HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is seeking comments on the preliminary definition of “Meaningful Use” of electronic health records (EHRs) as presented to the HIT Policy Committee on June 16. The meaningful use preamble and matrix give more details.

Comments on the draft description of “Meaningful Use” are due by Friday, June 26, 2 p.m. Pacific Time (1 Alaska, 3 Mountain), and should be no more than 2,000 words in length. Please click the link to access instructions for submitting comments.

The National Library of Medicine”s exhibit booth at MLA meetings is always a popular gathering spot for attendees wanting to keep current on NLM”s many information resources and other projects. Most of NLM”s Theater Presentations from MLA “09 are now available for online viewing.

• ClinicalTrials.gov Update (16 min.)
• Journals Database: Did You Know? (14 min.)
• LinkOut for Libraries Tips and Tricks (7 min.)
• Medicare & Medicaid Resources for the Consumer Health Librarian (20 min.)
• MedlinePlus and Go Local Update (coming soon)
• MyMedicationList (coming soon)
• Public Health and Health Services Research: What”s Happening at NLM? (19 min.)
• PubMed Update (17 min.)
• PubMed Central and NIH Public Access Update (23 min.)

The PubMed Update includes a discussion of the redesign coming later this year. At about 16 minutes into the presentation, there is a screen shot showing how the PubMed Results screen may look post-redesign.

Thanks to an alliance between physician assistants and librarians, the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants features a new online column starting this month: “Ask a Librarian”.  This column is a co-authored by  Jim Anderson, Physician Assistant, and Susan Klawansky, Network Member and Librarian at Seattle Children’s Library & Information Commons.  The column will promote collaboration with medical librarians, address questions from physician assistants and point to resources, including  www.nnlm.gov. Congratulations to Susan Klawansky for this important outreach effort.

Earlier this month, U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-MI) re-introduced H.R. 801, the “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act.” If passed into law, H.R. 801 would reverse the NIH Public Access Policy, which ensures public online access to taxpayer-funded, peer reviewed health research literature, and prevent other federal agencies from implementing similar policies.

To read more about this proposed legislation and its potential implications, see:

Full text of H.R. 801

H.R. 801 on OpenCongress

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access

T. Scott - What I Said About Public Access at the ER&L Conference

NN/LM Pacific Northwest Region is pleased to announce that Go Local Montana is now live! This is the first live Go Local project in our region and we couldn’t be more pleased. Montana Go Local is a project of the Voices of Hope with partners 2-1-1/First Call for Help District XI Human Resources Council, 2-1-1/First Call for Help United Way, Montana State Library, and The Help Center. The site is possible thanks to the dedication and hard work of Jackie Fitzgerald.  Voices of Hope would like to send a special thanks to Susie McIntyre for initiating the project. More promotion of the site will follow in the coming months, but you can take a peek at: http://medlineplus.gov/montana.  Congratulations to the entire Go Local Montana team!

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has produced brief training videos to demonstrate two of the four methods for submitting articles to PubMed Central in compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy.

See the Public Access Homepage for descriptions of each of the four methods. The new videos pertain to Method C: submissions initiated by the author, and Method D: completing the process for submissions initiated by a publisher.