A recent article published in the Los Angeles Times by Scott J. Wilson listed the following data resources from government agencies and private organizations, designed to provide consumer information about hospitals.

1. CalHospitalCompare.org from the California HealthCare Foundation.
2. Hospital Compare from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
3. The Leapfrog Group, an employer coalition that promotes hospital safety and quality.
4. Quality Check, a site operated by the Joint Commission accrediting organization.
5. The Medicare site has a feature to help compare kidney dialysis centers.

Yesterday, two new features were added to PubMed: filters sidebar and computed author sorted display!

In order to provide users with a more visible and accessible way to narrow PubMed results, the Limits page has been replaced by a results filter sidebar. The filter sidebar options will work the same way as the limit selections; that is, once a filter is selected it will be activated for subsequent searches until the selection is cleared. The PubMed default Review and Free full text filters have been moved to the filters sidebar. The “Filter your results” portlet will eventually be incorporated into the filters sidebar. For additional information about the filters sidebar, please read the NLM Technical Bulletin article and PubMed trifold.

The PubMed Abstract display was modified to display results using a ranking algorithm when users click the author search link. Because an author may share the same name with other authors, the objective is to display more relevant results by disambiguating common author names. The author name disambiguation process compares citations with the same author name. The similarity for each citation pair is measured by examining the metadata for both citations, such as co-authors, journal, title, affiliation, abstract, MeSH terms, grants, and publication date. For additional information about the computed author sorted display, please read the NLM Technical Bulletin article.

To give those who can’t travel to Bethesda, Maryland to see it in person a lively virtual experience, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) announces a new, free iPad app that captures the contents of its popular exhibition, Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness, currently on display. NLM is the world’s largest medical library and a component of the National Institutes of Health.

The app lets users explore video interviews with tribal elders, healers and other prominent people who practice traditional medicine, Western medicine or a combination of both. From their unique experiences and perspectives, they weave a tapestry of stories of the vibrant and diverse cultures of and medicine ways practiced by Alaska Natives, Native Americans and Native Hawaiians. Other video clips provide an exhibition overview and highlights of the 4,400-mile journey of a totem pole specially crafted for the exhibition, from Washington state to the NIH campus in Bethesda.

The NLM Native Voices app works on all iPads with iOS4.2 and higher. The free app is available for download from the Apple iTunes store.

Dan Miller, editor of Macworld.com, recently posted a video illustrating seven keyboard tricks that are helpful for every iPad user. A complete transcript and video link are featured in this MacWorld.com article. The seven tips are summarized below. Tips 1 and 3-6 also work on the iPhone.

1. Tap-and-hold for special characters. Tapping and holding on any vowel key and several consonants results in a pop-up to select variations on those characters, including accents and circumflexes. This is particularly useful for typing in languages other than English. Similarly, tapping and holding on several keys on the numeric keyboard accesses other special characters. For example, tap-and-hold on the dollar sign to see a variety of currency symbols.
2. Swipe up on some keys to insert special characters. For example, swipe up on the dollar sign to get the cents symbol.
3. Double-tap on the space bar at the end of a sentence to automatically insert a period and a space. Then begin the next sentence.
4. In Safari, to get to a site that has a top-level domain other than .com, tap-and-hold on the .COM key to see a pop-up to select .ORG, .EDU, and other domains.
5. Similarly, in Mail, to add a top-level domain at the end of an email address, tap-and-hold on the period; then select the top-level domain desired.
6. To insert a number or punctuation mark after typing a string of letters, open the numeric keyboard and slide your finger to the number desired. Then release the finger to return to the alpha keyboard.
7. Lastly, there’s the feature to split the keyboard and undock it. Tap-and-hold on the keyboard button in the lower right, and select “Undock.” Then slide the keyboard up and down to different positions on the screen. By tapping and holding the keyboard button and selecting “Split,” the keyboard will split in two. This is very handy when holding the iPad with two hands and typing with the thumbs.
   

MLA has posted information about the two Disaster Information Specialist classes that are being offered after the MLA conference on Thursday May 24th.

Here is the link to the information: http://www.mlanet.org/education/dis/.

Course title: U.S. Response to Disaster and Public Health Emergencies
Instructors: Mary Moore and Kimberly Loper
Host: NN/LM PNR
Date: Thursday, May 24, 2012, 8:00 a.m.–11:30 a.m.
Location: University of Washington, Seattle
Registration: To register, contact Kathleen Combs

Course title: Information Roles in Disaster Management
Instructor: Robin Featherstone
Host: NN/LM PNR
Date: Thursday, May 24, 2012, 1:00 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Location: University of Washington, Seattle
Registration: To register, contact Kathleen Combs

There is no charge for these classes. If you are attending MLA and are interested in extending your stay in order to take these courses, the RML may be able to assist. Please contact Kay Deeney for more information.

Some other Disaster Information Specialization courses will be offered in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Texas this summer.

Disaster Health Information Sources: The Basics is available for 1.5 MLA CE contact hours. Indivduals can now register to view the program “On-demand.”

Last November, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) Innovation Center issued a $1 billion challenge to the country, asking innovators to submit the most compelling new ideas that deliver better care and better health at lower costs, to people enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), particularly those with the highest health care needs. Through this initiative, now called the Health Care Innovation Awards, the CMS Innovation Center received many applications, representing over ten thousand organizations spanning every State and U.S. Territory.

Today, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the first batch of organizations to receive Health Care Innovation awards. The awards, made possible by the Affordable Care Act, support 26 innovative projects nationwide that will save money, deliver high quality medical care, and enhance the health care workforce. The CMS Innovation Center anticipates making its next announcement of awards in early June. To learn more about the 26 projects, read the Health Care Innovation Awards project profiles. One of the awardees is the Regents of the University of California, who are receiving funding for the UCLA Health System to expand a new program to provide coordinated, comprehensive, patient and family-centered, and efficient care for approximately 1000 Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia.

In April 2012, Lori Tagawa, Community Outreach Coordinator for the NN/LM Pacific Southwest Region, accepted an invitation to serve on the Board of Directors for the Asian Pacific Faculty and Staff Association (APFSA) at UCLA. In addition to providing resources, support, and a forum for networking for Asian Pacific (AP) faculty and staff at UCLA, the APFSA partners with AP community-based organizations in Southern California, AP higher educational organizations and support groups in the UC system, and AP national organizations. In this role, she will work with UCLA faculty and staff on diversity issues and policies and will collaborate with AP community-based and national organizations.

Following are some tips for faster, more focused search results using Google:

• Exclude terms. If you are looking for information on the term “myocardial,” but not “myocardial infarction,” place a minus sign in front of the word you wish to exclude, e.g., myocardial -infarction.
• Site search. Limit your search to a single website or a specific group of sites, by using site: followed by a Web address or ending. For example, entering “stroke site:gov” as the search will provide information about strokes from government agencies, including MedlinePlus!
• Wildcard search. Use the asterisk to substitute for any word in a phrase. This can be especially useful for identifying a particular fact or even finding a missing word in a song lyric! Put phrases in quotes; for example, “Las Vegas is in * county.”
• Math and conversions. Enter a math problem into Google Search, and it will give you the answer (use * for multiplication and / for division). It will also convert currencies and temperatures. For example, enter “$100 in euros.”
• Definitions. Place the word “define” before any word, for example “define popliteal,” and Google provides a definition at the top of the results list. You can also enter “movies” or “weather” before a ZIP Code or city name to see a list of films playing nearby or a weather forecast for that area.

The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health are co-sponsoring a webinar regarding their joint Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science & Engineering (BIGDATA) solicitation. The webinar will be held from 8-9am PDT on May 8, 2012. Questions about the solicitation can be submitted during the webinar. Please register for the webinar by May 7, 2012. After your registration is accepted, you will get an email with a URL to join the meeting. The webinar will be archived for later viewing, and linked to the BIGDATA program web page.

The BIGDATA solicitation aims to advance the core scientific and technological means of managing, analyzing, visualizing, and extracting useful information from large, diverse, distributed, and heterogeneous data sets so as to accelerate the progress of scientific discovery and innovation; lead to new fields of inquiry that would not otherwise be possible; encourage the development of new data analytic tools and algorithms; facilitate scalable, accessible, and sustainable data infrastructure; increase understanding of human and social processes and interactions; and promote economic growth and improved health and quality of life.

The phrase “big data” in this solicitation does not refer just to the volume of data, but also to its variety and velocity. Big data includes large, diverse, complex, longitudinal, and/or distributed data sets generated from instruments, sensors, Internet transactions, email, video, click streams, and/or all other digital sources. Proposal submission deadlines are June 13, 2012, for mid-scale projects; and July 11, 2012, for small projects. Fifteen to twenty projects will be funded, subject to availability of funds.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) announces the retirement of Sheldon Kotzin, Associate Director for Library Operations, at the end of June, 2012, after 43 years of service.

NLM colleagues will gather on June 14, 2012, to wish him farewell, best wishes and a heartfelt thank you in speeches, videos, and song. Mr. Kotzin served NLM long and well, including his service as Executive Editor of MEDLINE, Administrator of the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee, and NLM’s representative to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. For his many contributions to NLM’s services, he has earned the lasting respect and admiration of NLM staff, medical librarians, editors, and publishers worldwide.