A message from the founder
Dear Colleagues and Pneumotox users,
Our story
Building, maintaining and updating Pneumotox has been a real and longlasting pleasure since 1997. The aim was to serve my community of healthcare providers and patients everywhere, with quick, comprehensive, documented and reliable information on drug reactions in the lung, respiratory system and heart. Not omitting substances of abuse, combustible and e-cigarettes, chemicals, gases, warfare agents and radiation therapy, with a total of >1,700 drugs or agents and >820 possible patterns of involvement. It seems this goal has been reached.
Over the past decades, interest in drug-induced respiratory diseases (DIRD) has developed without fading. Nowadays, 400-500 persons access Pneumotox daily, and it is a pleasurable experience that DIRD has now reached the status of a daily diagnostic consideration for many patients in pulmonary, cardiology, oncology, ICU, radiology, pathology, forensic and other settings, as our metrics indicate.
The work behind Pneumotox
Keeping Pneumotox current requires browsing about 400 paper titles and/or abstracts per day 7/7, to extract an average of 5-10 articles that, after careful reviewing, merit consideration for accrual into the Pneumotox database, website and Apps.
A new chapter
After 29 years of this labor of love and >800 updates, rejuvenating and securing Pneumotox using the latest available technology is needed. Pneumotox has to stay current, trustworthy, sharp, and up-to-date for everyone worldwide.
Pneumotox will stay independent, free and ad-free, as long as it is in my ownership and control.
Looking ahead
Qualified colleagues will join me in building an international scientific comittee tasked with the maintenance and development of Pneumotox, with very careful consideration of how AI can be effectively utilized to better the overall management of DIRD.
To help undertake these transformative changes, I opened a fund page where users, departments, institutions, administrative bodies and corporations can contribute once or on a regular basis. Although contributions may vary depending on donor, country, and satisfaction with Pneumotox, equity dictates that service to users will be the same for all.
Should funding go well, a sidestream fund will be endowed to help maintain Pneumotox on the longterm and feed research in DIRD through our recognized scientific bodies. The list of contributors (gold to silver) will be accessable from the Pneumotox frontpage.
Thank you
I am separately preparing a summary describing the history, objectives and metrics of Pneumotox, along with the results of the survey, about 1,800 of you were kind enough to answer with enlightening comments.
I am very proud to continue serving Pneumotox for as long as humanly possible, very hopeful that it will carry on offering a valuable service for many years to come.
Thank you very much for your trust.