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.

Wolfram|Alpha is a new search engine. Scratch that — it”s a “computational knowledge engine,” and also “the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.” W|A has generated a lot of buzz since it launched on May 15.

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Maryanne Blake and Alison Aldrich are teaming up to offer a new distance learning opportunity for network members. Podcasting for Advocacy is a hands-on class is designed to provide a fun yet informative introduction to podcasting. Hear all about it!

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Greetings from Nikki Dettmar, the solo RML librarian in the Seattle office now, with an update from Alison Aldrich who is one of the official bloggers at MLA 2009 in Hawaii.

Her coverage of the NLM Sunrise Seminar on May 18th includes the following highlights:

• PubMed”s Single Citation Matcher is not going away and will remain on the sidebar
• In late summer, we will see some “stylish” new designs in PubMed that won”t affect functionality
• Multimedia functionality will be prominently displayed in MedlinePlus

Get the full scoop at Alison”s Official MLA “09 Blog post!

Edited to add link to the May 19, 2009 NLM Technical Bulletin with additional PubMed redesign information.

There are several ways to keep up with events at the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting next week,  even if you can’t make it to Honolulu.

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First, a bit of library jargon: a pathfinder is an organized list of starting places (links or print resources) for research into a particular field or topic. In 2003, The Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce created an excellent pathfinder at phpartners.org. Since then, it has grown into an incredibly comprehensive and valuable resource. Do you need to find a report, article, or statistic related to public health? Are you looking for information about health policy or legislation? What about continuing education opportunities, funding sources, networking options, or employment? Odds are good that the perfect starting place for your search is listed at PHPartners … somewhere. There are 128 links on the Health Data Tools and Statistics page, 97 links on the Health Promotion and Health Education page, and that’s only the beginning. Exploring those links one by one takes a great deal of patience.

ChunkIt! is a free browser add-on that can help you process the information found in a long list of links and make decisions about how to focus your search. It works with Internet Explorer 6.0+ and Firefox 2.0+.

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