New Image Search Engine from the National Library of Medicine For Biomedical Articles
From the Web announcement
The Open-i project aims to provide next generation information retrieval services for biomedical articles from the full text collections such as PubMed Central. It is unique in its ability to index both the text and images in the articles. The article retrieval is powered by Essie (the search engine that supports ClinicalTrials.gov). Open-i lets users retrieve not only the MEDLINE citation information, but also the outcome statements in the article and the most relevant figure from it. Further, it is possible to use the figure as a query component to find other relevant images or other visually similar images. Future stages aim to provide image region-of-interest (ROI) based querying. The initial number of images is projected to be around 600,000 and will scale to millions. The extensive image analysis and indexing and deep text analysis and indexing require distributed computing. At the request of the Board of Scientific Counselors, we intend to make the image computation services available as a NLM service.
Vist our Frequently Asked Questions page for more information and help.
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- Open Access Biomedical Image Search Engine (beta) (bespacific.com)
- A Centralized Portal to Free Biomedical Literature: Europe PubMed Central (intellogist.wordpress.com)
- How to Stay Updated on Yearly Changes to MEDLINE (intellogist.wordpress.com)
- New PubMed Tricks (hslnews.wordpress.com)
- Europe PubMed Central: not only a new Medline (scienceintelligence.wordpress.com)
- PubMed Central or OA Central – More Strange Behaviors at PMC and NLM Paint a Portrait of Biases and Poor Process (scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org)
- Introducing PubReader: A New Way to Read PubMed Central Articles, Code Also Available (infodocket.com)
Many NIH-funded clinical trials go unpublished over two years after completion (with ClinicalTrials.gov link for many trial study results)
[Flahiff's note: It is possible that many of these unpublished clinical trial results would have made a positive difference in many people's lives. These unpublished results have the potential of aiding many researchers. They can prevent unnecessary duplicate trials, point to areas needing more research, and potentially provide groundwork for collaboration.
On another note, it is good to see that published research papers are now more accessible to all. As of 2008, research papers based on NIH grants must be submitted to PubMed Central (PMC) when those papers are accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. PMC will then make the papers freely available to the public within 12 months of publication.
I look forward to the day when all research papers are freely available to the public. There are a myriad of issues, as who pays for the publishing, the peer review process, and where the research papers should be "housed". However, I believe the more scientific research results are disseminated in easily accessible format, the more we can advance in technology applications and filling in knowledge gaps.]
Excerpt from the 3 January 2012 article By Karen N. Peart at Yale News
In a study that investigates the challenges of disseminating clinical research findings in peer-reviewed biomedical journals, Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that fewer than half of a sample of trials primarily or partially funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were published within 30 months of completing the clinical trial.
These findings appear in the January issue of the British Medical Journal, which focuses on the topic of unpublished evidence.
[As of 3 January 2012, the January issue of BMJ was not yet online..however many of the articles may be found at http://www.bmj.com/archive/sevendays]
“When research findings are not disseminated, the scientific process is disrupted and leads to redundant efforts and misconceptions about clinical evidence,” said Dr. Joseph Ross, first author of the study and a Yale assistant professor of medicine. “Such inaction undermines both the trial in question and the evidence available in peer-reviewed medical literature. This has far-reaching implications for policy decisions, and even institutional review board assessments of risks and benefits associated with future research studies.”…
…
Ross said that there may be many reasons for lack of publication, such as not getting accepted by a journal or not prioritizing the dissemination of research findings. Still, he said, there are alternative methods for providing timely public access to study results, including the results database at ClinicalTrials.gov** that was created in response to Federal law.
[From the About Page at Clinical Trials.gov
US Public Law 110-85 (Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 or FDAAA), Title VIII, Section 801 mandates that a "responsible party" (i.e., the study sponsor or designated principal investigator) register and report results of certain "applicable clinical trials" that were initiated or ongoing as of September 27, 2007...]
Related Resource
 |
ClinicalTrials.gov offers up-to-date information for locating federally and privately supported clinical trials for a wide range of diseases and conditions.
ClinicalTrials.gov currently contains 118,682 trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, other federal agencies, and private industry.
**Here is how one can check for study results
(remember, researchers are not mandated to submit study results to ClinicalTrials.gov, they are voluntary)
- Go to ClinicalTrials.gov
- Click on Search (upper right corner)
- Click on Advanced Search
- Go to Study Results, use drop down menu to select Studies with results
- Fill out rest of form with as much specific information as you can
especially search terms, conditions, and/or interventions
ClinicalTrials.gov records with published results listed via the PubMed medical literature search service.
- Use the Advanced Search with the search phrase clinicaltrials.gov[si]
Use the Builder limit results by topics (as a disease, medical device), year(s), name of researcher/invesitator)
- Need help searching? PubMed has tutorials , including a YouTube at the Advanced Search Page
Ask for assistance from a reference librarian at your local public, academic, hospital, or medical library.
Many academic, hospital, and medical libraries offer at least basic search help to all. Call ahead and ask
about their services. You may be pleasantly surprised.
Related articles
- Many NIH-funded clinical trials go unpublished over 2 years after completion (eurekalert.org)
- The White House Calls for Information on Public Access to Publications and Data (The Scholarly Kitchen)
- How to obtain free/low cost medical and scientific articles(jflahiff.wordpress.com)
- Patients want to understand the medical literature (with links to resources for patients) (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
-
Low Reporting of Clinical Trial Data in Key U.S. Database, Study Shows (Science News Daily)
- Missing trial data threatens the integrity of medicine (eurekalert.org)
- Poor patient recruitment cited in call for trial disclosures (fiercebiotechit.com)
- A Present for NIH: President Signs Law Creating New Translational Center (news.sciencemag.org)
- NIH and Non-profits Sign Research and Development Agreement (kauffman.org)
- NIH establishes National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
PubMed Health – A Growing Resource for Clinical Effectiveness Information
From the November NLM Technical Bulletin article
PubMed Health — A Growing Resource for Clinical Effectiveness Information
PubMed® Health developed further as a resource for clinical effectiveness research with its August and September 2011 releases. Growing from around 200 items based on systematic reviews to over 5,000, PubMed Health has also begun a collection focused on helping people understand systematic reviews and their results. PubMed Health goals are: helping users find the evidence that could answer their questions about effects of health care and helping them understand what they find.
Making Systematic Reviews More Accessible
Systematic reviews that identify and interpret studies on the effects of health care form an essential research basis for informed decision-making. Systematic reviewing has been growing, especially with the advent of The Cochrane Collaboration and the increasing incorporation of this methodology in health technology assessment by public agencies and clinical practice guideline development.Systematic reviews (including health technology assessments) are often lengthy and highly technical. Their evolution has been accompanied by a growth in knowledge translation activity. Along with traditional abstracts, various forms have been developed to help people use systematic reviews: executive and policymaker summaries, summaries or other forms for patients/consumers and summaries for clinicians.
However, these materials have been scattered widely on content providers’ Web sites without being collected centrally. Many of the systematic reviews undertaken by public health technology assessment agencies have also remained outside the National Library of Medicine® (NLM®) system. The PubMed Health initiative is gathering them together within a single searchable resource.
PubMed Health Content
PubMed Health contains systematic reviews and summaries of systematic reviews undertaken or updated in roughly the last ten years. The time limit is applied to publication date of around eight years, to allow for the time lag from the date of the evidence search. The cut-off currently is 2003.New content incorporated in these releases include summaries from The Cochrane Collaboration and the National Health Service (NHS) National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment Programme. There are also full text reviews from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Drug Effectiveness Review Project (DERP) at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), England’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines program, and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Evidence-based Synthesis Program. From NHS Choices comes “Behind the Headlines”, its educational service on the science behind the news. These new content providers join PubMed Health original consumer clinical effectiveness content for consumers content provided by AHRQ and the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG).
The reviews and review summaries now in PubMed Health account for perhaps one-third of the good quality systematic reviews published by public agencies and journals worldwide. Most of the remainder can be found in PubMed “Clinical Queries” Systematic Reviews search which runs simultaneously with a PubMed Health search; those PubMed results are presented as links on the right-hand portion of the results page (see #3 in Figure 4).
Organization
The re-designed homepage (see Figure 1) includes four key sections:
- Contents: a complete alphabetical listing of all titles, sorted by type of content.
- Behind Headlines: the NHS guide to the science behind health stories in the news.
- New & updated: content added in the last 60 days.
- Featured reviews: high quality reviews on interesting topics are selected and featured here. “Previously featured reviews” are provided in an RSS feed to which people can subscribe.
- Understanding clinical effectiveness: an explanation of clinical effectiveness research along with a section focusing on resources to help people understand systematic reviews and interpret the results.
Figure 1: PubMed Health homepage.A drop-down box under “Contents” (see Figure 2) shows the categories of information currently included in PubMed Health where these are available:
- For consumers: includes consumer summaries of systematic reviews as well as consumer information based on systematic reviews.
- Executive summaries: executive or policymaker summaries of systematic reviews.
- Clinical guides: clinician summaries of systematic reviews as well as clinical practice guidelines that are based on a fully reported systematic review.
- Full text reviews: systematic reviews with full texts, including PDF versions.
- Medical encyclopedia: medical and drug information for consumers for supplementary background information.
PubMed Health includes content that is currently also cited in PubMed, and PubMed Health will systematically be building in links to these citations. However, there will be some time lag for many items between inclusion in PubMed Health and citation in PubMed. Consumer content from PubMed Health is currently not included in PubMed.
Figure 2: Contents drop-down box.At the top right-hand corner (see Figure 3), “About PubMed Health” explains the Web site and the National Center Biotechnology Information, NLM, with a full listing of content providers. “Help” includes explanation of basic functions, along with suggested citations for PubMed Health content.
Figure 3: About PubMed Health and Help features.Searching
The primary search (see #1 in Figure 4) returns clinical effectiveness content by relevance, with the option of viewing all (default) or only specified content types. Relevant medical encyclopedia results are shown at the right (see #2 inFigure 4), with the results of the “Clinical Queries” filter search for systematic reviews in PubMed showing below those (see #3 in Figure 4). “Clinical Queries” returns results chronologically.
Figure 4: Search results.Additional Features
With medical encyclopedia content, PubMed Health has enhanced the display of anatomical images and given this popular feature a more prominent position. There are links from the medical encyclopedia diseases and conditions pages to MedlinePlus® content.PubMed Health now features “Add this” sharing for e-mail and social media. Coming in the fall, PubMed Health will begin a Twitter feed, announcing new content providers and features, as well as featured content.
PubMed Health full address: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/
Shortcut: http://www.pubmed.gov/health
Customer service contact: pmh-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.govBy Hilda Bastian
National Center for Biotechnology Information
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PubMed Health — A Growing Resource for Clinical Effectiveness Information
Image via Wikipedia
From the November NLM Technical Bulletin article
PubMed Health — A Growing Resource for Clinical Effectiveness Information
PubMed® Health developed further as a resource for clinical effectiveness research with its August and September 2011 releases. Growing from around 200 items based on systematic reviews to over 5,000, PubMed Health has also begun a collection focused on helping people understand systematic reviews and their results. PubMed Health goals are: helping users find the evidence that could answer their questions about effects of health care and helping them understand what they find.
Making Systematic Reviews More Accessible
Systematic reviews that identify and interpret studies on the effects of health care form an essential research basis for informed decision-making. Systematic reviewing has been growing, especially with the advent of The Cochrane Collaboration and the increasing incorporation of this methodology in health technology assessment by public agencies and clinical practice guideline development.Systematic reviews (including health technology assessments) are often lengthy and highly technical. Their evolution has been accompanied by a growth in knowledge translation activity. Along with traditional abstracts, various forms have been developed to help people use systematic reviews: executive and policymaker summaries, summaries or other forms for patients/consumers and summaries for clinicians.
However, these materials have been scattered widely on content providers’ Web sites without being collected centrally. Many of the systematic reviews undertaken by public health technology assessment agencies have also remained outside the National Library of Medicine® (NLM®) system. The PubMed Health initiative is gathering them together within a single searchable resource.
PubMed Health Content
PubMed Health contains systematic reviews and summaries of systematic reviews undertaken or updated in roughly the last ten years. The time limit is applied to publication date of around eight years, to allow for the time lag from the date of the evidence search. The cut-off currently is 2003.New content incorporated in these releases include summaries from The Cochrane Collaboration and the National Health Service (NHS) National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment Programme. There are also full text reviews from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Drug Effectiveness Review Project (DERP) at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), England’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines program, and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Evidence-based Synthesis Program. From NHS Choices comes “Behind the Headlines”, its educational service on the science behind the news. These new content providers join PubMed Health original consumer clinical effectiveness content for consumers content provided by AHRQ and the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG).
The reviews and review summaries now in PubMed Health account for perhaps one-third of the good quality systematic reviews published by public agencies and journals worldwide. Most of the remainder can be found in PubMed “Clinical Queries” Systematic Reviews search which runs simultaneously with a PubMed Health search; those PubMed results are presented as links on the right-hand portion of the results page (see #3 in Figure 4).
Organization
The re-designed homepage (see Figure 1) includes four key sections:
- Contents: a complete alphabetical listing of all titles, sorted by type of content.
- Behind Headlines: the NHS guide to the science behind health stories in the news.
- New & updated: content added in the last 60 days.
- Featured reviews: high quality reviews on interesting topics are selected and featured here. “Previously featured reviews” are provided in an RSS feed to which people can subscribe.
- Understanding clinical effectiveness: an explanation of clinical effectiveness research along with a section focusing on resources to help people understand systematic reviews and interpret the results.
Figure 1: PubMed Health homepage.A drop-down box under “Contents” (see Figure 2) shows the categories of information currently included in PubMed Health where these are available:
- For consumers: includes consumer summaries of systematic reviews as well as consumer information based on systematic reviews.
- Executive summaries: executive or policymaker summaries of systematic reviews.
- Clinical guides: clinician summaries of systematic reviews as well as clinical practice guidelines that are based on a fully reported systematic review.
- Full text reviews: systematic reviews with full texts, including PDF versions.
- Medical encyclopedia: medical and drug information for consumers for supplementary background information.
PubMed Health includes content that is currently also cited in PubMed, and PubMed Health will systematically be building in links to these citations. However, there will be some time lag for many items between inclusion in PubMed Health and citation in PubMed. Consumer content from PubMed Health is currently not included in PubMed.
Figure 2: Contents drop-down box.At the top right-hand corner (see Figure 3), “About PubMed Health” explains the Web site and the National Center Biotechnology Information, NLM, with a full listing of content providers. “Help” includes explanation of basic functions, along with suggested citations for PubMed Health content.
Figure 3: About PubMed Health and Help features.Searching
The primary search (see #1 in Figure 4) returns clinical effectiveness content by relevance, with the option of viewing all (default) or only specified content types. Relevant medical encyclopedia results are shown at the right (see #2 inFigure 4), with the results of the “Clinical Queries” filter search for systematic reviews in PubMed showing below those (see #3 in Figure 4). “Clinical Queries” returns results chronologically.
Figure 4: Search results.Additional Features
With medical encyclopedia content, PubMed Health has enhanced the display of anatomical images and given this popular feature a more prominent position. There are links from the medical encyclopedia diseases and conditions pages to MedlinePlus® content.PubMed Health now features “Add this” sharing for e-mail and social media. Coming in the fall, PubMed Health will begin a Twitter feed, announcing new content providers and features, as well as featured content.
PubMed Health full address: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/
Shortcut: http://www.pubmed.gov/health
Customer service contact: pmh-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.govBy Hilda Bastian
National Center for Biotechnology Information
Related articles
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Patients want to understand the medical literature (with links to resources for patients)
http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/patientcare/library_for_health_information/Pages/index.aspx
From the Science Intelligence blog item
Findings of a recent study by JISC:
Publishing a lay summary alongside every research article could be the answer to assisting in the wider understanding of health-related information.
Patients Participate! asked patients, the public, medical research charities and the research community, ‘How can we work together in making sense of scientific literature, to truly open up research findings for everyone who is interested?’ The answer came from patients who explained that they want easy-to-understand, evidence-based information relating to biomedical and health research.
Some universities now offer researchers training in communicating with lay audiences. (…)
JISC believes that publicly-funded research should be made available for everyone and be easy to find. JISC funded this work to show how making access to scientific literature enables citizen-patients to participate in the research process, therefore providing mutual understanding and better links between scientists, medic, patients and the general public.
——————————————-
“Summaries for Patients” and other plain language summaries help patients and others understand medical studies and guidelines
“Summaries for Patients” are brief, non-technical summaries of studies and clinical guidelines published inAnnals of Internal Medicine. The Summaries aim to explain these published articles to people who are not health care providers.
- Summaries about studies describe how researchers did the published study and what they found.
- Summaries about clinical guidelines describe the official recommendations for patient care developed by official groups such as the US Preventive Services Task Force or the American College of Physicians.
To search for summaries, click on New Search (top of middle column) at “Summaries for Patients”
Once at the New Search Page (http://www.annals.org/search), be sure to check Summaries for Patients , under Limit Results by Section (Articles Published After 1927)
Here are excerpts from a recent Summaries for Patients, Who Reports Having More Pain at the End of Life?What is the problem and what is known about it so far?
Pain at the end of life is everyone’s great fear, but we still do not know enough about what makes pain worse at the end of life. Studies of pain near death have mostly looked at specific types of patients, such as those with cancer or those who are in a hospice program in which a patient’s comfort and reducing pain is a main focus of care. Other studies have asked family members about their deceased or dying relative’s experience of pain in the last months of life, but these reports are affected by their feelings about the pain of their loved one. In addition, studies have generally not examined patients from national surveys that offer broader understanding of patients’ experience of moderate to clinically significant pain at the end of life.
What did the researchers find?
Among the more than 4700 patients in the study, about 25% had clinically significant pain. However, the proportion experiencing significant pain increased to nearly 50% in the last 4 months before death. One of the most important things that affected the amount of pain was having arthritis. Surprisingly, the reason that a person was dying, such as heart disease or cancer, was not associated with important differences in the amount of pain.
What were the limitations of the study?
No information about treatment for pain was provided, and the study did not follow specific patients over time to see how their pain changed. Some people with arthritis might have had pain from something else that they mistakenly thought was arthritis.
What are the implications of the study?
Physicians and patients are not good at knowing when death is close, so it is important long before the last few months of life to discuss pain and ways to reduce it. Arthritis may be an important cause of pain or death that could be reduced by lifestyle changes long before death.
patientINFORM plain language summary Web sites are provided by participating publishers to help patients or their caregivers more fully understand the implications of research and to provide links to the full text of research articles they’ve selected from participating journals. The publishers allow readers following links from patientINFORM material on the health organizations’ sites to access the full text of these articles without a subscription, and they provide patients and caregivers with free or reduced-fee access to other articles in participating journals.
- American Cancer Society (News Center)
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (Eureka Alert- Medicine and Health)
- American Diabetes Association (Access: Diabetes Research)
- American Heart Association
- Lupus Foundation of America (Research Summaries)
- National Breast Cancer Coalition
- National Organization for Rare Disorders
- American Society of Hematology Articles for patients from the ASH education book can be accessed via the patient section of ASH’s web site under Other Resources.
- Journal of Rehabilitation Research and DevelopmentFor its nontechnical readers (e.g., veterans, patients, and caregivers), JRRD publishes plain-language summaries in each issue that describe the purpose and explain who may benefit from the research. These summaries are useful tools that keep patients and interested individuals informed of current research and encourage discussion of research between patients and their healthcare providers.
The Cochrane Collaboration
Cochrane Collaboration provides systematic reviews of the strongest evidence available about healthcare interventions (as drugs and medical procedures). It does not cover all interventions, but those covered were reviewed in-depth by experts in the medical and library fields.
The main activity of the Collaboration is the preparation of Cochrane reviews that are published electronically in successive issues of The Cochrane Library. These Cochrane reviews investigate the effects of interventions for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. They also assess the accuracy of a diagnostic test for a given condition in a specific patient group and setting.
[Click here to find more information about the use of the evidence to inform decision making in health care ]
Here is how to find plain language and audio summaries of Cochrane reviews
- Go to the Cochrane Collaboration home page and scroll down to Browse Free Summaries.
Topics include Breast Cancer, Dementia and Cognitive Improvement, and Complementary Medicine. - Click on To the Cochrane Library in the upper right corner of the Cochrance Collaboration home page.
This Cochrane Library search page has a Help page , and an Advanced Search option.
Related Blog Items
Cannot find a plain language summary with the above resources?
Consider asking a reference librarian for help at your local public, academic, or hospital library. Many academic and hospital libraries provide at least limited reference service to the public.
Call or email them for information about their services.
You may also contact me at jmflahiff@msncom. I will do my best to reply within 48 hours.
Consult with a librarian to find information more efficiently and effectively! (peer reviewed study summary)
http://www.rluk.ac.uk/node/657
From the Science Intelligence blog item
A recent study has has found quantitative evidence of a significant difference in search performance between paediatric residents or interns assisted by a librarian and those searching the literature alone.
Each participant searched PubMed and other online sources, performing pre-determined tasks including the formulation of a clinical question, retrieval and selection of bibliographic records. In the assisted group, participants were supported by a librarian with ≥5 years of experience. The primary outcome was the success of search sessions, scored against a specific assessment tool.
To read in Health information and Libraries Journal:***
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2011.00957.x/abstract
*** This article is only available online through paid subscription.
For suggestions on how to get this article for free or at low cost, click here.
“Show Off Your Apps” Winners of the NLM software development challenge
From the NLM (National Library of Medicine) Web page
Show Off Your Apps Winners And Honorable Mentions
The National Library of Medicine (NLM), wishes to congratulate the five winning entries in the Library’s software development challenge, “Show off Your Apps: Innovative Uses of NLM Information.” In addition, we thank all Entrants for participating in the Library’s first software development challenge!
Winners
GLAD4U
GLAD4U (Gene List Automatically Derived For You) is a new, free web-based gene retrieval and prioritization tool, which takes advantage of the NCBI’s Entrez Programming Utilities (E-utilities). Upon the submission of a query, GLAD4U retrieves the corresponding publications with eSearch before using Pubmed ID-Entrez Gene ID mapping tables provided by the NCBI to create a list of genes. A statistics-based prioritization algorithm ranks those genes into a list that is output to the user, usually within less than a minute. The GLAD4U user interface accepts any valid queries for PubMed, and its output page displays the ranked gene list and information associated with each gene, chronologically-ordered supporting publications, along with a summary of the run and links for file exports and for further functional enrichment analyses.
iAnatomy
Learning anatomy interactively with a touchscreen device is dynamic and engaging. Having it as an app, makes the information available anywhere, anytime. iAnatomy is an exciting electronic anatomy atlas for iPhone/iPod touch. The images are interactive and zoomable. If a label is touched, the name of the structure is shown. Images span from the face to the pelvis. The face and neck images and the female pelvis images are reconstructed from data from the National Library of Medicine’s Visible Human Project. iAnatomy is designed to stand on its own and does not require an ongoing internet connection. Learning is reinforced with multiple quiz modes. Latin medical terminology is also included as an option for international use.
KNALIJ
The KNALIJ web application addresses the challenges and opportunities posed by ‘big data’ with a new generation of information visualization tools. It offers researchers, students and health consumers alike a technology platform with capabilities to rapidly discover and gain insights from the copious amounts of information being made available from the National Libraries of Medicine (NLM), through its data repositories such as PubMed. KNALIJ recognizes the ‘connections’ linking bio-medical and life sciences research and researchers around the world, and visualizes those linkages. This makes them clear, intuitive, and even playful by providing interactive ‘information communities’ for exploration, analysis, and education.
NLMplus
NLMplus is an innovative semantic search and discovery application developed by WebLib LLC, a small business in Maryland. NLMplus provides enhanced access to the vast collection of health and biomedical information and services made available by the world’s largest medical library, the National Library of Medicine (NLM).
Quertle
Quertle is an innovative website for searching and investigating the biomedical literature. Quertle uses advanced linguistic methods to find the most relevant documents instead of traditional keyword searching, which often returns an overwhelming list of uninformative articles. Quertle is geared to active life science professionals – both researchers and health care providers – and saves them considerable time and effort in finding the literature they need. Quertle, available on the web using any browser, simultaneously searches multiple sources of life science literature, including MEDLINE.
Honorable Mentions
BioDigital Human Platform
The BioDigital Human Platform simplifies the understanding of health topics by visualizing anatomy, conditions and treatments. Similar to how geo-browsers such as Google Earth serve as the basis for thousands of location based applications, the BioDigital Human Platform will open up entirely new ways to augment healthcare applications. From the visual representation of concepts found on health portals, to step-by-step virtual guidance for surgical planning, to EHR integration so patients can finally understand their diagnosis, the BioDigital Human Platform will meet the learning demands of 21st century medicine.
DailyMedPlus
DailyMedPlus is an online application providing integrated access to pharmaceutical information available from various databases provided by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). DailyMedPlus offers a high-performance unified search engine providing ranked, highlighted and full-text search results for patients and healthcare professionals who seek updated prescribing information. As the only product of its kind, the application supports searching NLM databases for pharmaceutical products using trade and generic names, medical conditions, indications, contra-indications, side-effects, and also allows for the searching of these products by their physical characteristics (“red round”), providing image results in an in line intuitive layout. Users benefit from comprehensive search results of more than 90,000 products displayed in over 26,000 organized and digitally curated monographs designed for browsing on a wide variety of desktop and mobile platforms.
Drug Diary
Drug Diary is an iOS (iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad) application that allows users to quickly build an inventory of prescribed and OTC medications they are currently taking or have taken in the past along with information on the associated prescribers and pharmacies. From there, they are able to take notes outlining their experiences with these medications and generate reports to share with care providers. Data entry is made quick and easy through the use of a locally cached copy of the NLM’s RxTerms dataset and intelligent data entry screens that require little to no typing. The app leverages the data present in RxTerms to allow one tap access to another NLM source, MedLine Plus, which is a web portal that provides detailed information on the medications in the user’s library.
Molecules
Molecules is a 3-D molecular modeling application for Apple’s iOS devices, including the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. It pushes the limits of mobile graphics processors by using advanced techniques to make realistic renderings of molecular models. A touch-based interface allows for intuitive manipulation of these structures, so that they can be viewed from any angle and at any scale. While originally designed for researchers to view and present biomolecule structures on the go, the most popular use of Molecules has proven to be in education. Chemistry teachers are using this application to explain common molecular structures to their students, and biology professors are demonstrating the form and function of biomolecules. Many students already have iOS devices of their own, so they are able to make the lesson more personal by following along on their own iPhone or iPad. The popularity of this approach is seen in the over 1.7 million downloads of this application to date.
ORKOV
Orkov is a Greek term for Hippocratic Oath that medical professionals, especially, physicians take all over the world. Orkov, an iPhone App for iOS 5 platform as well as for Android OS is a productivity smart phone application for hundreds of thousands of medical researchers who are the end users of PubMed.gov data all over the world. Orkov empowers many researchers to search and browse research abstracts and full text research articles from the repository of PubMed.gov’s over 5,000+ research journals. Orkov utilizes publicly available web service interface of PubMed.gov. Majority of the features of PubMed.gov are wrapped into a powerful iPhone/Andorid App that is easy to use and navigate.
Related articles
PubMed Clinical Queries Page Updated
Image via Wikipedia
From the 11 August 2011 National Library of Medicine (NLM) Technical Bulletin
The PubMed® Clinical Queries homepage will be slightly modified to provide users with a more straightforward understanding of how to enter a search (see Figure 1).
After running a search, the category/scope limits for the Clinical Query Study Categories secion and topic limits for the Medical Genetics section will be available on the preview results page (see Figure 2).
The clinical queries search strategies will not be changed.
By Kathi Canese
National Center for Biotechnology Information
[From http://medlib.bu.edu/busdm/content.cfm/content/pubmedclinicalqueries.cfm]
PubMed Clinical Queries provides access to specialized PubMed searches designed to quickly connect clinicians with evidence-based clinical literature.
There are two EBM search options:
- Search by Clinical Study Category
- Find Systematic Reviews
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK3827/ ,
- and/or http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/disted/pubmedtutorial/020_570.html
- and/or contact a local academic, medical, or public librarian
Related articles
- My NCBI – Enhancements to My Bibliography (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
- Overview: “A Brand New Look for PubMed Central” ” INFOdocket (infodocket.com)
- Updated Online Tutorials for NCBI resources including an NCBI Overview and PubMed and the Gene Expression Omnibus tutorials (prweb.com)
How many research papers are freely available? (About 28% in PubMed)- August 01, 2011
From the Nature.com Newsblog item
The chart shows the proportion of papers indexed on the (largely biomedical) PubMed repository each year that are now freely accessible: in 2009, it’s above 28%. (Some of this literature is not immediately available at the time that it is published, because of journal policies that impose embargo periods on when material can become free). Those numbers are even more impressive than a study last year which found that around 20% of research papers published in 2008 were freely available on the internet.
The growth is due to various public access mandates by federal government and by funding agencies – as well as the success of open access publishers like the Public Library of Science. “What’s interesting is the relatively stable linear slope here for more than 10 years,” says David Lipman, director of the US National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Institutes of Health, which houses PubMed. “Would we expect that to continue at the same rate with around 50% of the literature published in 2021 freely available?”
Read entire article (with links) here
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MedTerm Search Assist – A database to share biomedical terminology and strategies for comprehensive searches
MedTerm Search Assist
biomedical terminology and strategies for comprehensive searches
From a Medlib-L listerv entry dated 15 July 2011
The MedTerm Search Assist http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/terms/> database was developed at the Health Sciences Library System, University of Pittsburgh, for librarians to share terminology, MEDLINE search strategies, and search tips with one another for comprehensive searches such as systematic reviews. Any librarian can add a new term into the database or suggest additions for existing records.
Before being displayed in the database, all submitted terms are reviewed for obvious errors such as misspellings, but are not reviewed for thoroughness, quality, or accuracy.
To contribute or browse the database please visit: www.hsls.pitt.edu/terms http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/terms>.
For comments or questions regarding the database please fill out the available form: http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/terms/contact
<http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/terms/contact> or e-mail the project managers directly: Ahlam Saleh, saleha@pitt.edu or Melissa Ratajeski, mar@pitt.edu
About
This blog presents a sampling of health and medical news and resources for all. Selected articles and resources will hopefully be of general interest but will also encourage further reading through posted references and other links. Currently I am focusing on public health, basic and applied research and very broadly on disease and healthy lifestyle topics.
Several times a month I will post items on international and global health issues. My Peace Corps Liberia experience (1980-81) has formed me as a global citizen in many ways and has challenged me to think of health and other topics in a more holistic manner. (For those wishing to see pictures of a 2009 Friends of Liberia service trip to this West African country, please visit www.fol.org. My photo album is included).
Do you have an informational question in the health/medical area?
Email me at jmflahiff@yahoo.com
I will reply within 48 hours.
This blog is a companion site to my Health and Medical News and Resources Web site with…
- Informational sites and guides
- Links to help from others (as health care providers and support groups)
- Interactive tools (as health calculators and apps)
- Select related news sites and blogs
My professional work experience and education includes over 10 years experience as a medical librarian and a Master’s in Library Science. In my most recent position I enjoyed contributing to our library’s blog, performing in depth literature searches, and collaborating with faculty, staff, students, and the general public.
While I will never be be able to keep up with the universe of current health/medical news,
I subscribe to the following to glean entries for this blog
- Medical News Today, a MediLexicon International daily online health news product
- MedLib-L ,a medical librarian discussion list
- Science Daily – Your source for the latest research news
- A Consumer and Patient Health (CAPHIS) discussion list , by a section of the Medical Library Association (MLA)
- MedlinePlus email updates from the US National Institutes of Health
- Public Health Partners from the National Library of Medicine
- US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) electronic newsletter with updates on the agency’s efforts to “improve the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care for all Americans”
- Krafty (Medical)Librarian,” a collection of writings from Michelle Kraft on items of interest to medical librarians. She tends to write on technology and medical libraries but she also writes about things in general on librarianship, medicine and health”
- Research Buzz, “news about search engines, digital archives, online museums, databases, and other Internet information collections since 1998″
- Library Journal – Breaking News
- librarian.net by librarian consultant Jessamyn West
- The Cornflower, the blog of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Greater Midwest Region
- DocuTicker with “abstracts from ‘grey literature’: PDF reports published by government agencies, think tanks, NGOs, research institutes and other public interest groups”
- PubMed New and Noteworthy, updates from the largest indexer of biomedical journals in the world
- Free Government Information, a ”place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information”
- Scout Report, a “weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators”
- Latest from Brookings Institute, independent research reports on social and political issues
- KevinMD.com -”Social Media’s leading physician voice”
- EurekAlert-Medicine and Health
