QMedCONNECT: Highlights 

January 2021

Welcome to our January issue. We are on a journey towards making our highlights more and  more useful for you! In this issue you will find a compilation of our important Social Media posts and our blogs. And we also share some of our important developments. Keep letting us know how you find this. 

This month - learn about some observances in January, an update in PubMed by NLM, something interesting about information literacy - from Ganga Dakshinamurti - in an interview by Santosh C Hulagabali - a very enthusiastic librarian and then a few recent articles about research in general 

Please write to us at info@qmed.ngo - to tell us how you like this and if you would like us to include anything else! 

The QMed Team 

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Our Social Media posts this month

4th Jan - World Braille Day:

Chosen on a day that marks the birth of it's maker Louis Braille, the World Braille Day is celebrated on the 4th of January every year. Braille is a writing system used by people with visual impairments. Celebrating a day dedicated to it marks the awareness and realization of the full rights of visually impaired people.

For people in the Vision Sciences - Some recent braille literature

And here's a web resource that may help people understand different professionals who help the visually impaired

5th Jan - Ganga Dakshinamurti: A true researcher has to be information literate:

Ganga Dakshinamurti, an avid practitioner of innovative services in Canadian academic libraries, is of the correct opinion that there is no end to information explosion.

Therefore, the only logical way out of the confusion created by unlimited access is to train the people and educate them to sift through the dense fog of resources, to find material that is pertinent, reliable, and useful.

Read on about this interview by Santosh C Hulagabali - who heads the Central University of Haryana - to know more about what she has to say on this subject.
Educate, raise awareness, be an aware user.

8th Jan - Changes in NCBI accounts in PubMed:

Do you have an NCBI account in PubMed? Well most people do, so if you say yes, we are not surprised. But here is a change in the near future. If your NCBI account is via your institution (not very common in India) or with your Google account (pretty common) - then relax - there is no change.

But if you have created a User Name because you had your email via hotmail, yahoo etc, then you will need to create another email id and link your current settings there.

How do you do that? Just follow the steps in this link

12th Jan - National Youth Day:

Today marks the birthday of Swami Vivekananda. Let us celebrate today in a unique way.

Take a minute from your day, and make a mental note of a young health professional who has changed your life or the life of someone you know and love, for the better. It may have happened in the course of the pandemic, or even before.

It may be a doctor, an intern, a nurse, a physiotherapist or someone who drew blood for a test. Actually any young frontline worker too. Remember the person, thank them directly or just in your mind, and experience the gratitude!

20th Jan - Interesting Articles:

Two interesting articles on approach to research in India.
Three articles on predatory journals - we need to be so careful about these! Read them here

22nd Jan - Virtual Method Symposium:

For those interested in the domain of Systematic Reviews:
Methods Symposium: Advanced Methods and Innovative Technologies for Evidence Synthesis (Online and FREE) -
Dates - Feb 16, 23 and Mar 8 Read More

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From our Blog

Open Texts - Opening up a world of digitised texts

Open Texts - Opening up a world of digitised texts

How would you feel if you knew that there is a complete library of valuable text just waiting for your attention, a few clicks away from you?

Open Texts is a web platform that enables you to discover free digitised text resources from around the world. It has over eight million items on its shelves, ranging from items on the History of Medicine right down to conference literature on topics such as Osteoporosis.

Find more on this: https://opentexts.world/

Read more.

Leprosy Eradication Day

 World over, the 30th of January is celebrated as Leprosy Eradication Day. Multi Drug Therapy or MDT is the watchword for treatment of Leprosy - also known as Hansen's disease.    

In 1991, the World Health Organization established a wishful protocol to eliminate Hansen's Disease by the year 2000. Not all nations were able to achieve this.    

There is great scope, however, for treatment and eradication. Sources reveal >200,000 cases worldwide, every year. MDT is a very important tool to keep a check on this disease, particularly if supplemented by early detection.  

We hope that health professionals world over can, on Leprosy Eradication Day pledge once more to work towards this cause.   Do check out systematic reviews as well as regular reviews on Leprosy - in the last 6 months. And do get in touch if you need more literature.

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Webinars this month

Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital - Dept of Occupational Therapy

Date: 27-01-2021
No of Participants: 35

Central Council for Research in Homeopathy

Date: 22-01-2021
No of Participants: 50

Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital and Medical Research Institute

Date: 17-01-2021
No of Participants: 60

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QMedCourses News

 

Sri Manakula Vinayagar Medical College and Hospital –  joins us for Institutional access for QMed Courses! We are happy to have 330 people enrolled - faculty and PG residents. This month we also had a discussion and doubt solving session for RMRC Bhubaneswar. It was an enjoyable hour long session. We present some current statistics about our courses.

Course

Certified

Total Enrolled

Information Resources & Literature Searching (IRLS)

274

2303

Introduction to Referencing (IR)

182

394

Mastering PubMed (PM)

109

1946

Reference Management with Mendeley (RMM)

94

1946

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Testimonials for QMedCourses

Course: Information Resources & Literature Searching 
The topic was simplified and covered in small videos making it easy to finish. It was very smoothly explained. Dr Komal Bhombe, PG-Student,Sharad Pawar Dental College.

Course : Introduction to Referencing
Wonderful program. UG/PG students, research scholars, faculty members must do the course. Excellent presentation. Prasanta Kumar Mitra, Professor & Head, Dept. of Medical Biotechnology, Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences, Gangtok, Sikkim.

Course : Mastering PubMed
I highly appreciate the initiative as this would largely enable researchers utilise their time efficiently. Features explained here will make searching relevant information easy and more focussed. Sunaina Lal, Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences

Course : Reference Management with Mendeley
I was not knowing many things, learned a lot in this course. Very informative. Thank you madam for explaining everything so beautifully and in a very simple way which was easy to understand. Papa Naik, Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences. 

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