Slideshows and Podcasts from the Biomed Central
colloquium "Open Access:
How Can We Achieve Quality and Quantity?" held in February, are now
available to download from the Biomed Central website. Speakers
include Sir Muir Gray (Director of Clinical Knowledge, Process
and Safety for NHS Connecting for Health),
Robert Kiley (Head of e-Strategy, Wellcome Library),
and Richard Smith (Member of the board of PLoS, former Editor
of the BMJ and Chief Executive of the BMJ Publishing Group).
Brain and Spine Foundation Information Access
Toolkit
The Brain and Spine Foundation (BSF) have
designed an Information Access Toolkit, which aims to help
commissioners and providers of health and social care services to meet
the information needs of people with long-term neurological
conditions. The toolkit is currently being piloted on the BSF website
before it is launched more widely later in the year.
A new Centre for Healthcare Associated Infections
has been launched at the University of Nottingham. The centre will
bring together experts to research superbugs such as MRSA and
Clostridium Difficile. The centre is a collaboration between nine
schools at the University of Nottingham, covering a range of
disciplines, and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, and is the
first of its type in a UK University.
Asthma UK, the British Heart Foundation and
Diabetes UK have teamed up to produce a toolkit which aims to provide
advice and support on all aspects of commissioning for long term
conditions. The website includes links to commissioning guidance,
patient involvement information, and case studies.
The Forum for Global Health Protection is a new,
not-for-profit information service that has been set up in close
association with, but independent from the Health Protection Agency.
The aim of the website is to contribute to preparing for and fighting
new, emerging, re-emerging and changing health threats. This will
include publishing original research, critically reviewing other
published research, and providing a forum for international
health-protection officials, scientists, and policymakers to debate
relevant issues.
The Health Archives and Records Group (HARG)
launched a new website in January 2007, extending summary information
that was previously available on the Society of Archives website.
This includes news and events, links to relevant resources, and
frequently asked questions.
Health Knowledge is an online learning resource
for Public Health practitioners, particularly aimed at those studying
for the Faculty of Public Health Exams. The website contains
information on each section of the syllabus, advice on Part A of the
membership exam, and a public health jargon buster.
Medical Sociology Online (MSO) (formerly Medical
Sociology News) publishes articles in the area of medical sociology
based on original research using qualitative and quantitative
methods. MSO will be published biannually and all issues will be
freely available to download from the MSO site.
The National
Personality Disorder website is the first dedicated website to provide
information, resources and learning opportunities on personality
disorder. It supports the development of the National Personality
Disorder Programme, a collaborative initiative between the Department
of Health, Home Office (Health & Offender Partnerships) and Care
Service Improvement Partnership. The site is aimed at anyone
interested in personality disorder, including service users, carers,
the general public, commissioners, chief executives and multi-agency
professionals.
The Health Foundation have launched the QQUIP
website which brings together data from a wide range of sources to
reveal national and international trends on diseases and quality of
care. QQUIP also collates evidence on the impact of various
interventions designed to improve the quality of healthcare
internationally, and provides access to data on priority areas such as
cancer, heart disease, diabetes and mental health. In addition, QQUIP
examines NHS performance in terms of its effectiveness, safety,
responsiveness, efficiency, resource-use and how easily patients can
access their care.
This is a new website for sexual health
professionals, following the launch of the “Condom Essential Wear”
campaign targeting young adults. The site provides access to policy
information, documents relating to both adult sexual health and
teenage pregnancy, and information on the latest national campaigns.
Registration is necessary to gain free access to the website.
UK PubMed Central (UKPMC)
is based on PubMed Central (PMC), offering a free-to-access online
digital archive of full-text, peer-reviewed research publications.
The archive is fully searchable and currently contains over 620,000
full-text articles. In addition to the mirrored content from PMC,
UKPMC also provides a manuscript submission system (UKMSS) to enable
researchers funded by the UKPMC Funders Group to deposit articles that
have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Please note that from 2 April 2007, Best
Treatments will no longer be available free of charge due to the NHS
in the UK withdrawing funding. After this date access will be by
subscription only.
Blackwell Publishing’s online journals platform,
Blackwell Synergy has been re-designed, aiming to provide easier
navigation, faster loading times, and improved access to research
tools. There is currently an online survey allowing users to give
their feedback on the new design (
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) website has a
new design, incorporating new features and functions for researchers,
health professionals and the general public. The BHF are keen to gain
feedback on the site, this can be done by using the ‘Contact Us’ form
at:
Dissect Medicine,
the collaborative medical news website which indexes and ranks
international medical news, has launched Spanish and German versions
of its website. The Spanish edition can be found at:
http://www.dissectmedicine.es/
and the German edition at:
http://www.dissectmedicine.de/
Intute has released a new Internet tutorial for
Health and Social Care which can be found in their Virtual Training
Suite at:
http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/health The tutorial is
free to access and covers the best websites in the topic, how to
search the Internet effectively, and how to evaluate the quality of
online information. Tutorials can be completed in approximately one
hour.
The National Library for Health has launched two
new services: ‘My Library’ (http://www.library.nhs.uk/mylibrary/)
and ‘Clinical Knowledge Summaries’ (http://cks.library.nhs.uk/).
My Library is a page you can customise to show the news, current
awareness updates and health links that are relevant to you. You will
need to log in with an Athens username and password to use this
resource. Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) aim to provide
up-to-date clinical knowledge to help healthcare professionals manage
common conditions in primary and first-contact care. CKS currently
provides access to full PRODIGY guidance and quick reference guides
summarising this, patient information leaflets and PRODIGY Drugs.
