If you are interested in alternative literature searching strategies, be sure to read the article “PubMed and beyond: A survey of web tools for searching biomedical literature” published last month in the open access journal DATABASE: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation. This article is a review of 28 search tools that are based on MEDLINE data. The author is a researcher at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which is the division of the National Library of Medicine that produces PubMed.

(more…)

NLM announces MedlinePlus Connect (http://medlineplus.gov/connect), a free service that allows electronic health records (EHR) systems to link users to MedlinePlus (http://medlineplus.gov), an authoritative up-to-date health information resource for patients, families and health care providers. MedlinePlus provides information about conditions and disorders, medications, and health and wellness.

(more…)

Those who search PubMed regularly have often wished for a way to import search results into a a program such as Excel. It’s here! A new tool called FLink (Frequency-weighted Links) is now accessible from the NIH National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/flink/docs/flink_about.html. FLink allows PubMed search results to be saved as a CSV, or comma-separated value, file which can be imported into a program like Excel.

(more…)

HiveMind by 917 Press

On October 7, 2010, the first organized discussion on Twitter about health literacy using a hashtag of #healthlit was hosted by Dr. Cynthia Baur, the Senior Health Literacy Advisor for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (@CDC_eHealth on Twitter) and healthfinder.gov (@healthfinder on Twitter). The main topic discussed was How can we improve health literacy? along with the recently launched National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy and the CDC blogged about the experience. An online archive of the October 7th #healthlit conversation is available.

The National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific Northwest Region (@nnlmpnr on Twitter) participated in the second #healthlit chat discussion on October 28, 2010, hosted by Health Literacy Missouri (@HealthLitMO on Twitter) featuring Dr. Baur, Dr. Arthur Culbert (CEO of Health Literacy Missouri), and Gary Schwitzer, publisher of HealthNewsReview.org and organized as a Twitter Town Hall. (more…)

The NN/LM PNR will be hosting a group seating for the next Hot Topics in Preparedness webcast on Tuesday, October 26th at noon Pacific.  To join us in person, come to the University of Washington Health Sciences Library, Room T-223.

If you are unable to sit in on the webcast in person, they are archived on the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice site for future viewing.

Session Description

Public health is necessarily concerned with issues that range over long time periods and broad areas/regions. Through several relevant examples (e.g. childhood obesity, low birth weight outcomes), participants will receive an overview of why learning through computer-based learning labs facilitates the development of systemic understanding. Participants will learn how to identify appropriate issues for simulation-based learning, including next steps to build their capacity for developing effective simulations.

(more…)

UPDATE: This session has been postponed until Wednesday, October 27, 2010, 12:00 noon Pacific Time. See you then! 

Guest speaker Jolanta Sliwinski, EFTS Program Coordinator from the University of Connecticut Health Center , will join us this month on Wednesday, October 20, at 12 noon Pacific Time (note time change for this one session). She will tell you the advantages of using EFTS and answer your questions. If you can’t attend, a recording will be available later on the RML Rendezvous page.

We look forward to seeing you at the webcast! For more information and to test your computer connection, please visit How do I connect to the Rendezvous?