QMedCONNECT: May 2012

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: May 2012

Dear friends,

May 2012 has been very special for me. I attended the Annual conference of the Medical Library Association of the US. The MLA’s mailing list - Medlib-L has been a major source of learning for me since 1996. And reading about their Annual Meeting every year made me feel it was important to attend this sometime. I am really grateful for having been able to attend it this year. The learning and networking opportunities were excellent. And so were the reaffirmations I had in terms of QMed’s work. I presented our four years’ achievements to about 40 people in a parallel session and had lovely feedback. I also got to interact with some librarians out there who are working with other developing countries to mentor them, and they were happy to get my inputs too.

I had the additional privilege of indepth interactions with Lenny Rhine who is a trainer for HINARI countries. Both of us shared our experiences and our training slides, and it was a lovely moment when Lenny asked me if he could borrow some of my slides and offered to share his! We both will work together in this knowledge sharing initiative for the benefit of developing nations!

Now, in the month of June, I have to chalk out how to make the best use of my "MLA Meeting Learnings". And of course our plans for lectures for consumers, online training programs and more, will keep us on our toes!

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Help QMed GROW

Become a "Friend indeed"! To those who know us and believe in our cause and efforts -do join our Facebook page. We’d be very happy if you also choose to give us a donation - large or small. The "drops" make the ocean

If you are a health professional or student, you could become a "Friend indeed". You will be contributing to one of the most important initiatives for the health care profession! AND, you will get all the help that we can provide with our expertise.

We request for a minimum donation of Rs. 250/- (If you are a member of INFORMER, you automatically become a Friend of QMed, because you have already committed to the same cause out there!)

Larger donations are most welcome for this cause which I am sure each of you cares deeply about. We aim to raise funds of about Rs. 60 lakhs this year, so that we can create lots of E-learning programs and also conduct training programs wherever possible. We wish to help all our “Friends in need” with their research, paper writing and more.

Do check out our website www.qmedkf.org.in for details.We accept donations by cheques in favour of Quality Medical Knowledge Foundation. You may send the cheques to our address, or you could ask us for our account details. You will get the applicable IT Exemption for donations under Section 80G of the Indian Income Tax Act. We have FCRA registration, and can accept donations from outside India too.

Do You Know?

PharmGuide: Free Drug Information Resources
http://pharmlib.pbworks.com/w/page/41567022/PharmGuide
Compiled by the Pharmacy & Drug Information Section of the Medical Library Association of the United States, the people behind this compilation aim to highlight the best free drug information resources available on the web. They have included those resources they have found, with the most useful and/or unique content. The compilation activity began about a year earlier and is updated regularly.

Forthcoming Training Programs on literature searching and reference management:

To be announced: Literature searching & PubMed - for UG students attending a Clinical Research Workshop at KEM Hospital

June 13, 2011 - Lecture at a FAIMER workshop, at KEM Hospital

June 21, 2012 - Lecture / workshop - at Aravind Eye Care, Madurai

June 23, 2012 - Lecture at the IJO Research Methodology Workshop

July 1, 2012 - Lecture at a meeting of the Patient Safety Alliance

July 11, 2012 - Lectures at workshops of Medicon 2012

July 19, 2012 - Lecture at a Research Methodology Workshop at the KJ Somaiya Medical College, Mumbai

August 18, 2012 - Lecture at “Illuminati” a UG student event organized by AFMC, Pune

Other Events of Interest

Public Health Foundation of India's events in June. More details

Workshop on Research Methodology - offered by the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology - More details

INFORMER's Medicon 2012 - July 11-14, 2012, at MGIMS, Sevagram, Wardha. More details

Art & Science of Writing a Paper - conducted by “Indian Pediatrics” - 11-12 Aug, 2012. More details

Methods in Epidemiological Clinical and Operational Research (MECOR): Level 1: Introduction to Clinical Research Methods. 24th - 29th September, 2012 at NIE, Chennai. More details

One year online diploma in Bioethics , conducted by the NIE, Chennai - More details

If you are organizing or know about other conferences, pre-conference workshops or training programs related to medical research, do let us know; we would like to include these in our website and newsletter.

Events Attended

Vasumathi Sriganesh attended two CE programs at the Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association, USA
- Optimize Your E-Learning Design and Development
- Electronic Collection Development for Health and Medicine E-Libraries

Resources for You:

Super courses Lectures. Super course is a repository of lectures on Global Health and Prevention. If you wish to recieve a copy, do write to us at info@qmedkf.org.in

Article of the Month

Establishing an evidence base for e-health: the proof is in the pudding

Najeeb Al-Shorbaji and Antoine Geissbuhler

Bull World Health Organ. 2012 May 1; 90(5): 322–322A

This article is an editorial in the Bulletin of the WHO - May issue, which focuses on e-health. The editorial is about establishing an evidence base for e-health and provides a brief description on various papers covered in this theme issue. While several studies have shown a trend towards very positive impact with e-health, the editorial also says that this is a topic which needs more research to show that e-health can result in economic benefits and improve health outcomes and that there is a challenge for all to generate such evidence for the widespread adoption of e-health.

What we did – May 2012

Training Programs / Talks: Literature searching/ Consultative meetings

08-May-2012. Vasumathi Sriganesh delivered a lecture at the MUHS Pune, at a workshop on Medical Informatics. We are delighted to share that she got the highest faculty ranking!

Document Delivery of Journal Articles

In the month of May 2012, we delivered 40 articles to individual members & libraries. The total number of documents delivered since April 2012 is 100.

Quote of the Month

"There is nothing so practical as a good theory."
Ludwig Boltzman
Austrial Physicist - 1844 - 1906

Directory of Indian Medical Sites (www.indianmedicalsites.in)

We have added 25 new sites in the month of May and the total number of sites is 3625.

We invite volunteers to add new sites. If you would like to help, do write to us and we will send you a set of instructions that will make it easier for you to work. Please write "Volunteering for Indian Medical Sites" in the Subject of the email.