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OBGYN.net visits China-OBGYN.net in a meeting underwritten by
InSightec
March 2006
Roberta Speyer Introduces OBGYN.net to China-OBGYN.net
Click to view: Roberta Speyer's presentation to the Chinese dignitaries
I was at the Great Wall with my husband and business
partner Bruce, and we found this. I thought. “Well, this is very fortuitous”,
because Roberta is a very unusual name in the United States. You never see any
cups, license plates, or anything with my name on it, and here, at the Great
Wall, is my name. So this must be the place I belong. I am very happy to be here
with you all tonight.
The presentation here has been made possible by InSightec, which has
underwritten our dinner and our presentation. We would like to thank them for
doing that.
Here is an introduction by someone who is a very good friend of Dr. Lang’s. It
goes back to 1979 when the two of them decided to try something like laparoscopy
here in China together. He also was a great inspiration to my husband and myself
in starting our OBGYN.net back in 1996. He spoke to me on the phone last week
and wanted me to wish you all the very best wishes. He is very proud that we are
coming together in the tradition of the AAGL, and the medical books for China
that he founded, and working together with the internet, bringing back the next
level of communication globally.
As Dr. Xiaoming said to you, this is a first time for us to now have within
OBGYN.net, a complete section that is devoted to China, which is
CHINA-OBGYN.net. When people come from anywhere in the world now, they can
connect right through to this information.
So what is OBGYN.net? This is something that I have been involved with for ten
years, we founded the company. Our company was a technical company – we did
websites. My husband is a first graduate from the University of Washington in
St. Louis, with a degree in computer engineering. It was the first time there
was a degree in computer engineering. And I was a florist, you know, the lady
who designs the flowers. That is what my family did, but I married a computer
engineer and we started a company. We found that this new thing, the internet -
we were getting lots of people interested in it, and some of these people we met
were gynaecologists. They had a discussion forum, and they would send emails to
each other all over the world, about a thousand doctors. It had been started by
a resident, Dr. Geoff Klein at Baylor University School of Medicine. He tried to
go to the ACOG and some of the big societies, and talk about this. They felt
what can a little resident know that could be important to the whole world of
obstetrics and gynaecology?
We met him, and we said, “Well should we maybe talk about doing a website for
this? Is there a reason to have a website for obstetrics and gynaecology?” and
he told me to write to a doctor. I had never done an email; I was mostly just
doing things like running the office for my husband’s business. So, I said okay,
I can do this. I will send it to one doctor. But I did not realize it was a list
and when I sent it to one doctor, I sent it to a 1,000 doctors. Two hundred and
fifty doctors wrote back from all over the world, and said, “This is a wonderful
idea. How can we get involved? What can we do? How can we make a website for
obstetrics and gynaecology?”
It was a mistake, and I sent it to so many people, but it made it become
immediately a global project. So, it is the largest website that is dedicated to
all these things. He did it all; it was founded by my husband, a very large
amount of projects.
Over the years we have had so many contributions; we have 750,000 pages of
content now. We have over 300 very elite members of our editorial board all over
the world, who contribute and review our articles. There are two million visits
every month to the website. When you put in obstetrics with gynaecology in
Google, you come up with the first website, you get us.
Over the years from 1996 to the end of this past year, we have grown from no
one, to the first night we logged on and 35 doctors showed up very excited, and
now two million people a month use it. To put that in perspective, what is two
million? It is about the same amount that visits the American Medical
Association, the AMA every month. That is, of course, a very well used website
for all of medicine, and ours is just for OB/GYN.
What makes it special is our Board. Every section of OBGYN.net, for gynecologic
oncology or for maternal-fetal medicine, has a group of doctors that review
every time we are going to have a new update of material. They look at it and
say is this relevant? Is this good material? Is this something that has value?
By using email these people can be all over the world and in 24 hours they can
have communicated and agreed, and we can publish so much quicker than was ever
possible before.
We have had the discussion forum that was started by Dr. Klein when he was a
resident, since 1995, that gets about a 1,000 postings every month. This is the
longest discussion forum in English for obstetrics and gynecology. I say 1,000 a
month but I know a lot of you here use the Chinese version, and that goes up to
2,000 a month if somebody disagrees.
We have traveled all over the world to many major medical associations, and met
many of the world’s most famous doctors. Here I am in Florence, Italy with Leon
Sperrof.
Also, aside from being the most famous doctors, this doctor is Dr. Mark Perloe.
He started IVF.com, the first website for IVF. This is another reproductive
endocrinologist, Leonhard Loimer from Austria. They met through the discussion
forum and Dr. Loimer went and studied with Dr. Perloe and stayed at his home in
Atlanta. You can see they are pointing to OBGYN.net on the computer screen and
they mailed it to me. So it is really a community. Friendships are made.
Here is the first time we did a cyber café day. It was from ISUOG, International
Society of Ultrasound Obstetrics and Gynaecology from Edinborough. Of course,
since they were in Edinborough, the entire Board had to wear kilts. So we
thought you might enjoy that!
One of our doctors, Professor Braun, makes all his residents use OBGYN.net as
part of the course. They presented him with these scrubs, which I think we may
be able to market if we can get them made cheaply in China.
We donated the first website for the FIGO that they had. We were very proud to
do that. We did it in memory of one of first physicians from Portugal, Ricardo
Marques. He went to Somalia to build a women’s health clinic. Unfortunately
while he was there, there was an insurgent uprising and at the age of 33 he was
killed. It was the first time we lost one of our Board members. That was a very
touching thing because he was so young, and he exemplified everything we
believed in about global collaboration. So we decided that the best way to honor
him was to donate the website. We created the logo, and the people you see in
these pictures are not models. They are real people: the wife of Dr. Loimer and
the physician, Professor Lapidus, who is a perinatologist from Argentina. Our
doctors are what FIGO adopted as their logo to represent obstetricians and
gynecologists around the world.
One thing that came after a while was the “Need to Feed the Baby”; as you say,
the baby grows, and the baby needs and wants and needs and wants. We were very
lucky to meet people from industry, very early on, that believed in us. One of
those was Klaus (inaudible), seen here in a restaurant. He wants to look at the
website more than he wants to eat his tiramisu dessert. He became very excited
and he decided to support us, and gave us a grant to help us develop online
tools.
The one that they became interested in was the Endometriosis Zone, which is now
the largest resource for endometriosis in the world. It has over 40,000
registered members and provides information for patients who suffer from the
disease, but also brings together all the specialists who treat the disease. And
because, as you all know, it is difficult to get such a large group of experts
all around the world together; this gives them a platform for collaboration,
which is truly unique.
I want to just flip through some of these other things so you can see the type
of work that we do. We broadcast every two years from the Preterm Labour
meeting, and we will be doing it next month from Montreux, Switzerland.
Another project we did was for a meeting from ASRM on gonadotropins for IVF. We
developed a website that is now translated into seven European languages which
is for the First Visit when a girl goes to a gynecologist. What can she expect?
We found this to be very popular because young girls are using the internet, and
they get very nervous to go to the doctor. We were able to create an experience
that went through the steps, and even helped them to fill out some questions
that they could bring to their doctor and make them feel a little more
comfortable. This was also done with Schering.
Ferring Pharmaceuticals saw it and said, “Let’s do the same thing for IVF. Let’s
help women and couples who are going to be experiencing an IVF find out what to
expect.” So we developed that.
Some of our latest projects that I am very proud of, and you will all have a
copy you will be receiving of the CD. We did the first webcast ever from AAGL,
where we covered the presentations and selected symposium and had interviews. We
put it together and we were able to get industry to support it, and it has been
very well received.
We have also done an online CME; we have a terrible problem in the Unites States
with MRSA infections in hospitals. We had 800 doctors come to a live webcast
with the experts to talk about new ways to use molecular analysis. That was very
good. We worked this year with NAMS, the North American Menopause Society, who
switched from doing their CME-basics course as part of their meeting, to only
online.
So, a lot of things that used to be done in print or maybe in person are
becoming easier to do with the internet.
We also developed a very nice program that I am very proud of. This was a
project that was done collaboratively. None of the doctors were together. They
each did their portions from their own offices around the country. We were able
to put it together and create the presentations, and an introduction by a very
famous doctor who treats fibroids. This is Dr. Charles Miller from Chicago, and
this is about new ways to treat fibroids today, non-invasively.
So, the future global trends with OBGYN.net and OBGYN.net in China is to take on
more of these projects, like the one we just did. This technology is not just
being applied to fibroids. It is also being tested in clinical trials for breast
cancer, liver, brain, and bone cancers. The education and the ability to manage
the clinical trials, to recruit people, to be able to collect the data, and to
be able to educate people in distant regions, is truly helped by the internet in
a way that was never before possible.
The good news we have to surprise you with tonight is that we have gotten our
first collaboration. We are going to be translating the presentation that we
were trying to show you earlier. It is going to be translated into Chinese. This
is part of what we want to do more of, to take projects, and not just do them in
English, but also do them in Chinese because there is a huge population and
geographic distribution, which makes the internet the perfect way for you to
communicate.
I am very happy also to tell you that this year we have planned to do together a
daily pod cast of what is new at FIGO. So, even though it is a terrible burden,
Xiaoming, Bruce and I have agreed to go to FIGO, and watch, and report to
everyone who can’t be there and let you know what is going on in Kuala Lumpur.
I hope you have a little idea of what we do, and certainly if any of you have
any projects, ideas or things that you are doing, that is the way OBGYN has
always been: an open door for collaboration. We would love to hear about them.
Thank you very much.
View the collection of interviews with leading Ob/Gyns on gynecology and obstetrics issues in China.
