Healthnewsreview.org evaluates current news items for accuracy and comprehensiveness.   Stories concerning treatments, procedures, and diagnostic tests are rated by a panel of medical professionals.  Coverage of the reports are given zero to five stars on the ability of the journalist to provide thorough information on the particular topic.   Ten specific areas of criteria are measured including the use of additional independent sources, the discussion of advantages and disadvantages for the treatment, and the ability to assess the quality of evidence.   The aim of the website is to appraise the news story itself, not the actual treatment or procedure. 

The website examines the nation’s top 50 newspapers, network newscasts, and weekly news magazines.  Transcripts and links to the original article are provided for users.  Individuals can search for reviews by date of publication, news organization, number of stars, and keyword.  Consumers can view a general critique of the article as well as detailed information on the ability of the news story to address the ten areas of assessment criteria.

For instance, a recent story from the Wall Street Journal, “Bone Proteins Costly in Surgery, Study Says” received two out of five stars for its inability to address the  cost, benefits, problems of the procedure,  in addition to the failure of the news story to include limitations of the study.

Health News Review is an excellent website that you can use to get a second opinion on the latest medical news story.   

 Acetaminophen is a drug found in many over the counter medications such as Tylenol and Excedrin.  It is also found in prescription drugs like Percocet and Vicodin. This is part of the concern. A lot of people are unaware that prescription drugs contain acetaminophen, so they are more likely to exceed the recommended dosage amount. 

 For more information, see the following articles:

 FDA News Release

Introduction. Prescriber’s Letter: July 2009; Vol: 16, No. 7

So, what kinds of applications does the Kindle have for our healthcare community? There hasn’t been a lot of research done in this area yet, but there are some interesting commentaries and opinions online. If you’re interested, you might consider checking out the following:

• Life as a Healthcare CIO - CIO and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School John Halamka’s blog has multiple informative posts on the device, including one on implementing Kindle support for all educational resources at the school
• Thoughts on reading the New England Journal of Medicine and reference texts from PatrickMD.net
• The Dental Technology Blog from the editor of Dental Products Report magazine has a number of posts about the Kindle

If you’ve used the Kindle for health education or in clinical practice, we’d like to hear about your experiences.  You are welcome to share your own thoughts in the comments section below.

The key to using smart phones in hospitals is secure access, which is one reason some people are concerned about people using the iPhone.  The Krafty Librarian points out that at a majority of hospitals “Blackberry’s are the only mobile phones that are able to access email from off campus.  Many hospitals were very reluctant to allow iPhone users the same type of email access because of security concerns.“ iPhones simply were not created with the business user in mind. However, an exciting new app may change all of that. Citrix Receiver is a free app that enables iPhone and iPod touch users to run any Windows application as a service on their device. Connecting to a Citrix XenApp environment, iPhone fans can securely work with apps from Oracle, SAP, McKesson, Cerner, and other vendors. The only information sent over the wireless connection consists of screen taps, gestures, keyboard input, and screen updates so it is simple to keep data secure. In enterprises, such as hospitals that depend heavily on Citrix already, we should see more hospitals allowing the same types of access to iPhone users that we already see with Blackberry users.

Launched May 18, many people thought Wolfram|Alpha would be a new search engine that would compete with Google, but that isn’t the case.  The website is in no way similar to Google.  For instance, it will not provide you with driving directions or information about local events.  However, it will provide information on medical computations, hospital information, mortality data, and human growth charts. 

The site is updated frequently and claims to obtain most of its data from systematic sources.  For example the weather and financial inquiries are continually streaming.  In addition, references can be located at the end of each results page.

One of the major drawbacks with using this search engine is that it is not exactly user friendly.  Unfortunately, you have to utilize very specific syntax or search within the examples provided.  Also the majority of information contained on the site seems to involve scientific information; as such your results can be nowhere near what you expect.   Results that concern questions on science and math have the best answers, this is due to the fact that Wolfram|Alpha stemmed from the developers of Mathamatica software.  If you are a first time user, it is suggested you start with examples.   Similar to a “gigantic brain, it doesn’t know everything, but it knows a ton — and discovering what it knows is half the fun of using it (Conlon, 2009)”.  There are still kinks in the site, but Wolfram|Alpha possesses great potential that has yet to be seen.

 For additional information:

The Grouse Weighs in on Wolfram by Tom Conlon  

Wolfram Alpha Searching for its Niche by Tom Krazit

Wolfram Alpha Show Data in a Way that Google Can’t by Stephen Shankland and Rafe Needleman

Wolfram Alpha the New Greek Almanac by David Coursey      

 After reading the article in Wired, I decided to see for myself what sort of pages the journals were creating. I looked at pages for JAMA, AAS, and, of course, the New England Journal of Medicine. After looking at the JAMA Facebook page (look them up as “Journal of the American Medical Association”), I did not see a lot of value in the site. If you are on Facebook, you can become a fan, and maybe read about the journal, but that is all they have posted to date. Perhaps there is more to come later. As for Science magazine, all I could find for my searching efforts was a page for the company that produces the magazine, AAAS. The page did have a lot of interesting content, though.  The New England Journal of Medicine site is pretty sparse and comprable to JAMA’s page. Under info, you can find a link to the journal’s website and wikipedia, but not much else.

 I personally have not become a fan of any medical journals in Facebook.  I was a little disappointed by the lack of content on their sites, but I will keep an eye on them to see if additional content turns up later. It would be nice to friend a journal if you would get a feed of new articles that were being published or if they would send out notices of some of the new cool things they are doing on the web (like NEJM: Videos in Clinical Medicine).  When that happens, I’ll think more about becoming a fan or friending a journal.

This rather unethical practice presents a number of problems, not the least of which is the underlying disregard these businesses had for patient safety. What is Elsevier’s or Merck’s responsibility in recalling this information now? What other publications has Elsevier received payment for? What other publications are sponsored by “big pharma” without our knowledge? If you are a reseacher or healthcare practitioner, how would you be able to tell that these titles were disingenuous?

If you, your staff, or students are ever in doubt about the authenticity of data you’d like to use in your research or for patient care, please consider Laupus librarians a great resource for investigation. Information Services librarians are here to help you get the best quality data available and can look for those pieces of the puzzle that would signal poorly constructed research, like lack of quality references and sponsorship.

Laupus intends to monitor developments on this news item as they unfold and add updates to this post. Additional information can located at the following links:

New York Times article

Elsevier’s response

What is nanotechnology? Well, it’s the study of nano devices, or materials with dimensions between 1 and 100 nanometers. According to the National Nanotechnology Initiative, “A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. A sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick; a single gold atom is about a third or a nanometer in diameter.” Nanotechnology may have a wide range of applications, one of which is health care. It is believed that nanotechnology may open a new world of possibilities for things like cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The National Institutes of Health have a whole website devoted to nanotechnology. I found out about the site from the April 10 issue of the Scout Report. For those that are not familiar with it, the Scout Report reviews different websites on the internet covering a wide variety of both popular and academic topics. (At this time, it looks like you can only sign up for the email version.)

National Institutes of Health: Nanotechnology

According to the Scout Report, “Visitors who are wondering what nanotechnology is and what it can be used for, will find this website from the National Institutes of Health very helpful. If visitors have wondered what a nano looks like they can check out the video on the right side of the homepage for a 30-second animated view comparing the size of a nano to everyday objects.”

They also have some webcasts on the page from a recent all day nanotechnology symposium. Unfortunately, you cannot watch the webcasts unless you have RealPlayer software on your computer.

The authors of the article, “Use of Electronic Health Records in U.S. Hospitals”, studied the prevalence of the adoption of the EHR in U.S. hospitals. Their conclusion? Only 1.5% of hospitals surveyed had a system-wide EHR in place. Another 7.5% had adopted an EHR which was implemented in some but not all clinical units. Additionally, computerized, provider-order entry for medications has been implemented in only 17% of hospitals. Also, the authors note that large hospitals, those in urban areas, and teaching hospitals were more likely to have an EHR in place.

If you’re interested in reading more, including conclusions the authors draw from the data, and their recommendations about government policy regarding EHRs, then you’re in luck - the NEJM has made this important article available here on the journal’s website.