QMedCONNECT: November 2010

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: November 2010

Dear friends,

We hope that all of you had an enjoyable and safe Diwali. As the year draws towards closure, we are happy to share some developments. We have had two important ones in November. One is that we have a consultant - Ms. Suchira Deengar, joining us for a short term to help us sharpen our plans for the next couple of years and most importantly help us with measuring the impact of what we do. Ms Suchira has a Masters in Medical & Psychiatric Social Work and in Social Entrepreneurship. This combination makes it easy for her to understand our work in depth and we are sure she will help us with great contributions. The other development in November was my attending the Third National Bioethics Conference in Delhi. This is one conference which I believe is a "must attend" for anyone in the health care profession. Networking with people from multidisciplinary backgrounds exposed one to various angles of Bioethics and Medical Ethics. Speaking for myself, I will say that I fell in love with the domain of medical ethics and would look forward to delving deeper into this area!

We are finalizing our plans to launch the concept of "Friends of QMed Knowledge Foundation". Both Institutions and individuals can become "Friends", by giving us a donation or taking a donor membership. By becoming a Friend of our Foundation, the individual or institution acknowledges that they support our vision and activities. And we pledge to help them use information resources from the Internet and their libraries with maximum effectiveness. We also will help the institution's library to offer the most from their collections.

Do read our "historical" Article of the month on Medical library facilities (1954). We hope to have some comments on this one!

On Saturday - January 29th, we will have an event to celebrate the completion of three years of QMed Knowledge Foundation. This time it will be "Focus - Medical Students". We request people in Mumbai to block their calendars for that date between 2.30 and 5 PM. For readers of the newsletter outside Mumbai, if you can join us for the event, we would be very happy! The invitations will reach you by mid January.

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Do You Know?

Off and on we come across papers that have been "retracted" from a journal. What is retraction and why does it happen? A retraction of a published article means that the author/journal wishes to "take it back". In other words they indicate that the article should not have been published, and that its data and conclusions should not be used / quoted for any future research or publications. The common reasons for retraction of articles are scientific misconduct by way of falsifying data, plagiarism and several other actions.
An interesting Blog on Retracted papers was brought to our notice by Dr. Ratnakar Aspari a retired librarian and a good friend. Thank you Dr Ratnakar for this contribution to QMedCONNECT!

Retraction Watch www://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/

And for an interesting history and reason for creating this blog do check out the first post: Why write a blog about retractions?

Our Forthcoming Programs / Lectures

5th December, 2010 - Training program - PubMed Basics for members of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics, Navi Mumbai

6th December, 2010 - Talk on Literature Searching at theMECOR - Mumbai course

7th December, 2010 - Training program - PubMed Advanced and Cochrane Library for researchers at FRCH, Pune

11th December, 2010 - Training program - PubMed - in Delhi (sponsored event)

12th December, 2010 - Training program - PubMed Basics at Wadia Hospital Mumbai (Awaiting confirmation)

17th/18th December, 2010 - Training program - PubMed Basics for PG students, at ASICON, New Delhi (Awaiting confirmation)

We invite medical colleges/hospitals to contact us for organizing a program for PG students, faculty and health professionals. Please check out details at our website.

Other Events of Interest

3rd-5th December 2010: Workshop on 'Introduction to Clinical Trials and Good Clinical Practices'. NIH supported course, conducted by faculty of SGPGI, Lucknow, at Goa.More details

November 2010-onwards: Clinical Research Workshop Series. Conducted by the Public Health Foundation of India.More details

May 11th - 14th 2011: Medicon 2011: Medicon is an annual international research conference for undergraduate medical students organized in India. It presents a platform for young scientists and future doctors to meet, interact and present their research. 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.

Our Foundation Day

QMed Knowledge Foundation was registered on December 19, 2007. We celebrate our Foundation Day in January every year. We are now planning our next Foundation Day event for Sat, 29th January, 2011. This time we would like to focus on medical students (both undergraduate and postgraduate) and explore what can be done to ensure that they use both the Internet and library resources effectively. We would like to have a discussion involving all concerned - faculty, students and librarians and see how the usage of all resources can be enhanced, and barriers removed.

Resources for You:

Supercourse Lectures- Supercourse is a repository of lectures on Global Health and Prevention designed to improve the teaching of Prevention. Supercourse is a library of 3623 lectures in 30 languages. It has been produced at the WHO Collaborating Center University of Pittsburgh, with core developers Ronald LaPorte and others.

Our Foundation has received a CD of entire content, and are distributing it for free to institutions during our training programs and also to anyone requesting for the same. This will be useful if you do not wish to view all lectures on the Internet for various reasons. Please get in touch with us at info@qmedkf.org.in if you wish to receive a copy.

Article of the Month

Neelameghan A.

Medical library facilities in the Madras State; a historical note, with a reference to the All-India Medical Institute Library.

Bull Med Libr Assoc. 1954 Jul;42(3):341-56.

This article is historical. And I would urge every reader to ask - "how much has changed since then"? Are we in India not doing enough for developing our medical libraries? Can we wake up and ensure some rapid changes? I am hoping some readers will at least write in.

What we did –Novmeber2010

Training Programs / Talks: Literature searching:

2nd November, 2010 - PubMed Basics at FRCH Pune.

19th November, 2010 - Talk on "Ethics in Literature Searching" at the National Bioethics Conference

24th November, 2010 - Talk on effective literature searching at a preconference workshop - Update Ayurveda Conference at Nair Hospital

27th November, 2010 - Training program - PubMed Advanced & Cochrane Library for M.Optom students of the Lotus College of Optometry

Document Delivery of Journal Articles

In the month of November 2010, we delivered 85 articles to individual members, libraries and corporate clients. The total number of documents delivered since April 2010 is 1055.

Funding

For any not-for-profit organization, sustenance is a challenge every now and then. Assurance of basic needs (infrastructure and salaries) makes a huge difference to the time we can commit to carry out activities. Contributions from those who sincerely believe that our activities are vital will be deeply appreciated.
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.

Quote of the Month

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.

- Groucho Marx -

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

We have added 25 new sites in November and the total number of sites is about 3210.

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.