May 2021

From our Blog - Our CEO's Posts

Tech Savvy vs Information Savvy

Recently I had a conversation with a doctor. By the way, what I am going to write is not unique to this doctor, but it has happened with many. And so - this piece

We were talking about our online courses for undergraduate students. And she said, "When I studied my medical degree, we did not have all these resources, we only used our library and read books ."

And I asked "Were you introduced to the Index-Medicus"? There was silence. The answer was obviously no. Index Medicus was a resource available since the 1950s. It was a weekly index to articles published in many health science journals. You could search it by author or by topic and you got bibiographic details of articles by an author or on a topic. I am not sure how many medical libraries had this resource and if they did, now many students were taught about it.

Read more.

The AND OR confusion

When searching online databases, using the words - AND, OR and NOT, is a common practice. The terms AND, OR and NOT are called "Boolean Operators". 

"But this is so simple and basic. Why are you writing a blog post about this?" - you might ask.

I write this blog post because it is important to use Boolean Operators correctly while searching. It is important that anyone who searches online should know how these terms work. Everyone thinks it is simple. But many people make mistakes in their usage. I am not talking about the inadvertent slips (I make them too), but the mistakes people make, thinking they are searching correctly.

Let me share some very basic points about using Boolean Operators

Read more.

Can QMed become redundant in the not too distant future? 

QMed Knowledge Foundation was registered as a Trust in December 2007. In 2008, when we had our formal inauguration, I had mentioned in my talk – “We aim to become redundant”. And we have actually paved the first steps towards this!  

QMed can definitely become redundant (at least in its current Avtaar), in the not too distant future. This - if every institution teaching health science courses has librarians and faculty who can teach the skills of literature searching and referencing. They will need to teach these in depth and mentor students for these activities. This simply must happen if we aim for the highest in education, research and practice.

First, a large number of health science students and professionals have to go through these courses. From these, will emerge future teachers who make them better and better with time.

Read more.

From our Social Media Posts- International Observances

From our Social Media Posts - Other Events / Courses

Public Health Foundation of India - 

1. Integrated MSc & PhD in Clinical Research. Duration: Two Years for MSc and minimum three years for PhD
2. Integrated MSc & PhD in Health Informatics Duration: Two Years

Check out details at https://phfi.org/on-campus-courses/

From our Social Media Posts - Do You Know

6 Ways to Spot a Predatory Journal - 5th May

How does one know if a journal is predatory? 
Here is a blog post with six fairly simple steps to find out!

PICO Portal - 24th May

PICO Portal is a almost brand new. Launched in Sep 2020, it aims to make the processes and documentation of systematic reviews easier. Our FB Post

From our Social Media Posts- Interesting Articles

Lectures & Webinars this month

 May being a month of holidays there have been no lectures and webinars this month

QMedCourses News

Additions to our Courses site:

• We have added Discussion Forums to the PubMed and Mendeley Courses. We invite interactions from all participants. We hope to see it buzz with activity and learning exchanges. 

• We also introduce a collection of useful resources - useful for searching literature, useful for writing and reporting of research and links to articles from PubMed on several topics related to education and research. This will become a great library for people to learn from. 

We present some current statistics about the overall progress of our courses.

Testimonials for QMedCourses

Course: Information Resources & Literature Searching 
The course was very lucid and touched upon areas which otherwise no one teaches. Thanks. Debapriya Bandyopadhyay, Dept of Biochemistry - AIIMS Bhubaneswar.

Course : Introduction to Referencing
This is a great step. Introducing this course to the undergraduate students is going to sensitise them and improve the quality of their student projects and later when they are ready to write theses. This will give them a edge over others. Manasi Bhattacharjee, Dept of Physiology, AIIMS Guwahati

Course : Mastering PubMed
The course was pretty much systematic for beginners to learn the ropes of literature searching. I feel more confident about my searches after having gone through these lessons. Saloni Dedhia, PT School & Centre, Seth GSMC and KEM hospital.

Course : Reference Management with Mendeley
Reference management explained in a very simple way, easy to understand, useful for researchers. Mohd Maroof, MD Community Medicine, GMC, Haldwani

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