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Unsolicited Answers to Rhetorical Questions

davidrothman.net — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 12:17:49 +0100

From something I saw in Facebook recently: Q: Will NextBio do away with PubMed? A: Absolutely not. In order to even have a chance at making PubMed irrelevant, a 3rd-party tool would have to be free. I believe I have played with the vast majority of 3rd-party PubMed/MEDLINE tools available (see this post category for details). Q: …will Pubget do away with PubMed? A: In some libraries for some users, PubGet will be a the preferred option. Will it make PubMed irrelevant? Good lord, no. K adds: Suspect they use PubMed to get their lit content, esp since they say they include all the full text from PubMed Central. K is absolutely right. Both PubGet and NextBio get their data through NCBI API tools. Now, if GoPubMed (free) did LinkOut and/or made PDF retrieval as easy as PubGet (free) doe...

MEDLINE Trends, MEDSUM, Compare PubMed (3rd-Party PubMed/MEDLINE Tool)

davidrothman.net — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:00:04 +0100

Alexandru Dan Corlan made this nifty tool, MEDLINE Trend. From the site: Examples of usage To find out just how many papers have been indexed by PubMed every year, enter an empty query (simply press ‘Build Trend’); To find the history of a subject, enter a few keywords describing the subject. For example, clopidogrel will tell you that discussion about this drug first appeared in 1987, was ocasional (under one paper a month) by 1996 and really took off in after 2000; To make statistics of the languages of papers as indexed by PubMed and how they evolved in time enter something like fre[la] and you will see their number is geting reduced in time, despite the increase in the general number of papers, so the prevalence of papers in french in the database falls from about 10%, f...

The End of Publishing As We Know It

davidrothman.net — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:31:52 +0100

Excellent. [via LISNews] _______________ Feed-only Footer: You can follow me on Friendfeed or Twitter if you want to- but be aware there’s lots of stuff there that may not be related to libraries or health information. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Why People Pirate Movies

davidrothman.net — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:20:06 +0100

(Click above for full-size image) (Via LifeHacker, via Joe Morgan) If the user’s experience sucks, they’ll get their media elsewhere. _______________ Feed-only Footer: Hey! You’re reading this in an aggregator of some kind! [sarcasm]Haven’t you heard that RSS is dead?[/sarcasm] (Source: davidrothman.net)

eBooks, Audiobooks, Overdrive and DRM

davidrothman.net — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:03:05 +0100

I love these solely based on my experience as a patron of a public library, trying (and failing) to enjoy the ebooks and audiobooks they offer. I’m sure the good folks at the Cleveland Public Library have seen this by now: Click for full-size _______________ Feed-only Footer: A few books I think are essential. What else should I add to this list? What are the books that no medlib geek should be without? (Source: davidrothman.net)

New(est) Media Will Ruin Society/Children/Intelligence

davidrothman.net — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:47:38 +0100

This article surveys some of the ways in which early modern scholars responded to what they perceived as an overabundance of books. In addition to owning more books and applying selective judgment as well as renewed diligence to their reading and note-taking, scholars devised shortcuts, sometimes based on medieval antecedents. These shortcuts included the use of the alphabetical index, whether printed or handmade, to read a book in parts, and the use of reference books, amanuenses, abbreviations, or the cutting and pasting from printed or manuscript sources to save time and effort in note-taking. Other examples include Socrates warnings on the danger of writing and fantasy tales, Malesherbes complaining that newspapers “socially isolated readers,” and an 1883 article which argu...

How to: Add a Free Medical Dictionary to Word 2003/2007

davidrothman.net — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:58:26 +0100

Got an email from a friend the other day: “I wonder if you have found a free add-on for Word 2003 that includes medical terms in the spell check feature and is secure enough for me to recommend to my users at the hospital?” This is such a great question and something that has come up at my place of work previously. Out of the box, Microsoft Office Word doesn’t recognize a whole lot of the specialized medical vocabulary that people at our hospital use every day. The result of this is that Word frequently fails to recognize clinical terms and underlines them in red, essentially making them false positives for spelling errors. Only one employee in my department has Stedman’s medical dictionary installed in her copy of Word 2003 because paying a license for each copy u...

Adam Corson-Finnerty on the “death spiral” of Academic Libraries

davidrothman.net — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:07:54 +0100

Interesting reading. A similarly interesting discussion of this post is taking place on FriendFeed. _______________ Feed-only Footer: Have you checked out our book yet? (Source: davidrothman.net)

Big Pharma in your iPhone and Nintendo

davidrothman.net — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:56:50 +0100

From The Independant: Medicines not working? There’s an app for that (Is anyone else completely done with the “There’s an app for that” meme?) Novartis, for example, signed a $24 million (£15.3 million) deal last month with US-based Proteus Biomedical to create “smart pills” that can transmit data from inside the body to monitor patients’ vital signs and check they have taken medicines as prescribed. Bayer is connecting its glucometer for diabetic children to Nintendo’s video-gaming consoles to promote consistent blood sugar testing. And Johnson & Johnson’s Lifescan unit has an iPhone application that lets users upload readings from their connected blood glucose monitors to their Apple phone. _______________ Feed-only Footer: [Th...

Ben Goldacre Explains the Placebo Effect

davidrothman.net — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:01:21 +0100

Ever have a hard time explaining the placebo effect? Let Dr. Ben Goldacre do it for you in this video from the NHS: _______________ Feed-only Footer: I still think it is a huge waste of resources for a library to invest any time or money in a Second Life presence. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Yet Another Reason to Love the NLM: Emergency Access Initiative

davidrothman.net — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:05:04 +0100

I just caught up and noticed this…and think it is brilliant. http://eai.nlm.nih.gov/ The Emergency Access Initiative (EAI) is a partnership of the National Library of Medicine, the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, and the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers. EAI provides free access to full text articles from major biomedicine titles to healthcare professionals, librarians, and the public in the United States affected by disasters. Of course, I won’t be using this because I’m not doing anything related to the disaster in Haiti- but the NLM deserves all kinds of attention and praise for doing this, as do contributing publishers: American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Am...

USDA and Social Media

davidrothman.net — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:43:06 +0100

In my previous post about social media endeavors at the CDC and HHS, I should also have mentioned the United States Department of Agriculture.1 Are there other government agencies (related to health and/or healthcare) with social media projects I haven’t noticed yet? Please let me know in the comments? 1 Full disclosure: My friend Craig Stoltz is working on USDA social media projects, and they’re very lucky to have him. There are a lot of social media “experts” who are not actually all that expert- but Craig really knows his stuff. _______________ Feed-only Footer: Know of something I should blog about? Please let me know! If you prefer, you can leave me a voicemail here: (315) 876-9574 (Source: davidrothman.net)

CDC and HHS Guidelines/Policies on Social Media

davidrothman.net — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:00:10 +0100

Does it say something that these .gov agencies have formal social media operations and policies? Centers for Disease Control CDC Social Media Tools Guidelines & Best Practices Front page for social media at the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/ Health and Human Services The HHS Center for New Media, Standards and Policies Front page for HHS Center for New Media: http://www.newmedia.hhs.gov/ Brief “interview” from AdAge with Andrew P. Wilson, web manager for HHS: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134332 Excerpt: Pblackshaw: So Andrew, does the Health and Human Services Department really have a social-media team? AndrewPWilson: Yes. See http://tinyurl.com/accz97. The social-media outreach effort is being directed by the department’s new Social Media Cent...

Atul Gawande on The Daily Show

davidrothman.net — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:01:56 +0100

Among the things I like: Patient safety, Jon Stewart, and Atul Gawande. Gawande talks with Stewart about The Checklist Manifesto (video embedded below). The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Atul Gawande www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis Steven Levitt calls this “…the best book I’ve read in ages.” Dagnabbit. Now I need to read it. _______________ Feed-only Footer: Hey! You’re reading this in an aggregator of some kind! [sarcasm]Haven’t you heard that RSS is dead?[/sarcasm] (Source: davidrothman.net)

“Information Overload” vs. “Filter Failure”

davidrothman.net — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:52:06 +0100

on 1/10/2008, I wrote: I’m sincerely flabbergasted to hear a librarian (or any information professional) complain that there is “too much data” or “too many RSS feeds.” “Web 2.0″ doesn’t cause an information glut. What causes an information glut is being an information glutton, taking on more than anyone can reasonably manage. There aren’t too many RSS feeds. Rather, there are users who subscribe to too many RSS feeds. The solution isn’t for less data to exist, the solution is smarter, more selective use of the data. The tools that help us filter and manage the information that we care most about are continuing to improve in power and sophistication. Nice to see Clay Shirky agree: _______________ Feed-only Footer: A few books I...

Making “David Pogue Direct”

davidrothman.net — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:36:26 +0100

So a reader writes to NYT technology columnist David Pogue, saying he wishes there was one button he could push to receive all Pogue’s writings and videos. The reader even suggests a name for this: “David Pogue Direct.” It’s a great idea. But David Pogue says there’s no “one-click Pogue subscription” and that to catch all his content online, one has to subscribe to multiple sources in multiple formats. I think that stinks. I think there should be a one-click way to keep up with Pogue. After all, he’s one of my favorite writers on technology. So…let’s see if we CAN make a one-click Pogue Subscription. We already have an RSS feed for Pogue’s Posts (his NYT blog): http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/feed/ To get his columns, Pogue ...

The Health Tweeder

davidrothman.net — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:36:31 +0100

appears to be an attempt at visualizing tweets about health conditions on Twitter. Interesting. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Notes on the Motorola DROID and #androidapps (#mlamobile)

davidrothman.net — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:59:01 +0100

I finally broke down and bought a Motorola DROID from Verizon several weeks ago- that’s the new phone that runs Google’s Android 2.0.1 Operating System. Thus far, I don’t regret the decision. AT&T’s coverage where I live stinks, so as much as I like the iPhone, it just wasn’t an option for me. Fortunately, the DROID does most things as well as the iPhone, and does some things much better than the iPhone. I agree with most of the accolades and criticisms you’ve probably already read about the DROID. Things I Like: The touchscreen is large, responsive, and looks terrific. Syncing of my Gmail contacts, my work contacts, and my Facebook contacts is pretty darn great. I always have ALL my contact information on me- and it is updated whenever Facebook, ...

MLGSCA/NCNMLG 2010 Slides (#jm2010az)

davidrothman.net — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:23:45 +0100

Perhaps I can write a bit more about my trip to Arizona soon, but for now I wanted to get the slides posted for those who attended. It was lots of fun and a treat for me to get to leave Syracuse in January and gape at palm trees for a couple of days. Refreshing Take on Technology Trends (MLGSCA/NCNMLG 2010) _______________ Feed-only Footer: [This space for rent] Want to reach about 3,500 RSS subscribers to this feed? Please get in touch. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Vlogging: Unprofessional Communications

davidrothman.net — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:23:49 +0100

Previous video John’s article _______________ Feed-only Footer: I still think it is a huge waste of resources for a library to invest any time or money in a Second Life presence. (Source: davidrothman.net)

A Lovely Use of RSS

davidrothman.net — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 23:28:38 +0100

My brother, Andrew, a Web developer, is a very clever guy and a fan of woot.com. Recently, he bought a digital picture frame from Woot that can be fed photos via RSS- as a gift to my parents. The clever bit is where each of my siblings created a Flickr or Photobucket account in which to post photos of grandchildren. The feeds from each of these accounts was combined in Yahoo Pipes so that, once the frame is set up on my folks’ WiFi network, any new photos posted appear in their digital photo frame. What a great way for a geographically dispersed family to keep grandparents updated. My mom called to tell me how much she liked it, and I made a point of noting it was Andrew’s clever idea. All I did was mash the feed together in Yahoo Pipes. I love technology when it is used intell...

Behind the Scenes at the #mlamobile Webcast

davidrothman.net — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:22:06 +0100

[Embedded video below] [Embedded video above] _______________ Feed-only Footer: Know of something I should blog about? Please let me know! If you prefer, you can leave me a voicemail here: (315) 876-9574 (Source: davidrothman.net)

Notes on the #mlamobile Webcast (Questions and Comments)

davidrothman.net — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:00:36 +0100

So, we had just decided that we should encourage people to tweet about the Webcast using a hashtag and we jumped online to announce it…and discovered Nikki Dettmar had beaten us to it by a few minutes. GMTA, Nikki. Anyway, it has been a lot of fun reading the tweets and I’m so grateful to those who participated for providing such useful, fun, fast feedback. Some tweets I found interesting: BerrymanD Great content today. Would recommend that, in the future, we skip the history lesson and go directly to the current content. #mlamobile Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:00:38 +0000 – tweet id 5837056058 – 552 Donna, I could not disagree more. The history provides context showing that technological change isn’t new, but is happening faster and faster. Without context, we&...

Webcast Tomorrow on Twitter: #mlamobile

davidrothman.net — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:16:34 +0100

So we’re in Chicago getting ready for the Webcast tomorrow. We just figured out that we want people to be able to submit questions or discuss the Webcast on Twitter, so use the hashtag #mlamobile to do so. Thanks! -David, Bart, Max, and Emily (Nikki set up an archive for these tweets at Twapper Keeper.) _______________ Feed-only Footer: Hey! You’re reading this in an aggregator of some kind! [sarcasm]Haven’t you heard that RSS is dead?[/sarcasm] (Source: davidrothman.net)

[UPDATED] Another Question about ‘Clinical Reader’ …and the NEJM

davidrothman.net — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:12:33 +0100

[UPDATE: 11/12/2009] Got a call from Tom Richardson at the NEJM (who I saw play with the Bearded Pigs at MLA 2008!). According to Tom, NEJM has no arrangement with Clinical Reader and did not license their content to Clinical Reader. So it appears that Clinical Reader is again violating copyright. [/UPDATE] So, Clinical Reader shows video content from the NEJM, including a video on chest tube insertion (yeah, the same one I blogged about a ways back). I thought this was odd. After all, if you go to the NEJM’s home for this video, it clearly says one needs a subscription to view the content. Hmmm. So I decided to look around for any notes from either organization that would indicate Clinical Reader is using this video content with permission. Didn’t find it. Also didn’t f...

Another Question about ‘Clinical Reader’ …and the NEJM

davidrothman.net — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:12:33 +0100

So, Clinical Reader shows video content from the NEJM, including a video on chest tube insertion (yeah, the same one I blogged about a ways back). I thought this was odd. After all, if you go to the NEJM’s home for this video, it clearly says one needs a subscription to view the content. Hmmm. So I decided to look around for any notes from either organization that would indicate Clinical Reader is using this video content with permission. Didn’t find it. Also didn’t find any published terms under which NEJM offered to license it. My curiosity piqued, I decided to poke around more to see if anyone else was showing NEJMs content. Sure enough, somebody with a subscription to NEJM downloaded a decent copy and posted it on Vimeo: It has been viewed there over 1,600 times. No...

Vlogging: ‘Library 101′ and the AL

davidrothman.net — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:05:01 +0100

I’ve never videoblogged before and I’m not sure I’ll ever do it again, but it was fun to try. Please see embedded YouTube video below. Links mentioned in the embedded video above: http://davidrothman.net/category/library-20/ http://www.libraryman.com/blog/essays-on-101/ _______________ Feed-only Footer: Have you checked out our book yet? (Source: davidrothman.net)

New PubMed Video (U of Manitoba)

davidrothman.net — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:02:48 +0100

(Source: davidrothman.net)

Got my H1N1 Vaccination

davidrothman.net — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:00:26 +0100

I got my 2009 H1N1 live, attenuated (nasal spray) vaccine today. I continue to be surprised by how many otherwise rational people (including health professionals) are frightened by the prospect. For the record: If New York State law did not require me to get both the seasonal and the H1N1 vaccine, I would get both anyway. I’ve avoided commenting on the media coverage of Swine Flu. Why bother when Jon Stewart does it better? The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c (Source: davidrothman.net)

Mayo’s LibBlog Shows You How to Use My NCBI

davidrothman.net — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:56:03 +0100

Melissa Rethlefsen does it again with another great screencast: [via: http://liblog.mayo.edu/2009/10/13/video-tutorial-my-ncbi-custom-filters-and-sharing-collections/] Melissa rules. _______________ Feed-only Footer: [This space for rent] Want to reach about 3,500 RSS subscribers to this feed? Please get in touch. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Harvard Medical School’s HMS Mobile | iPhone Apps for Public Health

davidrothman.net — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:00:21 +0100

Harvard Medical School Presents HMS Mobile and Announces Plans to Launch iPhone Applications Aimed at Promoting Public Health Boston, MA, October 09, 2009 –(PR.com)– The Harvard Health Publications Division of Harvard Medical School announced today that it will launch a new program called HMS Mobile to deliver a series of iPhone Applications aimed at promoting public health. The first such application will focus on the H1N1 flu pandemic and is scheduled for release to the public in early October. These applications will leverage Harvard Medical School’s extensive knowledge along with its long-standing expertise in publishing health information for the general public. The School’s goal is to provide the public with the best available information on public health-related issu...

New PubMed Handouts from the NNLM

davidrothman.net — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:57:46 +0100

Oh, thank goodness. I’ve been fretting about how my library’s patrons will react to the PubMed redesign, so I’m grateful for the revised tri-fold handouts from the NNLM- they’ll probably help ease a few concerns. The new handouts are available in .doc and .pdf formats and include: Full Text and PubMed PubMed Basics PubMed My NCBI Searching PubMed with MeSH [via The Cornflower] If you’ve prepared any materials to help your patrons (or your staff) use the new PubMed and you’d like to share them with others, please let me know in the comments? _______________ Feed-only Footer: Twitter and similar tools have no innate value. The value is in the network you use the tool to connect with. (Source: davidrothman.net)

LigerCat

davidrothman.net — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:00:14 +0100

In a recent comment, Creaky (Kathleen Crea) made me aware of LigerCat, a 3rd-Party PubMed/MEDLINE tool that is new to me. I’m really enjoying working with it.1 I’m sure that more experienced Medical Libraryfolk don’t have to do this, but as I start putting together a lit search, I often start by going to the MeSH Browser http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html to begin working out what MeSH terms I might be working with. Alternately, I might go to Novo|Seek or GoPubMed with a few key words to get a frequency analysis of MeSH terms. In these examples, I’m doing some preliminary searching on Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis. LigerCat isn’t necessarily *better* at this, but its presentation is simpler. Rather than putting the frequency analysis of MeSH term...

PubMed Preview

davidrothman.net — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:31:38 +0100

http://preview.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/pubmed First impression: TONS of wasted screen real estate on that front page. What do you think? (Thanks to Patricia Anderson for the heads up!) Patricia’s take is here. _______________ Feed-only Footer: You can follow me on Friendfeed or Twitter if you want to- but be aware there’s lots of stuff there that may not be related to libraries or health information. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Test post from iPod Touch

davidrothman.net — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:32:25 +0100

Huh. Neat. _______________ Feed-only Footer: Hey! You’re reading this in an aggregator of some kind! [sarcasm]Haven’t you heard that RSS is dead?[/sarcasm] (Source: davidrothman.net)

CiteSmart (3rd-Party PubMed/MEDLINE Tool)

davidrothman.net — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:06:30 +0100

CiteSmart is a citation software specifically developed for PubMed users to faciliate the writing of manuscripts and other academic documents. With CiteSmart, retrieving references from PubMed is just a click away. This revolutionary software has many new features not found anywhere else. You will be able to: * Search PubMed from your Word document. * Insert a citation directly into your document from Internet Explorer. These two features will save an enormous amount of time. It reduces extraneous clicking and the need to create a database of references. CiteSmart handles it all! Anyone care to try it and write up a proper review? Perhaps for the JMLA? _______________ Feed-only Footer: A few books I think are essential. What else should I add to this list? What are the books that no m...

EBSCO’s Free Influenza Portal

davidrothman.net — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:30:10 +0100

New to me. EBSCO has a portal for free information on the ‘flu from Due to Pandemic H1N1 Influenza and concerns about the 2009/2010 flu season, the EBSCO Publishing Medical and Nursing editors of DynaMed™, Nursing Reference Center™ (NRC) and Patient Education Reference Center™ (PERC) have made key influenza information from these resources freely available to health care providers worldwide. The editorial teams will monitor the research and update these resources continuously throughout the upcoming flu season. _______________ Feed-only Footer: Have you checked out our book yet? (Source: davidrothman.net)

‘Qualities’ not ‘Quality’ – Text Analysis Methods to Classify Consumer Health Websites

davidrothman.net — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:00:09 +0100

Guocai Chen, Jim Warren, Joanne Evans. ‘Qualities’ not ‘Quality’ – Text Analysis Methods to Classify Consumer Health Websites. electronic Journal of Health Informatics, 2009; 4(1): e5. Abstract There is an increasing need to help health consumers to achieve timely, differentiated access to quality online healthcare resources. This paper describes and evaluates methods for automated classification of consumer health Web content with respect to qualitative attributes relevant to the preferences of individual health consumers. This is illustrated in the context of identifying breast cancer consumer web pages that are ‘supportive’ versus ‘medical’ perspective, as compared to an existing manual classification employed by a breast cancer portal with personalised search preferen...

Ohio State University Medical Center: On Using the iPhone and iTouch

davidrothman.net — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:00:32 +0100

_______________ Feed-only Footer: Have you checked out our book yet? (Source: davidrothman.net)

Lin On PubGet and 3rd Party PubMed Tools

davidrothman.net — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:00:44 +0100

Since I don’t have the option of implementing PubGet (previously mentioned) at my place of work, getting to read about the experiences that others have had with it is a treat. Over at Up to the Waves, Lin shares her observations. Lin also writes, however: Pubget is only one of the 3rd party life science search engines that tries to create shortcut to search PubMed. If you are a serious researcher, my advise is using the 3rd party search engines with caution or as a pre-search. Getting comfortable and familiar using PubMed itself is your goal. If you need assistance using PubMed, contact your medical librarians. I can’t wholly agree with this. Not all 3rd-Party PubMed/Medline tools are meant to replace PubMed, and some can simply do things that PubMed itself cannot. If you are ...

LOLpharm (Friday Fun)

davidrothman.net — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:30:11 +0100

via: http://leavesamark.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/lolpharma/ (Thanks to Sarah for pointing this out.) _______________ Feed-only Footer: I still think it is a huge waste of resources for a library to invest any time or money in a Second Life presence. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Physician Rating Sites: Pew-pew-pew!

davidrothman.net — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:52:38 +0100

Bleah. Yet another article about Web sites for rating doctors. Is anyone else really tired of seeing these articles and pretending these sites matter? They might one day, but they don’t now. Anyway, the Pew Internet and American Life Project (Please tell me I’m not the only one who quietly thinks “pew-pew-pew!” to himself every time Pew is mentioned?) says: Nearly half (47%) of internet users, or 35% of adults, have turned to the internet for information about doctors or other health professionals.” Nothing surprising there. “These health information seekers, however, are not likely to post their own reviews of doctors: just 7% of those who looked for information about doctors online (and 4% of all internet users) report posting a review of a doctor onl...

All Your HealthBase Are Belong to Us (Updated 9/3/2009)

davidrothman.net — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:30:17 +0100

[Update] The folks at Netbase have issued an apology: Our first release of healthBase yesterday surfaced a few embarrassing and offensive bugs. These were far in the minority of results but enough to keep us up late improving the site. We sincerely regret and apologize in particular for any offense caused. …I wasn’t offended. I just thought the tool was awful. [/Update] TechCrunch called healthBase “The Ultimate Medical Content Search Engine.” I beg to differ. Rather than getting into what it is supposed to do, lets just try a few queries and see how its semantic technologies perform. First, a search for causes of AIDS. As a Red Sea Pedestrian myself, I’m fascinated to learn that Jews cause AIDS. Huh. What if I was a Jewish Physiotherapist? How would I live ...

All Your HealthBase Are Belong to Us (Want ‘em back?)

davidrothman.net — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:30:17 +0100

TechCrunch called healthBase “The Ultimate Medical Content Search Engine.” I beg to differ. Rather than getting into what it is supposed to do, lets just try a few queries and see how its semantic technologies perform. First, a search for causes of AIDS. As a Red Sea Pedestrian myself, I’m fascinated to learn that Jews cause AIDS. Huh. What if I was a Jewish Physiotherapist? How would I live with myself? Next, we’ll look at the “Pros & Cons of lithotripsy”: Take a look at the “Pros” list. These are just partial phrases describing what lithotripsy is. This list of pros and cons make no sense at all. Among the sources it searches: - Wikipedia - NaturalNews.com (Check out the embedded video in the right sidebar and listen to the lyrics- t...

Pharma Linkdump

davidrothman.net — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:00:40 +0100

Pharma items that caught my attention over the last couple of months: http://itp.pharmacy.dal.ca/Scenarios/Pumed_searching_for_.php Great tutorial from the Dalhousie University College of Pharmacy on searching for drug information in PubMed. http://therapeuticseducation.org/ Produced by UBC Faculty The main goal of the Therapeutics Education Collaboration (TEC) is to provide physicians, pharmacists, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, other health professionals, and the public with current, evidence-based, practical and relevant information on rational drug therapy. The overall philosophy of the TEC is to encourage clinicians to engage in shared informed decision-making, critical thinking, and exercise some degree of healthy skepticism when it comes to the use of new and old...

Web Geekery in Recent Literature, 9/1/2009

davidrothman.net — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:35:48 +0100

Welcome to another installment of Web Geekery in Recent Literature, where we point out recent articles in the indexed literature of potential interest to the Geeky and Web-obsessed. Plagiarism of online material may be proven using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (archive.org). PMID: 19716663 Many writers and researchers are reluctant to publish online for fear that their work will be plagiarized and used without attribution elsewhere. For example, junior or freelance researchers may worry that their ideas will be ’stolen’ and published under the name of professional or senior researchers; and that then it could be hard to convince people that in fact the idea had originated elsewhere. However, if this happens, plagiarism may be objectively proven by a service called the I...

Understanding Medical Tests with Wolfram|Alpha

davidrothman.net — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:30:13 +0100

I thought Wolfram|Alpha was pretty neat when I first heard about it and looked over the examples of its potential use in Health and Medicine, but I didn’t really give it another look until I stumbled across this post from the Wolfram|Alpha blog, “Understanding Medical Tests with Wolfram|Alpha”. Bookmarked for later potential use. Have you checked out our book yet? Here are a few other books I think are essential. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Google CSE: Search Hospital Web Sites

davidrothman.net — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:00:16 +0100

Ed Bennett (previously mentioned here) has come up with another interesting and useful Google CSE for searching the Web sites of over 2,800 hospitals. If you prefer the interface, you can also try it from its Google start page. Have you checked out our book yet? Here are a few other books I think are essential. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Sites for Flu-Tracking

davidrothman.net — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:30:48 +0100

MakeUseOf features five sites for tracking Flu online: Google Flu Trends FluTrackers The DoD Worldwide Influenza Surveillance Program World Health Organization Centers for Disease Control _______ Other posts on this site about ‘Flu (Source: davidrothman.net)

Radiopaedia for the iPhone

davidrothman.net — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:30:09 +0100

Radiopaedia (previously mentioned here) has made available (at no charge via the iPhone App Store) a Radiopaedia Radiology Teaching File of “50 CNS cases comprising 170 images, questions and detailed text.” Neat. Still, I’d like to know how many health infomation wikis are set up to deliver a mobile version for a variety of mobile browsers. This reminds me: I’m going to need to do an update on my list of medical wikis in the near future. If you know of any that I don’t have listed, please leave a comment or drop me an email? Have you checked out our book yet? Here are a few other books I think are essential. (Source: davidrothman.net)

The AMA Has an e-book Strategy

davidrothman.net — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:26:06 +0100

[Press Release] “In addition, because medical knowledge advances at a more rapid pace than the regular print publishing cycles, iPublishCentral gives us the ability to provide more frequent text updates to our most popular books without the added expenses of a new print run.” For instance, the e-book version of Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, sixth edition, contains clarifications and corrections that were not defined until after the book published. The AMA has recently reprinted the book and is using this opportunity to introduce its existing customer base to the electronic version. Direct purchasers can currently receive a two-year subscription to the downloadable e-book as a replacement offer for the reprinted publication. iPublishCentral allows a migration...

e-Patients Video

davidrothman.net — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:00:12 +0100

Some interesting numbers. Not sure about the rest. Have you checked out our book yet? Here are a few other books I think are essential. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Awesome MedLib Blog: PubMed Search Strategies

davidrothman.net — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:30:29 +0100

This kind of blog is sooooo useful to searchers like me who are clearly less experienced and expert than the author of PubMed Search Strategies, Cindy Schmidt, M.D., M.L.S. “This blog has been created to share PubMed search strategies. Search strategies posted here are not perfect. They are posted in the hope that others will benefit from the work already put into their creation and/or will offer suggestions for improvements. Librarians who wish to post comments on this blog or who wish to become authors are invited to e-mail me.” Example post shown below: [via: Melissa Rethlefsen and Mark Rabnett] Have you checked out our book yet? Here are a few other books I think are essential. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Trial-X

davidrothman.net — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:02:20 +0100

This blog has looked at Clinical Trial search tools previously. Some highlights included: Healia ClinicalTrials.gov A GoogleBase interface World Health Organization Also useful for non-clinician is the MedlinePlus page on clinical trials. Trial-X does a couple of things differently. First is that it seems Trial-X can gather your demographic information and diagnosis from your Google Health account or your Microsoft HealthVault account and apply it to your clinical trial search. Second is that the search criteria one can apply is far more detailed than in any of the other search tools I’ve seen. Then it maps your information on a grid to see if you’re a good match for the trials known to the system: And if there’s no good match? Trial-X will email you if it finds on...

PubMed-EX

davidrothman.net — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:20:40 +0100

is a really interesting Firefox Add-on or Greasemonkey Script. PubMed-EX is a browser extension that marks up PubMed search results with additional information retrieved from IISR & IASL text-mining services. PubMed-EX’s page mark-up includes section categorization, gene/disease name, and relation. The mark-ups of PubMed-EX can help researchers quickly focus on key information in retrieved abstracts and can provide additional background information on key terms. Furthermore, our text-mining server carries out all text-mining processing, freeing up users’ resources. Try this- it’s way cool. [PubMed-EX] (Source: davidrothman.net)

Quertle®: More Semantic MEDLINE Search

davidrothman.net — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:02:02 +0100

What New Users Should Know (How is Quertle® different?) 1. Find true relationships, not simple co-occurrences On Quertle, if you search for two or more terms, you will find documents in which those terms occur in a conceptual relationship, not simply scattered within the same document. You won’t always find as many, but you weren’t really going to read 14,578 documents, were you? 2. Quertle understands biology and chemistry Quertle understands the difference between “TWIST”, the helix-loop-helix transcription factor, and “twist”, the verb. So, use proper capitalization in your query, and you won’t be lost in a sea of irrelevant results. 3. Power Terms™ enable you to query for categories of objects Use Power Terms™ to query for categories of ob...

Facebook and the Green-Eyed Monster of Jealousy (WGiRL – 8/4/2009)

davidrothman.net — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:30:06 +0100

The objectives of the present study were to explore the role of Facebook in the experience of jealousy and to determine if increased Facebook exposure predicts jealousy above and beyond personal and relationship factors. Three hundred eight undergraduate students completed an online survey that assessed demographic and personality factors and explored respondents’ Facebook use. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis, controlling for individual, personality, and relationship factors, revealed that increased Facebook use significantly predicts Facebook-related jealousy. We argue that this effect may be the result of a feedback loop whereby using Facebook exposes people to often ambiguous information about their partner that they may not otherwise have access to and that this new i...

MedlineRanker

davidrothman.net — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:02:18 +0100

Learned about MedlineRanker through this recent article: The biomedical literature is represented by millions of abstracts available in the Medline database. These abstracts can be queried with the PubMed interface, which provides a keyword-based Boolean search engine. This approach shows limitations in the retrieval of abstracts related to very specific topics, as it is difficult for a non-expert user to find all of the most relevant keywords related to a biomedical topic. Additionally, when searching for more general topics, the same approach may return hundreds of unranked references. To address these issues, text mining tools have been developed to help scientists focus on relevant abstracts. We have implemented the MedlineRanker webserver, which allows a flexible ranking of Medline fo...

Health Media CSE from Hunter College

davidrothman.net — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:02:29 +0100

Shawn McGinniss at Hunter College let me know that Hunter’s Health Professions Education Center created a Google Custom Search Engine for searching out “health-related videos and other interactive media.” You can try it here. According to the CSE’s main page: Since many educational organizations and media outlets now host full-length content online, this custom search engine aims to make it easier to find quality educational content for students, faculty, and service providers in the health professions. Our goal is to quickly and efficiently locate videos, documentaries, podcasts, lectures, interactive flash content, and other educational media. Targeted topics include nursing, public health, medicine, physical therapy, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, epidemiology, medical lab...

Family Practice POC Web Geekery

davidrothman.net — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 10:59:35 +0100

University of Wisconsin Department of Family Medicine physician Derek Hubbard, MD instructs family doctors on how to find clinical information [on the Web] at the point of care. There are definitely some good tips for clinicians here, but a couple that make me a little uneasy (like using info from About.com as a patient handout). Dr. Hubbard might also be interested in using the Consumer Health and Patient Education Search Engine. [Hattip: Ratcatcher] (Source: davidrothman.net)

“Article of the Future”

davidrothman.net — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:37:25 +0100

Cell Press and Elsevier have launched a project called Article of the Future [link] that is an ongoing collaboration with the scientific community to redefine how the scientific article is presented online. The project’s goal is to take full advantage of online capabilities, allowing readers individualized entry points and routes through the content, while using the latest advances in visualization techniques. We have developed prototypes for two articles from Cell to demonstrate initial concepts and get feedback from the scientific community. [Video here] Craig Stoltz may be more impressed with these than I am, but he asks an interesting question: WHY IN HOT SCREAMING HELL HAVE MAINSTREAM NEWS PUBLISHERS NOT DEVELOPED AN “ARTICLE OF THE FUTURE” BASED ON USE WEB CASES LIKE THI...

Colbert Uncovers Public Library Crime

davidrothman.net — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:46:01 +0100

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c (Source: davidrothman.net)

Watch Nikki Pound Clinical Reader

davidrothman.net — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:50:22 +0100

When I became aware of Clinical Reader (no linky Google-juice for these guys- you can find ‘em if you want to), I decided just to ignore them. In previous years, I might have enjoyed pointing out various disappointing aspects of the site (I’m a peevish naysayer, it has been said). There was no need, though. There are more really good MedLib bloggers than there once were, some of whom are far better at it than I have ever been. To my delight, Nicole Dettmar was the one to do it. http://eagledawg.blogspot.com/2009/07/clinical-reader-starry-ethics-fail.html To answer Alan’s question: Probably just stupid, but they still deserve a good smacking. Jerks. “Legal ramifications,” my Aunt Fanny. Moral of the story: Don’t try to intimidate a smart medical libraria...

Fun Videos from PPLD

davidrothman.net — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:43:11 +0100

Jill Jarrell hipped me to the fun videos her library posts on Vimeo. Here’s one on workplace etiquette (Jill stars in the fridge, grazing, at about 3m:19s). (Source: davidrothman.net)

Ncbi rofl

davidrothman.net — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:32:02 +0100

Martha Hardy (friend, medical librarian, incredibly cool person) hipped me to NCBI ROFL, a wonderful blog that highlights the best chuckles from PubMed citations. Edit: D’oh! Nikki posted about this yesterday and Berci before that! I have become a truly lame blogger. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Chla-absc 2009

davidrothman.net — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:10:09 +0100

Thanks so much to Laurie Blanchard and everybody at CHLA for inviting me to speak! I enjoyed Winnipeg and it was a treat to finally meet people like Francesca Frati (who is awesome) and Mark Rabnett. The slides for my talk (which look awful in Slideshare) are embedded below. To clarify for Krista Clement: I think anything that removes obstacles between users and the information they want is good. If more fully automating some functions of the library makes those functions less visible, I think that’s great. I don’t think that doing a better job for users will result in decreased funding, but I do think that better automation will cut costs. (Source: davidrothman.net)

☣Sneeze: Flash Flu Fun

davidrothman.net — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:25:45 +0100

How timely that a friend sent me the link to this game just when I needed a fun break from Swine Flu panic. In Sneeze, you are an influenza virus in one human and have the opportunity the spread yourself in various environments by having your human sneeze just once on each level. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Q&A With Melissa Rethlefsen

davidrothman.net — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:45:11 +0100

MIDLINE, the Newsletter of the Midwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association has a Q&A with my friend and kick-butt medical librarian Melissa Rethlefsen. (Source: davidrothman.net)

EBSCOhost and ScienceDirect Blocking RSS re-syndication?

davidrothman.net — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 02:44:49 +0100

A friend who is a medical librarian emailed me. She writes: “I’ve been setting up local RSS pages with Feedburner [for email distribution] and Feed2JS [for dislaying the content of feeds on Web pages] for our most popular journals, to allow for TOCs. … It seems the publishers have gotten wise to this and are not allowing their feeds to be resyndicated. It started with EbscoHost — I noticed their feeds never seemed to refresh themselves (which totally defeats the purpose of having a feed). Now it seems ScienceDirect is also blocking re-syndication. FeedBurner can’t pick up the feeds; Feed2JS gives an error, yet the feed validator says it’s a valid feed. SD is providing it’s own source-code to paste into local web pages, but it takes so long to loa...

Watching Swine Flu on the Web

davidrothman.net — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:34:21 +0100

Holy cow! Holy pig! Watching misinformation spread is sort of entertaining. Check out all the people who talk about not eating pork on Twitter. (The flu is not spread by eating pork.) Hah! As I was writing this post, the latest xkcd appeared! The CDC’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Twitter feed seems to be a frequently-updated source of sanity: (Source: davidrothman.net)

Really Stupid Social Health Site

davidrothman.net — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 01:32:31 +0100

The idea behind rateadrug.com is for users to rate drugs. Our goal is to provide unique user-generated data on side effects and subtle side effects of medications. We want to know how these prescription drugs make you feel. I’ve seen stupid applications of social media in healthcare, but this may take the cake as the dumbest I’ve seen in a good while. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Screencast: Introduction to new PubMed Advanced Search

davidrothman.net — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:00:19 +0100

Way behind on sharing this, but better late than never. The Mayo Clinic Libraries’ Liblog has a screencast by Melissa Rethlefsen on PubMed’s new Advanced Search features that you can embed on your own page: In case I have not mentioned it recently: Melissa is awesome. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Venting About a Vendor

davidrothman.net — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:45:09 +0100

I spent too much of today on the phone with a vendor from whom I’d requested an advertised, free, 30-day trial of an information resource on behalf of a clinical department at MPOW. (For now, I won’t name the product or company, but I welcome your guesses in the comments.) After 30 minutes of my patiently letting her finish pitching me with sales information I did not want (We’re already interested in the product! Why would I ask for a trial and quote otherwise?!), I asked for the third time if we could get a quote. Vendor: Well, I’d really like for you to have the trial for a week before I tell you that. [Uncomfortable pause] Me: I can understand why, from a sales perspective, you’d want that. However, if my internal client evaluates the trial for a week, lik...

OCR Terminal

davidrothman.net — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:30:54 +0100

Don’t have an OCR application handy at your place of work to read the text of a scanned page? No problem. What is OCR Terminal? OCR Terminal is a free online Optical Character Recognition service that allows you to convert scanned images and PDFs into editable and text searchable documents. It accurately preserves formatting and layout of documents. Free, requires sign-up. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Congratulations To Movers and Shakers!

davidrothman.net — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:01:22 +0100

There are a number of names in the 2009 Movers and Shakers by Library Journal that made me smile. I’m whacky on cold medicine and half asleep, but these need mention and will, in addition, receive a “Macher and Shtarker” recognition from davidrothman.net. Melissa Rethlefsen: Melissa is a co-author, a mentor who is always ready to help, and a wonderful, treasured friend. I can think of no medical library geek who would be more appropriate to receive recognition for her awesomeness. Rachel Walden: Rachel has been blogging longer, better, and more consistently than I have. Her blog is not only wonderfully informative and frequently entertaining- it also makes medical librarians look soooooooo good. Rachel was absurdly nice to me when I started blogging and has remained someo...

Visible Human Server

davidrothman.net — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:02:49 +0100

This Visible Human Server is loads of fun to play with: English language instructions: http://visiblehuman.epfl.ch/Directions%20for%20use_Real%20Time%20slice.pdf (Source: davidrothman.net)

Pubget RSS and Firefox Download Extension

davidrothman.net — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:42:53 +0100

Okay, so we already knew that Pubget is pretty neat and, for the organizations who can implement it, it speeds up the process of getting the full text PDF to the user. Pubget’s head developer, Ian Connor, keeps me updated on new developments. I was delighted to hear that Pubget now offers RSS feeds with links to the full-text PDFs via one’s organization’s access. The example in the embedded video below uses an open access journal, but gives a good idea what the new feature looks like. So the idea is that if you click on the link in the RSS feed, Pubget scrolls down the list of the results, highlights the right paper, and displays that PDF. Pubget also has a new Firefox extension (available at http://pubget.com/pubget.xpi) for registered users at that will allow them ...

Screencast: Evernote as a Medical Student’s Peripheral Brain

davidrothman.net — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:27:19 +0100

In this video, 4th-year medical student Ryan MacDonald demonstrates how he uses Evernote as his “medical peripheral brain.” So cool. (Source: davidrothman.net)

IntenseDebate Test (Updated)

davidrothman.net — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:35:26 +0100

[Update] One’s FriendFeed feed needs to be public in order for IntenseDebate to pick up the comments and bring them onto the blog. IntenseDebate isn’t perfect, but I love the threaded comments, I like quickly moderating comments via email, and I like the sidebar widget for comments (if you’re reading this via RSS, visit the blog and check out the left sidebar). I’ll keep it for now. Thanks to those who helped me test it![/Update] ____________ I’ve installed a plugin/service called IntenseDebate on this blog. Among the things it is supposed to do is pick up comments people make on my posts in FriendFeed and import them as comments. I’m curious to see if it will find those comments even if my FriendFeed is set to private. If you’re seeing this post t...

Yale Image Finder (and UC Berkeley’s BioText)

davidrothman.net — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:02:05 +0100

The Yale Image Finder searches PubMed Central articles for images. That sounded not only like a good idea, but a good idea I’d heard before. In July of 2007, I posted about UC Berkeley’s BioText1, which seems to already search PubMed Central for images. Why build another tool to do the same thing? The answer is found in this Bioinformatics article The authors note they are aware of BioText, but that… …we are not aware of a biomedical search engine that can retrieve images by searching the text within biomedical images. This offers several advantages over searching over captions alone. First, captions may not contain all the textual information that is contained in the images. Second, image texts are usually very speciﬁc, allowing for precise matching of images w...

WebPax.com

davidrothman.net — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:29:29 +0100

I’m not sure what to make of WebPax.com…but at first glance, it seems really cool to have a Web-based service for viewing images in DICOM format. I know at least a couple of physicians who will want to try it out right away for sharing the occasional scan with a colleague from a distance. I *do* like that DICOM files are anonymized as they are uploaded. DICOM tags are cleared and… • The year and month are not modified • The day is set to the first of the month • The time is set to midnight The patient’s birth date is set to January 1, 1970 I’ll say this much: If I kept a digital personal health record in an online service, I’d want to be able to view DICOMs in it with this kind of tool. Google needs to buy these guys or build a comparable tool...

Directory of Librarians Who Twitter

davidrothman.net — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:02:58 +0100

Most know I’m not a huge fan of Twitter (I prefer FriendFeed), but this interests me anyway. JustTweetIt is a service intended to help Twitter users find others they may want to follow and includes directories. I recently stumbled across JustTweetIt’s directory of Twittering Librarians Check it out, see if there are any librarians listed you want to follow and consider adding an entry to help others find you. (Source: davidrothman.net)

HAVIDOL (avafyneyme HCI)

davidrothman.net — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:02:03 +0100

Dated 2007 but new to me: Havidol is clearly an amazing new drug. Thank goodness there’s such a wonderfully detailed site to tell us all about Havidol and how it can treat Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD). Click to visit the site Great parody of direct-to-consumer advertising. (Source: davidrothman.net)

HHS/FDA/CDC Social Media Tools for Consumers and Partners

davidrothman.net — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:35:18 +0100

New to me- and a good idea to put all of this on one page. http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/ I didn’t know the CDC was on MySpace or that the FDA had a recall Twitter feed. I decided I should definitely follow the CDC’s Twitter feed for Health Professionals, which is for “…Health Professionals interested in staying up-to-date with CDC’s interactive media activities…” They’ve also got a widget to help consumers search for products impacted by the Peanut-Containing Product Recall (embedded below). Includes: Blogs eMail Subscriptions Health-e-Cards Mobile Information Online Video Phone/Email Podcasts RSS Feeds Social Networks Badges for Social Networks Twitter Virtual Worlds Web Sites Widgets Go check it out. Hat tip: Maura So...

More on Evaluating Health Journalism

davidrothman.net — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:05:22 +0100

Francesca Frati (who rules) pointed out last week a site produced by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow: http://behindthemedicalheadlines.com/. Craig Stoltz (previously mentioned) dropped me an email to point out a post I’d missed from The Health Care Blog by Alicia White of Bazian (the company which evaluates stories for the NHS’s Behind the Headlines service). Says Ms. White: …we’ve developed the following questions to help you figure out which articles you’re going to believe, and which you’re not. Questions include: Does the article support its claims with scientific research? Is the article based on a conference abstract? Was the research in humans? How many people did the research study inclu...

novo|seek (3rd-Party PubMed/MEDLINE Tool)

davidrothman.net — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:01:05 +0100

(First started drafting this post on 10/27/2008) I received an email recently which invited me to try the beta version of novo|seek. I was a little put off by some of the grammatical problems I saw until I realized that novo|seek is the product of a Madrid-based company called bioalma (a.k.a. Alma Bioinformatics). novo|seek is an information extraction system for searching the published knowledge in biomedical literature. novo|seek index the biomedical literature with a text mining technology that enables identify uniquely the key biomedical terms. To do this unambigous identification the technology takes into account external available data and contextual term information. As a result of this indexing technology novo|seek is able to retrive every document where a term is mention no matt...

Clarifying “Social (Network* OR Media)”

davidrothman.net — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:01:36 +0100

A friend recently asked for clarification. What is the difference between social media and social networking? Yours may differ, but here’s my take: “Social Networking” is an activity. When you go to a professional conference or gathering, you’re engaged in the activity of social networking. People you know introduce you to new people you don’t know. You exchange business cards and, now acquainted, may contact each other in the future directly without the common intermediary who introduced you. The activity of social networking can take place anywhere, any place, and any way people establish and maintain these connections. The activity of social networking has been amazingly facilitated in recent years by the appearance and development of online tools built wi...

Online Social Networks for Nurses

davidrothman.net — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:15:13 +0100

(Started drafting this post on 10/12/2008) We’re well past the point where there is an online social network for every community. We’re at the point where there are an absurd number of online social networks for every community. A selection of online social networks for nurses: Nurse Connect (previously mentioned here): NurseConnect is an online nursing community and networking site for nurses and other healthcare professionals interested in advancing their education, careers and personal lives by sharing experiences and knowledge with others. NurseConnect is owned and operated by AMN Healthcare, Inc. NurseLinkUp (previously mentioned here), is one of many sites run by Online LinkUp. ANA Nursespace (previously mentioned here) doesn’t seem to be doing much at all. Soci...

Sites that Critique Health Journalism

davidrothman.net — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:01:06 +0100

(Example of how backed-up I am: WordPress says I started drafting this post on 9/18/08) I was skeptical when I first heard about Health News Review, but learning that Craig Stoltz was involved with the project.1 HealthNewsReview.org is published by Gary Schwitzer of the University of Minnesota’s health journalism program and funded by the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. Read a few reviews and you’ll likely find them reliable and wonderfully critical. Be sure to check how how they rate stories. Health News Review focuses on U.S. news, so anglophones in other nations will want to note these: For Canadian news, there’s Media Doctor Canada. Australians have Media Doctor Australia. The NHS Choices site has a section called Behind the Headlines which seems...

Understanding Evidence-based Healthcare

davidrothman.net — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:05:06 +0100

Rachel Walden points (from both Women’s Health News and Our Bodies Our Blog) to a free online workshop titled “Understanding Evidence-based Healthcare: A Foundation for Action” , offered by the US Cochrane Center’s Consumers United for Evidence-based Healthcare (CUE). (Embedded below is a video about CUE. If you are reading this post via a feed reader, you may need to visit the site to view the video.) (Source: davidrothman.net)

Annals of Pharmacotherapy on Wikipedia

davidrothman.net — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:01:31 +0100

This study suggests that Wikipedia may be a useful point of engagement for consumers looking for drug information, but that it should be supplementary to, rather than the sole source of, drug information. This is due, in part, to our findings that Wikipedia has a more narrow scope, is less complete, and has more errors of omission versus the comparator database.” And I loved this: “…health professionals should not use user-edited sites as authoritative sources in their clinical practice, nor should they recommend them to patients without knowing the limitations and providing sufficient additional information and counsel. If these sites are recommended, it should be in the form of a permanent link pointing to the specific recommended version of an entry. Finally, the issue...

Additions to the list of Medical Wikis

davidrothman.net — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:01:49 +0100

Added to the list: Clinical Research Informatics Wiki Self-description: “…devoted to topics in clinical research informatics…exists to facilitate collaborative development of articles covering the breadth of the CRI domain.” Intended Audience/Users: Not listed. Contributors: Anyone who registers Editors/Administrators: Listed only by User ID. Editorial Policies: None listed. MIGHEALTHNET Self-description: “This project aims to give professionals, policy makers including health authorities, researchers, educators and representatives of migrant and minority groups easy access to a dynamically evolving body of knowledge and a virtual network of expertise.” Intended Audience/Users: “…professionals, policy makers including health authorities,...

Apomediation, Online Health Info and Baloney

davidrothman.net — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:14:53 +0100

A recent article in the Journal of Rheumatology: “Trying to Measure the Quality of Health Information on the Internet: Is It Time to Move On?” [html] | [PDF] Short answer: Hell, no. Longer answer: Says the article: “The natural assumption is to believe that there exists a link between the quality of information on the Internet and harm. However, a systematic review attempting to evaluate the number and characteristics of reported cases of harm in the peer-review literature determined that for a variety of reasons, there was little evidence to support this notion.” It is impossible to quantify why people make bad decisions. For instance, say someone makes foolish financial decisions and loses everything they own: can it be determined if these bad decisions were made ...

Lei Wang’s “Find It Fast” Video Tutorials

davidrothman.net — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:01:33 +0100

Posting about the cool stuff Lei Wang does appears to be a habit for me, but as habits go, it sure is worthwhile. Lately, Lei has been posting “Find It Fast!” video tutorials on the blog he writes for the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at the Yale University School of Medicine. These are great and are available as streaming flash or as an .m4v download (suitably sized for viewing on a portable device!). The most recent ones, The Clinical Question and The Pyramid of Resources aren’t just useful to clinicians- they would make wonderful instructional tools for new medical libraryfolk, too. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Vote for a medical librarian!

davidrothman.net — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:18:14 +0100

For the second year in a row, a MedLib blog has been nominated for the MedGadget Medical Weblog awards. Please note that Laika has been nominated for Best New Weblog and consider dropping by to vote for her? What’s not to like about a smart, Dutch medical librarian’s blog? Please- go vote now. (Source: davidrothman.net)

More About the Book

davidrothman.net — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:56:58 +0100

So the book is getting some attention! Internet Cool Tools for Physicians is in Google Book Search Stephen Francoeur made this little video: The Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the MLA mentioned it on their blog. The MLA’s Taskforce on Social Networking Software posted about it, calling it “…an accessible, illustrated and contemporary guide to online tools in medicine.” Laika, whose blog has quickly become one of my favorite MedLib blogs, mentioned it, as did Creaky. I’m watching WorldCat.org with interest to see which libraries are getting it (though Duke’s copy doesn’t show up yet). Dr. Shock (MD, PhD) gave it a very nice review. I’m lucky to count as friends people like Meredith Farkas and Michael Stephens, both of whom thought the book worthy o...

Video: Introduction to Google Reader

davidrothman.net — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:06:24 +0100

Google Reader is my favorite aggregator for RSS feeds by a huge margin, so I’m pleased to see Google is making videos for visual learners to help them get started. Other helpful videos about Google Reader Google Reader “Getting Started Guide” [via] (Source: davidrothman.net)

The Book!

davidrothman.net — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:48:08 +0100

Got my hands on my copies of the book today! How exciting! Yay! You can buy a copy from: Springer Publishing or here: I’m looking forward to eventually seeing it WorldCat. Congratulations to Melissa Rethlefsen (who wrote a heck of a lot more than I did)! You should really go email Melissa now and tell her how much she rocks. (Source: davidrothman.net)

The Book!

davidrothman.net — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:48:08 +0100

Latest Issue of UK Health Informatics Today

davidrothman.net — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:59:54 +0100

It isn’t a publication I generally set aside time for reading, but this most recent issue has a few items articles that look interesting, including: From Health Informatics to eHealth Text Messaging for Health Promotion Among Adolescents Designing for the Hospital Environment: Focusing on the Context Exploring the Role of Metadata in Health Information Applications Application of Mobile Computers and Wireless Technologies in Clinical Dentistry (Source: davidrothman.net)

Google Flu

davidrothman.net — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:20:18 +0100

(Please see previous post on infodemiology- full text here. Also of potential interest this flu season: WhoIsSick?) http://www.google.org/flutrends/ We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and discovered that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulat...

Google Flu

davidrothman.net — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:20:18 +0100

NYLA’s ‘Meet the Bloggers’ Panel (slides)

davidrothman.net — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:57:35 +0100

Jill Hurst-Wahl’s slides are available here. (Source: davidrothman.net)

NYLA’s ‘Meet the Bloggers’ Panel (slides)

davidrothman.net — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 03:53:29 +0100

(Source: davidrothman.net)

UNYOC (CE slides) and NYLA Tomorrow

davidrothman.net — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:27:47 +0100

My apologies to the awfully nice folks who attended the CE course I taught at UNYOC a couple of weeks ago! I’ve taken far too long to get these slides posted: Also: I’ll be on a panel at NYLA tomorrow (Friday, 11/6/2008) afternoon at 4:00 PM- please say hello if you’re going to be there! As usual at these sorts of things, I’ll know almost nobody. But hey- I might get to meet Polly Farrington! (Source: davidrothman.net)

Screencasting and Podcasting: Experience of the Yale Medical Library

davidrothman.net — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:30:36 +0100

Lei Wang’s slides from his presentation for the Connecticut Library Association on 10/24/2008: (Source: davidrothman.net)

Web 2.0 in Physical Therapy: A Practical Overview

davidrothman.net — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:28:42 +0100

Eugene Barsky and Dean Giustini wrote an editorial for Physiotherapy Canada on practical tips and useful Web sites for physical therapy that is short, practical, and chock full of resources I know and like. It isn’t comprehensive by any means (and doesn’t seek to be), but I think it provides a really good, digestible introduction to some useful tools for those in physical therapy. Barsky E., & Giustini D. Web 2.0 in Physical Therapy: A Practical Overview. Physiotherapy Canada, 2008; 60(3): 207-215. Available at either of these URLs: http://www.swetswise.com/eAccess/viewFulltext.do?articleID=38506191 http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/j767550n62473718/?p=6d30aec4e9ba49ae905cefbbfa34e113&pi=0 (Source: davidrothman.net)

I Didn’t Have a Heart Attack

davidrothman.net — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:15:41 +0100

I read you had a heart attack! Yeah, I just recently read that myself. How are you feeling? Thanks for asking. I’m feeling very grateful that I have *not* had a heart attack. Are you sure? I could swear that I read you had a heart attack. I’m pretty sure. I checked. David H. Rothman of TeleRead DID have a heart attack. I don’t know him well, but on the many occasions where a confused emailer has been routed from one of us to the other, he’s always been awfully pleasant. Best wishes to David and his family for a speedy recovery. If you’re not ill, why haven’t you been blogging? I have noticed a pattern: Those who have asked me this question generally do not have children. Those who have ever had a new baby at home don’t bother to ask- they correctly...

Survey: Health Sciences Librarians and EBM

davidrothman.net — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:48:02 +0100

Posted by request from Lin Wu: Dear Colleagues, We are inviting all medical librarians to take this survey. The purpose of the survey is to explore the roles of health sciences librarians in enhancing and supporting evidence-based medicine (EBM) practice. Results will be reported only for research purposes. The survey will take no more than 10 minutes. Take this link to the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ghjbae2_2fJaeUMVJ_2bK7z0HA_3d_3d Thank you for your time and participation! If you have questions about the survey, please contact Lin Wu directly: Lin Wu Reference Services Librarian Health Sciences Library University of Tennessee Health Science Center 877 Madison Avenue; Memphis, TN 38163 Email: lwu5 [AT] utmem [DOT] edu Toll-free: 877-747-0004; Local: 448-5404 (Source...

Congratulations to Mark Rabnett

davidrothman.net — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 01:56:34 +0100

Mark Rabnett, Pharmacy and Pharmacology Librarian, was the recipient of a 2008 CAUT Dedicated Service Award. Each year the Canadian Association of University Teachers recognizes individuals for exceptional service to their academic staff associations. Recipients are nominated by their association. Mark served for six years as the Contract Administrator for the University of Manitoba Faculty Association and eight years as UMFA representative for the Libraries Constituency. [via] Mark is hereby forgiven for not posting a lot of excellent entires lately on his blog. (Source: davidrothman.net)

iPod Touch (NOT iPhone) in the Healthcare Setting

davidrothman.net — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:03:29 +0100

I don’t own any Apple hardware (dang it), so I’ve stayed out of discussions about the use of the iPhone in a healthcare setting- but when someone like John Halamka opines about such things, I pay attention. Check out John’s post on why “…the iPod Touch is a device to watch for clinical and educational applications.” If anyone would like to buy me an iPod touch, please feel free. (If you’re interested in technology and healthcare, you should be reading John’s blog: Life as a Healthcare CIO [feed]) (Source: davidrothman.net)

Where to Find Embeddable Health Information Videos

davidrothman.net — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:33:13 +0100

There are a good number of sources for online health information videos, but I tend to take special note of those sites that will allow me to embed videos on any Web page I want. Insidermedicine http://insidermedicine.com/ Self-description: “The Insidermedicine Project is a physician-led news and knowledge-translation initiative that allows patients, doctors and medical students to keep up on the latest medical information by watching our unique videos that are created each and every weekday by our team of medical experts. Our goal is to reach patients, medical doctors and students around the world to ensure that each is receiving a daily “evidence based” health and medical update.” [Full disclosure: I did a very little bit of consulting for Insidermedicine] Medica...

Special Librarian PSA

davidrothman.net — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:28:36 +0100

Goofy, but I like it: See also: Academic Librarian PSA and Harper Library PSA (Source: davidrothman.net)

Sharing files online: Best Services for Libraries

davidrothman.net — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:30:44 +0100

I started drafting this post about 4 months ago. Sheesh. If I send an ILL request to many large academic medical libraries, I’ll often be sent a password and a link where I can log in and securely download the PDF. This is great because my IS department has pretty strict limits on the size of our email accounts and if mine gets too large, my ability to send new emails will be blocked. Smaller libraries might want to offer a similar service, but not have access to a secure server (or the software or the know-how) with which to set it up. There are a great number of free online services for sharing files, so how do we narrow down the right ones to try? Features we want: We want a simple, easy-to-use interface We want to be able to share even very large PDFs- say up to 15 MBs. For lega...

USP’s Drug Error Finder

davidrothman.net — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:02:28 +0100

As a service to healthcare practitioners, industry, consumers, and others, USP has developed a free tool for accessing drug names that have been identified with a medication error. USP’s Drug Error Finder allows a user to search more than 1,400 drugs involved in look–alike and/or sound–alike errors. It not only lists the other drugs involved in a mix–up, but also designates the severity of the error where at least one report was received through USP’s Reporting Programs. Use USP’s Drug Error Finder. More info here [Via ResourceShelf (via iHealthBeat)] (Source: davidrothman.net)

Proof that this blog has the Best Readers Ever

davidrothman.net — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:04:45 +0100

Last week I posted Rachel Walden’s readlly good idea for a useful 3rd-party PubMed/MEDLINE tool and received several exciting responses. Martin Gerken Martin Gerken was the first to make an attempt that you can try at: http://www.pharmakologie-bremen.de/test/meshr.html …but Rachel got some error messages from it. GoPubMed Martin and Rebecca both suggested using GoPubMed. David (not David Rothman) confirmed that GoPubMed worked nicely but had some problems (which GoPubMed’s Dr. Liliana Barrio-Alvers later answered). David’s (not Rothman) Tool David (again, not David Rothman) also made an attempt at creating the tool that Rachel asked for that you can try here: http://www.docmobi.com/mesh/. I threw in a list of PMIDs and got useful results presented in a pleasant mann...

Learning From The Context

davidrothman.net — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 04:02:57 +0100

I would love to have heard the lecture that accompanied these slides by Lauren Pressley. Any chance audio or video was recorded, Lauren? (Source: davidrothman.net)

KQED’s Forum: The Future of Libraries

davidrothman.net — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 04:02:56 +0100

Just stumbled across this episode of KQED’s Forum (a call-in talk show): Tue, Aug 26, 2008 — 10:00 AM The Future of Libraries Traditional libraries have been caught between declining budgets and the explosive growth of online research. We talk with experts in the field about how the institutions are evolving to meet the changing needs of patrons. Host: Michael Krasny Guests: • Al Escoffier, city librarian for the Burlingame Public Library • Jane Light, director of the San Jose Library • Jim Rettig, president of the American Library Association • Martin Gomez, president of the Urban Libraries Council Embedded player: [Direct link to mp3 file] (Yes, I remember what T. Scott said about discussing the future of libraries.) Download audio file (2008-08-26b-forum.mp3) (So...

EveryZing: Search the Transcript of a (Medical/LIS) Podcast/Video

davidrothman.net — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:32:24 +0100

I frequently like to listen to Uncontrolled Vocabulary, an LIS call-in talk show podcast run by Greg Schwartz. When he posts each episode, Greg also posts a list of the show’s participants and summary of what was discussed- and that makes the podcast somewhat searchable. If one wants to know when gaming has been discussed, one can use the search field in the right sidebar and get results like these which show three episodes Greg noted as having discussed gaming. The Problem: Greg puts a lot of time and effort into Uncontrolled Vocabulary, but itd be much more searchable if Greg transcribed every episode and made that that transcription available for searching. It’d be even cooler if Greg indexed the transcription against timestamps in the audio files so we could jump to the poi...

T. Scott on ‘Libraries or Librarians’

davidrothman.net — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:02:21 +0100

My favorite parts of T. Scott’s post: “As I’ve been saying for years the library is becoming less relevant, and no amount of hand-wringing over what we can do to get people to use the library more is going to change that. But librarians are more relevant than ever, if only we can disengage ourselves from privileging our buildings and collections the way that we do and utilizing our individual skills in more effective and relevant ways.” “The way I see it, the mission of librarians hasn’t changed at all. But we’re not going to fulfill it if we keep worrying about the future of libraries. There’s way too much interesting and fun work to do to waste time on that.” Go read the whole thing. (Source: davidrothman.net)

The Health Blogosphere: What It Means for Policy Debates and Journalism

davidrothman.net — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:30:40 +0100

Interesting item via Patricia Anderson: A Kaiser Family Foundation panel on the health blogosphere. Interesting to note that the only bloggers on the panel are from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and the Wall Street Journal. Where are the physician bloggers, patient bloggers, nursing bloggers, etc.? (Source: davidrothman.net)

Eagle Dawg on Pew’s “The Engaged E-Patient Population”

davidrothman.net — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:32:17 +0100

Nikki (at Eagle Dawg Blog) nails down exactly why I didn’t bother posting about the latest from Pew. (Typical of my cynicism- the report wasn’t worth blogging about, but criticism of the report *is*.) If you’re not reading Nikki’s blog yet, subscribe now: [Eagle Dawg Blog - Feed]. (Source: davidrothman.net)

WordPress Fun

davidrothman.net — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:53:48 +0100

Oy. Finally performed a long-overdue upgrade of WordPress, so this blog is finally running the latest version. I’m slowly working on a redesign- so if you’re reading this post via RSS, stop by the site and let me know what you think so far. One thing I’m pleased about is that I’ve finally set up this blog’s mobile version. Those visiting via mobile device (Hi Melissa Rethlefsen and J. Dale Prince!) will see a version more suitable for a small screen. In case your mobile browser isn’t recognized and automatically shown the mobile version, I’ve put a link at the top left of the header that’ll turn it on: Please let me know what you think. (Source: davidrothman.net)

MedLib Blog Badge at I’m Feeling Lucky

davidrothman.net — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:02:35 +0100

I’m Feeling Lucky is written by Brandi Tuttle, an Information and Education Services Librarian at the Duke University Medical Center Library. Brandi writes: I’m Feeling Lucky grew out of a discussion with my husband (who’s also a librarian). We were talking about the services and databases offered by libraries. My husband laughingly commented on the usefulness of Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. That option has value!! Sometimes people just don’t want to go through the work of looking through a library’s list of helpful links (even if all the links rock). One pretty good link will suffice. I was fortunate to meet Brandi at MLA 2008 and enjoyed her unique style of saying outrageous (and frequently hilarious) things in a sweet, cheerful voice. Why is David always o...

A (really good) Idea for a 3rd Party PubMed/MEDLINE Tool

davidrothman.net — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:02:38 +0100

Rachel Walden writes: What I’d like to do is to be able to enter the PMIDs of several citations and have the tool search MEDLINE via PubMed for the assigned MeSH terms, and return a single list of the terms used by any of the entered citations with a measurement of frequency. For example, if I input PMIDs 16234728, 15674923, and 17443536, the tool would return results telling me that 100% or 3 of 3 use the term “Catheters, Indwelling”, 2 of 3 use “Time Factors,” 1 of the 3 uses “Urination Disorders,” and so on. Although this example uses 3 PMIDs, I’d like to be able to input at least 10, just based on personal experience. This would be useful in situations where a single “gold standard” search strategy is needed for the purposes o...

MEDLINE now indexes JoVE

davidrothman.net — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 04:02:48 +0100

The Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is now indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed. They say on the Jove Blog that “JoVE is the first video-journal to be accepted in PubMed.” Verrrry interesting. Does anyone know if the NLM has published the standards that might’ve been applied here? Are they the same standards as for text resources? I’m curious to know what other Web-based non-text resources will be indexed in the future. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Create your own DTC Drug Advertisement!

davidrothman.net — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:50:09 +0100

Video! Make your own! Print! Make your own! [Via Metafilter] (Source: davidrothman.net)

Pam Dolan on Medpedia in American Medical News

davidrothman.net — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:02:43 +0100

Amidst all the coverage of Medpedia that has generally seemed to be derived from a press release is this more informative article from Pam Dolan at American Medical News. I’m quoted in the article: Medical librarian and blogger David Rothman, who regularly writes at DavidRothman.net about medical wikis, expressed concerns about the regular monitoring of Medpedia’s content. “If the academic institutions … wish to avoid embarrassment, I’d recommend that they dedicate some time of their health care experts to regular review of articles,” Rothman wrote. He estimates about 65 medical wikis exist. He’s not sure what the involvement of prominent medical institutions will mean to the project, noting that comparisons won’t be possible until the site i...

How not to pitch David on a post topic

davidrothman.net — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:19:43 +0100

I get email all the time from people who would like me to post about a site. I know that these get sent to a lot of bloggers in health care because I frequently see these sites mentioned on other blogs with 24 hours of receiving the email. I ignore 90% of these either because I think they won’t be of interest to those who read this blog or because I think they’re just lousy sites. I thought it might be fun to look at a recent example of an email I received and how I made the decision to not post about the site (except to write this post). I’ve removed the sender’s email address (as a courtesy to protect him from spambots) and the hyperlink (to refrain from lending the site any Google Juice). from: Dixon, Bill < [xxxxxxx]@cohnwolfe.com> to: David Rothman date: Wed, A...

Synapse

davidrothman.net — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:02:55 +0100

The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Library has come up with a neat tool for tracking publications by authors affiliated with the organization. What is Synapse? Synapse is a self-service web interface and database supported and maintained by the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Library, providing access to an inventory of the published output of our researchers and clinicians. As the name implies, Synapse is the user’s point of “connection” to publications authored by Memorial Sloan-Kettering staff. You can search for specific author names or by journal title, keyword and other fields. The search will return a listing (bibliography) of publications that you can browse, print, export or connect to the fulltext of specific articles. The term “synapse” was coined in 18...

PubMed Quiz

davidrothman.net — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:02:12 +0100

The Saab Memorial Medical Library (at the American University of Beirut) has quizzes to test your PubMed knowledge in both Basic and Advanced flavors. Just curious: If you teach (or have taught) a class on using PubMed, are these the sorts of questions you’d use to determine how well your students absorbed the material? (Source: davidrothman.net)

MedLib Blog Badge at MGAS nieuws

davidrothman.net — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:02:22 +0100

Jens De Groot’s MGAS nieuws is normally in Flemmish/Dutch, but an English-language version (which seems NOT to be machine-translated) is also available. MGAS News is the weblog of the Campus Library Biomedical Sciences (MGAS) of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). Here we offer information from and about our library (services) and biomedical information of interest for researchers, physicians and students. Why is David always on about this badgey stuff? Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges! Previously, I’ve noted the following blogs that display the MedLib Blog badge in their sidebars: Laika’s MedLibLog Health, Science, & Libraries Info.RxCases Bobobiblioblog Patient Education Matters! Staying Well. Connected. Info Long Term Care OrgMonkey EBM...

More Health Information Wikis

davidrothman.net — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:03:10 +0100

I’ve added a few new sites to the list of medical wikis. No, I’m not going to add Medpedia to it because Medpedia it is still in beta. I’m flabbergasted how much press it is getting while not even visible to the public. They must have hired the right PR firm. Wikis recently added to the list are noted below (details are in the list itself): The McGill Library Global Health Resource Guide Case School of Dental Medicine Clinic Manual ECGpedia Medical University of South Carolina Department of Radiology’s Medical Physics wiki EBHC Search Strategies Wiki Consumer Health Information (Toronto Public Library) Onco Wiki (Source: davidrothman.net)

MEDLINE Cognition (SemanticMEDLINE.com)

davidrothman.net — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:02:08 +0100

I knew that an interface for MEDLINE using Natural Language Processing was being developed at Lister Hill, and PubFocus has been called “semantic MEDLINE” too, but I heard a couple of days ago about a tool from Cognition Technologies called (appropriately enough) SemanticMEDLINE I’m going to need to play with it a bit more before having any idea if it’ll be useful to me, but it is interesting. I searched for “Are probiotics an effective therapy for Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis?” and got the following results: The most interesting part of this is how the panel on the right has drop-down menus for the terms it recognizes, allowing the user to make sure the search is using the correct terms/definitions. What I don’t understand yet is ...

“Dr. Web Makes Many Americans Question Trusted Health Providers”

davidrothman.net — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:02:27 +0100

This study reveals that most adult Americans instinctually trust health providers. However, increasingly, they are using online information to critically evaluate medical advice. It also suggests that trust in government and non-profits has significantly eroded. Finally, health communicators and marketers should resist overestimating the impact of patient-generated online content on medical decision-making. (Source: davidrothman.net)

A Question About Knol

davidrothman.net — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 01:15:14 +0100

Could someone please explain to me why Knol will be any more successful than Squidoo has been? (Source: davidrothman.net)

Notes on Medpedia’s changes

davidrothman.net — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:29:08 +0100

I first wrote about Medpedia in January. I noted in my post that Medpedia did not seem to specify what would qualify an applicant to become a contributor. Medpedia’s Angela Simmons addressed this in the comments: Anyone with medical and health knowledge is encouraged to apply to become a Contributor. It is not a requirement that you have medical credentials; however, it is important that you are passionate and knowledgeable about at least one topic related to medicine, health and the body. My concern here is that clinicians should not use an information resource built by people who are not qualified health professionals. Passion is not, in my view, a sufficient qualification. I also asked Angela if Medpedia was intended to be a resource for professionals (like UpToDate) or a resource...

A Thought on the Online Rating of Doctors

davidrothman.net — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 04:02:27 +0100

When discussing sites which allow patients to rate doctors, I have frequently heard the argument that the ratings wouldn’t really be useful or meaningful. My response to this is that it doesn’t matter at all how accurate or meaningful the ratings on these sites are- users will like them (and use them) regardless. My wife, for instance, spent a good bit of time examining books about pregnancy, parturition, and the care of infants. Rather than making use of the abundance of experts at her disposal (including midwives, OBs, medical librarians, and pediatricians), she took very seriously how well reviewed and rated each book was on Amazon.com. Nevermind if the particular review of a particular book showed the reviewer to be ignorant and semi-literate. What mattered was that the r...

Association Professionals Through the Ages

davidrothman.net — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:02:52 +0100

I know a lot of great association professionals (and association leaders), but this made me chuckle: Hat tip: Brandi Tuttle via FriendFeed. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Online Social Networks in Healthcare & Libraries (slides)

davidrothman.net — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:02:22 +0100

Another great overview from Patricia Anderson: Above: Those reading via RSS aggregator may need to visit the site to view the embedded slideshow. Posts from this blog about online social networks (Source: davidrothman.net)

PubMedPDF

davidrothman.net — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:35:04 +0100

I’ve previously posted about commercial applications for managing PDF files that access PubMed for article metadata (including iPapers, Papers, Sente, BibDesk), and Librarian) but I just stumbled across a new (to me) open source option called PubMedPDF. Built on the open-source content management system XOOPS (XOOPS Cube fork), PubMedPDF “…is a Document Management System which provides various useful functions. This uses ID which is used in the PubMed Database to automatically generate paper information. If the paper you want to register has that ID, you don’t have to input any information. Also of interest to Mac users is the BioMed Lab Portal Server Package. (Source: davidrothman.net)

MedLib Blog Badge at Laika’s MedLibLog

davidrothman.net — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:02:26 +0100

This blog was started as part of the online course SPOETNIK on NEW (web 2.0) internet communication methods for librarians. I will not only blog the course exercises but will also write about Medical Information, Medical Libraries, PubMed, the Cochrane Collaboration, Evidence Based Medicine etc.. Sometimes in English. http://laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com Why is David always on about this badgey stuff? Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges! Previously, I’ve noted the following blogs that display the MedLib Blog badge in their sidebars: Health, Science, & Libraries Info.RxCases Bobobiblioblog Patient Education Matters! Staying Well. Connected. Info Long Term Care OrgMonkey EBM & CSL @ UCHC Learn to Live Shelved in the W’s Only Connect! Women’s Health News ...

Physician Rating Sites (Guest post by PilgrimTinker)

davidrothman.net — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 04:02:12 +0100

The following is a guest post written by PilgrimTinker (a pseudonym for a consumer health information librarian who regularly blogs at Learn to Live. ___________________________ So, you need to see a doctor. Or, you have been seeing a doctor for some time and love her, or can’t stand her, or secretly suspect him of not paying appropriate attention to your complaints or wonder if he knows anything about geriatrics. Whatever the initial question, you decide to google him. And you discover that there are dozens of physician rating websites available, ready to help you dig up dirt or make a choice or trash a reputation. Have you guessed yet that I am feeling ambivalent about these sites? I am. On one hand, it makes perfect sense to be able to research a physician or facility before you ...

This Blog is (over) Two Years Old

davidrothman.net — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:24:02 +0100

Aw. Because Simon arrived a bit early, I failed to note this blog’s second blogaversary earlier this month. I’ll eventually get back to regular posting (perhaps when Simon is sleeping longer hours?), but I wanted briefly to thank y’all for reading. It wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without you. Some facty-figurish things: There are currently 1,024 posts (which makes an average of more than 9 posts/week for the last two years) and 2,115 comments. Akismet has caught 148,927 spam comments. Wow. Helps me love Akismet. Feed Subscribers (via FeedBurner): (Source: davidrothman.net)

PubMed Search Clinic (Guest Post by Nikki)

davidrothman.net — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:24:00 +0100

Hello, this is Nikki from Eagle Dawg Blog stepping in while David enjoys time with his beautiful family. Here is a friendly reminder that a 30 minute PubMed search clinic will be offered tomorrow (July 17th) at 2pm Eastern time (what time is that throughout the world?) by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Training Center and Clearinghouse (NTCC) to the first 300 participants to log in at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/clinics/pmupdate08.html Please note the following from NLM about questions you have during the search clinic: The Chat (Q & A) Pod: Because of the size of this clinic, we unfortunately will not be able to take questions using audio. Please use the Chat (Q & A) pod to type questions and comments to the trainers. Please enter your questions th...

If you use Gmail, I have your Xoopit Invitation

davidrothman.net — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:05:21 +0100

With all the photos and videos I’m dealing with in my email right now, I love Xoopit. The service scans your gmail account for media (photos, videos, etc.). The Firefox add-on allows you to easily manage/search/sort/view this media. I’ve asked for and was given 100 invitations for readers of davidrothman.net. Click here to get started. It’s in Beta. YMMV, but as someone who manages a significant number of email accounts with Gmail and lots of media, I’m just loving it. Our child was born four days ago and I’m taking time to put up a brief blog post about Xoopit. Let that inform your sense of how much I like it. (Source: davidrothman.net)

Introducing Simon Gabriel Rothman

davidrothman.net — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 17:39:51 +0100

Born at 5:30 AM today, weighing in at 6 lbs 3 oz. I uploaded the following embedded video quickly for distant grandparents: Music is You Ruined Everything by Jonathan Coulton Liz and Simon are both doing great. I will likely not be blogging for a while and will be slower in answering email than usual. Thanks in advance for your understanding. Tired and very happy, -David (Source: davidrothman.net)