opinion leaders for speaker bureaus. For those dependent on grants, Scan Grants allows searchs for grants and scholarships (in the US).

Use synonyms, or use a search engine that automatically chooses synonyms for you, such as metasearch tools like the TRIP database; view a Yale University School of Medicine video on the TRIP database for more information.

With regards pure literature searches, Acharya et al. conclude that, for good coverage and relevance of search results, PubMed, Google Scholar and HighWire Press performed well (of the free search engines). GoPubMed performed well with regard results based on the MeSH and gene ontology terms.

Other tips to make searching on-line more efficient
Experiment with different search strategies. If you want to make your search more focused using quotation marks helps immediately. Patricia Anderson has plenty more tips in a slide show.
If you want to set up regular searches of Medline or journals you can collect together all the results in a news aggregator, such as NetNewsWire, Google reader and others. But that is a whole other blog (coming soon…).

Summary
1.    The Web is not static – today’s great search engine may be tomorrow’s dinosaur. Therefore, periodic reviews of the search engines we use may be useful.
2.    There are several variants on PubMed out there. Choose one you like or one applicable to your search strategy.
3.    Use more than one search engine for each search you do.
4.    When using a mix of search engines, choose ones with different formats.
5.    You can customise some search engines to suit you.
6.    There is no ‘best’ engine, people have their own opinion and favour different search engines. Some people will probably still only ever use Google and PubMed.

Back story

The back story is that I am writing an article on aspects of Web 2.0 that might be particularly useful to medical writers (for the European Medical Writers Association Journal, The Write Stuff, June 2009 issue). I’ve necessarily had to make the article a whistle-stop tour to provide an introduction to everything from social bibliographies to social networking and web browsing. This blog, the Medical Communicating Network (www.medicalcommunicators.ning.com) and the twitter (http://twitter.com/Renshaw01) are the somewhat ill-planned offspring of that article. Nonetheless, while writing the article, I realised that I was barely skimming the surface. I kept unearthing little gems that I couldn’t squeeze into the EMWA article and that would make decent articles entirely on their own. New, funky search engines for writers, health professionals and scientists were some of these jewels.

References

Acharaya KK, Greta K and Haritha H. How do you choose your literature search tool(s)? Nature Precedings: npre.2008.2101.2 : Posted 23 Jul 2008. Available at: http://precedings.nature.com/documents/2101/version/2

Is peer review the enemy of creativity?

renshaw01 — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:24:12 +0000

The anonymous peer review process is the enemy of scientific creativity, according to Sir James Black in an interview for an FT article (2nd February).

The article went on to quote Sir James as saying: “Peer reviewers go for orthodoxy… Many of the great 19th-century discoveries were made by men who had independent wealth – Charles Darwin is the prototype. They trusted themselves.”

Mmm…I wonder if this will this lead to the abandonment of publication planning activities?

Sir James Black discovered the beta blocker propranolol for the treatment of angina and the histamine H2-receptor antagonist cimetidine for the treatment of stomach ulcers. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988 and you can read his autobiography here.