There can be no medical researcher who does not know UpToDate, known as Google for medicine, but importantly more, as it is based on evidence. Its creator, known as Steve Jobs of medicine, died of coronavirus recently. UpToDate was the brainchild of Dr Burton "Bud" Rose, aged 77, who is an entrepreneur and a kidney specialist breathed his last on Friday due to coronavirus infection.
What is UpToDate?
Almost three decades back, in an attempt for quick updating of his first textbook on nephrology –often called 'bible' for medical faculty and students –he thought to put the book into a clinical tool accessible by computer, to which his publisher declined.
The textbook "Clinical Physiology of Acid-Base and Electrolyte Disorders," thus led to UpToDate, which he created, says the website. Initially, the website had info mostly on kidney diseases, later included all fields of medicine. Bud turned his basement to an epicentre of medical resource for the world with his wife, Gloria, as his partner. The website is famous and widely used today.
'Steve Jobs of medicine'
Healthcare workers, even physicians refer to the website to treat patients immediately, almost a million times every day, reported STAT News.
Wolters Kluwer purchased the site in 2008 with 3,000 physicians reviewing and updating the content while recommending diagnosis to treat health conditions which often lead to changing clinical decisions of doctors based on it. In writing an obituary for Bud in STAT News, professors from Harward Medical School says "he was truly the Steve Jobs of medicine."
The nephrology section of the website was entrusted to Dr John P. Forman by Bud said that the idea of Bud was a most important medical invention in the past 30 years or longer. "I've argued more than once that he should have won the Nobel Prize for medicine," Forman said.
