MANAGING KNOWLEDGE IN HEALTH SCIENCES BACK “IN PRINT”

The classic book, Managing Knowledge in Health Sciences, edited by Andrew Booth and Graham Walton, London: Facet, 2000, is now available online. (It had been out of print, but the publisher has allowed it to be placed online). Contributors and subjects are:
Linda Banwell, Evaluating information services
Andrew Booth, Identifying users’ needs; making a case; organizing information resources; delivering and accessing resources; marketing a service, formulating the question; selecting appropriate sources, searching the Internet; organizing a personal knowledge base; keeping up to date with the knowledge base
Sharon Dobbins, Identifying resources
Louise Falzon, searching the databases
John Hewlett, Health service information providers
Alison Hicks, Training the users
Donald Mackay, Consumer health information
Jane Mackenzie, Health service libraries
Suzy Paisley, filtering and evaluating the knowledge base
Christine Urquhart: Health service users of information
Graham Walton, Health services: a contemporary approach; providing direction and management for health library and information services

URL: http://www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/mkhs/

CANADIAN CONSUMER HEALTH INFORMATION WIKI

The Toronto Public Library Consumer Health Information Service has put together a wiki “to help you find reliable, understandable health information for you and your family.” The site includes information on locating reliable health information, links to various resources, a browsable list of over 500 current information files held by the library, several health FAQs, and toll-free number for various Ontario health services and organizations. Some of the site is also available in French. Looks to be pretty useful.

URL: http://chis.wikidot.com/

GREAT NEW BOOK FOR PATIENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES

Jari Holland Buck has turned personal tragedy into a positive for everyone. Her husband was taken to the hospital with acute pancreatitis. He wound up having crisis after crisis, including heart attacks and strokes, and was hospitalized for over seven months in four different hospitals. If Buck had not been at his side 24/7 and been his advocate, he probably wouldn’t have survived—but he did, though not in great shape.

Buck has written a book about their ordeal and it is wonderful! Hospital Stay Handbook: A Guide to Becoming a Patient Advocate for Your Loved Ones (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7387-1224-6, US$17.95) is just that—a guide. It starts with forewords from the primary physician, the patient, and the wife. Then she makes 14 recommendations: take care of yourself, choose your hospital with awareness, pick the days of your stay carefully, take legal steps to ensure the patient’s wishes are honored, read and use the patient advocacy statement, assume your loved one can hear everything so speak in the positive, educate yourself, ask about every medication, understand every procedure used or denied, keeps track of all supplies and services, arrange for 24/7 coverage, pray, surrender, and (again) take care of yourself. Each recommendation comes with checklists and/or appropriate forms to fill out. There are a few essays at the end for more depth and a list of resources (mostly on the Web) and an index.

There are two other wonderful things about this book: it mentions the hospital library at least twice as a great source of information (even if she does think every hospital has a library) and the extremely reasonable price of US$17.95.

If you have anyone in the hospital or think you might, you should read (and/or buy) this book. It will help you and your loved one survive.

URL: http://www.hospitalstayhandbook.com (a great site with additional resources)

a WONDERFUL MEDICAL WIKI !!

I just discovered WikiDoc. It is a wiki run by and for medical professionals--and patients. As usual, I searched for my 2 major health issues (peripheral neuropathy and spinal stenosis). I found very good and accurate information on both, mostly understandable to the reasonably medicalese-fluent layperson. But the best feature was the link to other websites. I clicked on to excellent resources on both conditions--that I had never seen before. One was even peer-reviewed.

You can search or look at content by disease, differential diagnosis, signs and symptoms, lab tests, and drug. There is also the WikiDoc Medical School Curriculum, which has very complete lessons on everything from anatomy to public health. The home page has news stories and links to the WikiDoc Community ("It's the FaceBook/MySpace of Healthcare" where you can share video, images, blogs, and participate in forums. Another neat feature is "What Was My Doctor Talking About?" where you can watch "world experts explain procedures and treatments in language that you can understand." You can even put WikiDoc on your iPod. "There is no industry support for this site."

The site is available in English, Spanish, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Japanese and Turkish. It is the brainchild of Jacki Buros and C. Michael Gibson MD, but anyone can edit pages. If they approve you, you can become the editor of a page. As of today, there were 64,817 textbook chapters and news articles and far more pages.

I highly recommend this site.

URL: http://www.wikidoc.org/

GREAT NEW PATIENT NETWORKING SITE

“Patients Helping Patients Live Better Every Day” is the motto of a new website called PatientsLikeMe. The site provides information and networking for patients with “life-changing diseases.” Diseases included so far are ALS, MS (multiple sclerosis), HIV, Parkinson’s, and Mood Disorders (depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar, or anxiety). You create a profile of your condition, your mood (today), your medicines and dosages (!), a history of your symptoms, and your weight. Not only can you connect with others who have similar conditions or are on similar medications, but you can track your condition over time. You can even print out a sheet to take to your doctor.
It was founded by three engineers from MIT who were inspired by a young friend with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). How do they make money? By selling “anonymized” data and permission-based access to healthcare providers. (They tell you which information they share and which they don’t.)
I really like this site and see great things for it once there are more people on it.

URL: http://www.patientslikeme.com

FIND A DOCTOR

There's a new site to help you find a doctor--and it works well. Xoova (zu-vah) lets you search by location and or specialty or services provided. For some physicians you can even make an appointments. And it's free for everyone (ad-supported). I checked for my own physician and for ones in the city we are moving to and found what I needed. Good stuff.

URL: http://www.zoova.com/

TWO GOOD SITES FOR INFORMATION ON PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

I was reminded of these when reading an article in, of all place, International Travel News. The first is RxList, ”the Internet Drug Index for prescription drugs and medication.” In addition to having very complete drug information, with separate “for the consumer” and “for the professional” writeups, the site has a pill identification tool, drug medical dictionary, and a good section on diseases and conditions. The last links to RxList’s parent organization, WebMD. It is easy to use and very complete.
The other site is The Merck Manual Medical Library, the consumer-oriented version of the famous print manual. Entries are in alphabetical order and there are photos, and AV material not in the print version. It is easily searchable, but not as complete as RxList.

URLs:
RxList: http://www.rxlist.com/
Merck (portal): http://www.merck.com/nmhe/

WOMEN'S HEALTH MATTERS!!

There is a wonderful new resource available to find information on women's health. Since it is from the New Women's College Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, it has a Canadian focus, but many of the sites are good for anywhere. Its brand new product is a toolkit "to assist the many women who have asked us for help in navigating the often confusing maze of health information on the Web." Titled Women Wading Through the Web, it can be downloaded for free. The Toolkit has chapters on "How to use the Internet to search for health information," "How to judge the quality of a website," "how to interpret medical research," and "how to understand media and web-based health information." There are also many links to recommended resources.

Also on the site are feature articles, quick links, discussion groups, answer center, and more.

URLs:
Toolkit: http://www.womenshealthmatters.ca/toolkit/
general site: http://www.womenshealthmatters.ca/

DON’T TAKE YOUR ORGANS TO HEAVEN, WE NEED THEM HERE

OrganDonor.gov is the official US government website on organ and tissue donation and transplantation. (At the end of January 2008, there were over 98,000 people on the waiting list. In the first ten months of 2007, there were 23,706 transplants made and 12,031 donors.) There’s information here on how to become a donor, how to get on the transplant list, and health suggestions. From the Department of Health & Human Services.

URL: http://organdonor.gov

DOUBLECHECK MD (Beta)

“Have you started a new medication? Have you developed a new symptom? Or would you just like to check your drugs interactions and their possible side effects.” This new website is very easy to use and, for me at least, quite informative. They caution that not all drugs are included, but all nine (!) of mine were. Each possible drug interaction is assigned a risk level and notes for medical professionals. There are many citations to the medical literature for further reading (but not linked, drat.) There’s also a community discussion forum planned but not implemented yet.

URL: http://www.doublecheckmd.com/

ARE YOU EATING ENOUGH FRUIT AND VEGETABLES?

The US Centers for Disease Control have a website that, when you input your sex, age, and level of physical activity, tells you how many servings of fruits and veggies you should be eating. For me it is 1.5 cups of fruit and 2 cups of vegetables. Thanks to my current diet plan, I’m okay. (FYI. I’ve lost 42 pounds on Nutrisystem Silver.) There are also recipes and other tips. How are you doing?

URL: http://www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov/

NEW, USEFUL MEDICAL SEARCH ENGINE

Microsoft has introduced Health Vault, its new consumer health search engine. As usual, I tested it with one my own conditions, “small fiber peripheral neuropathy.” I was amazed at the number and quality of resources found. (I usually get just one or two when I qualify it with “small fiber.”)
Results are from all sorts of sources: Wikipedia, answers.com, Medscape, medical journals, news articles, and more. There are also related books on Amazon, several of which I will get and read. And there are some pretty-well focused ads, too.
PLUS, you can save the search and specific articles in your own “vault,” which is supposedly secure and confidential. A nice touch—better than bookmarking.
I really like this site—let me know if you do, too.

URL: http://health.live.com/

TWO NEW US GOVERNMENT PORTALS

the
Consumer Health Information for You and Your Family
http://www.fda.gov/consumer
This site from the US Food and Drug Administration has sections on general health information,medicines, medical devices and procedures, vaccines, cosmetics, protecting yourself, food and nutrition, animal health, and radiation-emitting products (such as cell phones). You can also sign up for e-newsletters and other consumer publications. There are links to sections just for women, seniors, teens, kids, and en espanol.

Google U.S. Government Search
http://www.google.com/ig/usgov
Here is a portal to government information, with sections from the American Forces Information Service, White House News, Government Executive, the Washington Post, and top Government stories. And, of course, there's a search feature for images, video, news, maps, etc.

And speaking of Google, try out the new personalization features for your Google page. I use mine as my home page and have included the weather, checking my Gmail and Yahoo! mail (you can check your other mail but I haven't been able to make it work), the day and time, top news, and local weather. I can even check and read my Google Reader RSS feed from the home page. Just go to http://www.google.com/ig and choose from lots of add-ins (not all from Google). I love this!