QMedCONNECT: April 2012

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: April 2012

Dear friends,

Another fiscal year began and we did our share of planning for the new one. Most importantly we wish to involve each one of you reading our newsletter in helping us plan the important area of "Knowledge Transfer” for improving the health of our citizens. We believe that each of you can help with “ideas and more".

We will soon be starting to do programs for the educated consumers, where we will be teaching them to find authentic information, and also to understand "evidence based resources for consumers". We believe this will help them have productive discussions with doctors, and also not to rely on sites or resources that just mention "Research shows …...".

We have created a platform for welcoming lots more Friends (including health consumers) to QMed. Anyone can become "A Friend Indeed" if you just believe in our cause. And anyone who need any help that we can offer, can become “Friends in need”, with a minimal donation of Rs. 250/- Do check out our website for more details.

We have just applied for accreditation to the Maharashtra Medical Council for our training programs. We are sure this will make a big difference to all students and health professionals

We launched our first “Full day hands on” workshop on searching PubMed. It was a pretty good success and we hope to do more of these this year.

And finally I am happy to share that I will be going to the US for three weeks in May. I will be attending the Medical Library Association’s Annual Conference and will also be spending three days in the Emory University’s Health Sciences Library in Atlanta. I am sure the conference and my library visit will be a great observing and learning experience, which I hope can translate into good changes in India. Do wish me luck!

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Help QMed GROW

Become a "Friend indeed"! To those who just 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.

Do You Know?

Implementation Science is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that aims to publish research relevant to the scientific study of methods to promote the uptake of research findings into routine healthcare in clinical, organisational or policy contexts. Check out the Table of Contents of the available issues in PubMed.

Forthcoming Training Programs on literature searching and reference management:

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

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

Two tentative lectures / workshops - one at a Dental college in Bengaluru and one at Aravind Eye Care, Madurai

June 23, 2011 - Lecture at the IJO Research Methodology Workshop

July 11. 2011 - Lecture at workshops of Medicon 2012

Other Events of Interest

Public Health Foundation of India's events. More details

Short course in Biostatistics - May 14 - June 22, 2012, at CMC, Vellore. 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 and Parvati Iyer attended a program on Fund raising, conducted by the Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy. The focus was on raising money from individual donors and involving them in the growth of an organization. It gave us an excellent insight into the importance and methods of keeping all our stakeholdhers involved! Thank you to our trainer,Ms Zahida Noorani!

Resources for You:

Supercourse Lectures. Supercourse is a repository of lectures on Global Health and Prevention. if you wish to receive a copy, do write to us at info@qmedkf.org.in

UpToDate. We, as trainers of UpToDate - [www.uptodate.com], can give one month complimentary trial passwords. Do write to us atinfo@qmedkf.org.in if you would like to have one.

Article of the Month

Translating evidence into practice: the role of health research funders

Holmes B, Scarrow G, Schellenberg M.

Implement Sci. 2012 Apr 24;7(1):39. [Epub ahead of print]

A "food for thought” article from the “Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, Simon Fraser University", Canada. There are always questions about how health research benefits society, and too many people have high expectations of “instant results”. This article explains “Knowledge Transfer” (KT) and its importance in health research funding. The authors mention that that through research done on KT it has been identified that there are gaps in knowledge about how health can be improved and what is being done. KT can narrow the gaps and lead to evidence informed healthcare. The article includes a model on how a funding agency can best use KT.

What we did – April 2012

Training Programs / Talks: Literature searching/ Consultative meetings

29th April - We conducted our first full day PubMed Hands on workshop at one of Pragati Software’s training rooms, at Andheri (E), Mumbai. We had five participants - three students, a Family Physician and an Ophthalmologist. All of them gave us excellent feedback and they were very happy with the practicals and practice sessions. We are now encouraged to conduct more such programs.

Practice Session

Document Delivery of Journal Articles

In the month of April 2012, we delivered 60 articles to individual members & libraries. The total number of documents delivered in the last financial year 2011-2012 is 780.

Quote of the Month

We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children's life. It may save someone you love. And it's very important.

Jim Valvano (1946-1993)
American Basketball coach, a great motivator and known for his
ESPY Award Acceptance Speech "Don’t Ever Give Up"

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

We have added 25 new sites in the month of April and the total number of sites is 3600.

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.