What is cM?

Cyber-medicine.org derives from an innovative intellectual partnership between Sheila Moriber Katz, MD, MBA and Kim Solez, MD. Their cyberMedicine joint venture was entirely conceptualized and executed in 2001 over the Internet. In the third millennium, their relationship is principally virtual, although they first became acquainted in a laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the mid 1970's. In the last quarter of the past Century, they met face-to-face only five times, occasions three and four separated by a gap of 18 years. Their professional collaboration is an e-prototype of productive interactions over the Internet.

There is an odd parallel between the careers of the cyberMedicine partners, both having begun as academic renal pathologists on the Northeast coast of the United States. Major human calamities propelled both people to the cutting edge of medicine where they still work best. For Sheila Moriber Katz, the first breakthrough was her finding the cause of Legionnaires' disease during the first recognized outbreak in 1976. For Kim Solez, the turning point was the devastating earthquake in Yerevan, Armenia in 1988, which resulted in hundreds of cases of acute renal failure. The odd parallel extends to cyberMedicine itself -- the 1988 earthquake in Armenia spurred the first use of the NASA Space Bridge satellite communications system for medical purposes, which was an important precursor of Internet-based telemedicine.