QMedCONNECT: October2009

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: October 2009

Dear friends,

October was the month of Diwali - the Festival of lights. We trust that all of you had a good celebration. We share our best wishes with all of you!

October for our Foundation had a mix of regular activities and some new explorations. Last month we had offered 10 free memberships to Undergraduate medical students who were working on ICMR projects. We are delighted to have started receiving their queries and responding to them. We conducted three training programs this month and also delivered three lectures on literature searching.

I also had the pleasure of participating in a workshop organized by the SLA (Special Libraries Association of the USA) - Asia Chapter, in Pune at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics. The theme was Embedded librarianship. I was delighted to be able to present QMed's activities in this context and received good feedback too.

Our Director-Programs, and I visited Chennai this month and had a series of meetings with various institutions to spread awareness about our Foundation. We were happy to note that all institutions have appreciated our work and have promised support in various ways.

I'd like to draw your attention to a very important event - a symposium on 'Evidence for Better Healthcare' on the dates January 11 to 14, 2010. This is being organized by the "SACN", CMC Vellore and partnered by the ICMR and several important bodies. Of immense use to both health professionals and consumers, the event will cover topics relating to generating evidence and using evidence.

Vasumathi Sriganesh

The Joy of Giving Week

In October we selected ten Undergraduate medical students to receive free membership to support their research projects. We are happy to say that we are in touch with them and have given references and articles to those who have sent in their research topics.

What we did – October 2009

Training programs: PubMed - Basics and Talks on Literature Searching

In October we conducted the following seven events.

October 3, 2009. PubMed - Basics training program for Nephrologists and Urologists in Mumbai. This program was sponsored by a Pharmaceutical company.

October 4, 2009. The Indian Association of Surgical Gastroenterologists invited us to do a short workshop on Searching PubMed. Attended by about 80 people, we received excellent feedback, and an invitation to conduct one in November at the Cancer Institute Chennai.

October 10, 2009. Lecture at the Hinduja Hospital Mumbai, for doctors and other health professionals of the hospital attending a workshop on Research Methodology

October 10, 2009. A PubMed Basics workshop for Postgraduate and Super-specialty students of the Seth GS Medical College & KEM Hospital, undergoing a one year Fellowship Course in Clinical Research

October 11, 2009. The Lotus College of Optometry is an institution where we conduct our programs every year for their PG students. Having done the Basics earlier this year, we conducted the Advanced now.

October 14, 2009. Lecture at the Seth GS Medical College & KEM Hospital, for the same audience on "Other medical information resources". This was the first time that we conducted this one, and we had good feedback once more. The resources covered included other sources for peer-reviewed publications, sources for the latest in the literature, writing and publication related resources and for storing bibliographies.

October 23, 2009. PubMed - Basics training program for Nephrologists and Urologists in Kolkata. This program was also sponsored by a Pharmaceutical company. There was an interesting question / answer session after the talk.

Special Lecture

In addition to the very "satisfying" list above, our CEO delivered a talk "Possible roles for embedded librarians in the medical profession" at a workshop held by the Asian Chapter of the Special Libraries Association, USA. Embedded librarians, to explain the term briefly, are librarians who work outside a library using the core competencies of the profession, with domain specialists to deliver value added services beyond what they receive from a regular library. The lecture touched upon how our Foundation works with this concept.

Special Chennai Interaction

Vasumathi Sriganesh & Girish Kunkur spent three days in Chennai visiting Govt and Private medical colleges and some research institutions. They met key individuals in these places and shared with them information about QMed's activities. As a result of these visits, we are only more certain about the need for us to reach out to these institutions and more, to share knowledge and spread our expertise. Overall the acceptance and support we received is very encouraging!

Events of Interests

1.November 16-19, 2009. Systematic Reveiw Completion Workshop. SACC, Christian Medical College, Vellore. More details

2. November 19-21, 2009. Clinical Research Workshop. Christian Medical College, Ludhiana. More details.

3. November 21-22, 2009. The 12th Workshop on ‘Biomedical Informatics and Communication’ at Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Sevagram (Wardha). More details

4. December 3-4, 2009. JPGM Writecon 2009 : A conference on medical writing - at the Seth GS Medical College & KEM Hospital Mumbai. More details

5. January 11-14, 2010. 8th Winter Symposium of the Christian Medical College, Vellore and the 3rd South Asian Regional Symposium on Evidence Informed Healthcare. 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.

Document Delivery Of Journal Articles

In the month of October 2009, we delivered 144 articles to individual members, libraries and corporate clients. The total number of documents delivered since April this year is 1169

Request for Donations: Experience the " JOY OF GIVING" When You Feel Like It!!

We believe we have made a big beginning to making a significant difference to healthcare professionals and institutions with our work and offerings. We need support from every individual reading this newsletter. Every Rupee you donate / help us get will make a difference. Could you extend our Joy of Giving week request to whenever it would suit you? Do contribute at least a day's salary/earnings to our Foundation any time you can. And do not forget to spread this message. We have big plans and every rupee will make a difference.

We accept donations only 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.

Special Announcement!!

1. MDConsult. Doctors in India can avail of access to MDConsult at special rates, thanks to the efforts of the HELP Library. With MDConsult, you get access to about 50 reference books, 70 journals (including Clinics), Practice guidelines and lots more. For more details click here.

2. 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

Jankharia B.

PubMed, writing and research.

Indian J Radiol Imaging 2009;19:255

The IJRI has been included in PubMed in the month of September 2009 and now has all issues of 2009. In this article the editor shares this news with readers (it is after all an achievement!) More importantly he stresses on the fact that authors who have been submitting high quality articles to foreign journals should now submit to the IJRI. Considering that the journal is available free online from 1999 onwards this makes a lot of sense. He also stresses on the need for students and residents to enhance their writing skills and more importantly the need for more research to be conducted and written about. The author concludes his Editorial with an appeal to the Central Government to give a push in this directions. More Indian journals need to go this way!

Quote of the Month

"Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit".

- William Pollard

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

We have added 50 new sites in the last month and the total number of sites is about 2535.

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.