Health Hotlines App

From a National Library of Medicine  (NLM) news item

NLM’s Health Hotlines is now available as an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch (http://itunes.apple.com/app/health-hotlines/id376404746?mt=8). Health Hotlines is also compatible with the iPad.

Health Hotlines is a compilation of organizations with toll-free telephone numbers to assist the public in locating health-related information. It is derived from DIRLINE, NLM’s Directory of Information Resources Online, which contains descriptions of almost 9,000 health and biomedical organizations and resources. Some of the subject areas included in Health Hotlines are AIDS, cancer, diseases and disorders, maternal and child health, aging, substance abuse, disabilities and mental health.

Health Hotlines is also available on the NLM’s Web site http://healthhotlines.nlm.nih.gov.

Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network

The Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network (RDCRN) was created so that experts on many different rare diseases could communicate and work more closely with each other. RDCRN is working on researching and treating rare diseases. For more information about the goals of RDCRN, click here.

Currently, the RDCRN is made of 19 different groups or consortia. Each consortia focuses on a single disorder or disease, as rare kidney stones and mitochondrial diseases

Presently, members of RDCRN are looking for volunteers to participate in over 100 clinical trials.

Other rare disease resources include
**MedlinePlus Rare Disease Web Site
**Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center (Office of Rare Diseases, National Human Genome Research Institute)
**Rare Disease Information (New Zealand Organizasation for Rare Disorders) Aimed to professionals, but useful to many members of the general public
**Rare Diseases Resource Page

Study Recommends Disclosure of Medical Mistakes That Affect Multiple Patients

From a Press Release by the Agency for Health Research and Qualtity (AHRQ)

Health care organizations should disclose medical mistakes that affect multiple patients even if patients were not harmed by the event, according to an AHRQ-funded research paper published in the September 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Medical mistakes that affect multiple patients, known as large-scale adverse events to researchers, are incidents or series of related incidents that harm or could potentially harm multiple patients. These events, which can include incompletely sterilized surgical equipment, poor laboratory quality control and equipment malfunctions, are often identified after care has been provided and can affect thousands of patients.

Online Medical Streaming Videos (Some Are Freely Available)

Medical videos are challenging to locate, even for medical librarians.

A recent post by the Krafty (Medical) Librarian

Did you know that there are citations to medical videos in PubMed? It was news to me and several other librarians today. I was at the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Library Advisory Board today discussing many things, among them the difficulty of finding good medical videos. That is when one of the people with NEJM mention that their Videos in Clinical Medicine, were indexed and in PubMed. Almost all of us were stunned, we said, “No they’re not, we’ve never seen them.” So we grabbed a laptop found the title of one of the videos from the NEJM website and searched for it in PubMed. Low and behold it was in there.

It turns out that videos are being added to PubMed and they are indexed under the Publication Type: Interactive Tutorial which was added to the database in 2008. So why didn’t we librarians in the room know about this? Well if you search for any PubMed citation where the Publication Type is an Interactive Tutorial you will notice that there are only 758 citations. In a database of over 20 million citation, 759 is less than a drop in a bucket. It is more like a drop in the ocean, no wonder we didn’t know the videos were there.

A few sources for medical videosRemember, no one Web site or search engine is comprehensive or will fit your needs

**PubMed
Use the Limits to search by Interactive Tutorial (under Type of Article). Also consider using their Medical Search Headings (MeSH) for more focused results. See Tutorials for help. (Some videos may require a subscription. Contact a librarian at an academic or medical institution for possible viewing options)

**OrLive Free live surgery broadcasts and videos

**Videos and Audios from Access Medicine (subscription required, may be available to the public at academic/medical libraries) Items are from online medical textbooks

**Science Multimedia Center Images, videos, slideshows and more from the journal Science. Most are freely available

**Nature.com streaming video Most videos are freely available

**Learner’s TVIncludes Medical, Nursing, Psychology and Dentistry video lectures

**Common Currency Videos(Dalhouse University) A small list of gross anatomy and procedural skills

**MedlinePlus Videos and Cool ToolsAnatomy and surgery videos

**BlipTV Creative Commons Video A variety of subjects, including some medical and nursing videos

**Academic Earth – Medicine & HealthcareA small collection of 9 videos at present

**PBS Health and Wellness Videos

**Google Video: http://video.google.com/
Consider an advanced video search, as Domain/Site .edu and keyword
For example, enter –> .edu AND stroke

**youtubeSpecific searches work the best, as using the phrase (with quotes) “respiratory tract infections”, “respiratory tract infections”, a search phrase as “emergency preparedness” AND home

**Bing Video

The above selections came from:
MedLib-L archives from the Medical Library Association
LibGuides Online Library Guides from academic and public libraries
Workshops/Finding Free Digital Resources