QMedCONNECT Newsletter: June 2009

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Dear friends,

My apologies for a delay in getting this issue out to you. June has been a hectic month both on professional and personal counts for some of us.

I'd like to dedicate this issue to "future doctors" - more specifically the Undergraduate medical students in India. I happened to attend Medicon 2009 - a conference by and for UG medical students in Mangalore. What specially struck me at this event was that around 700-800 students who presented posters / oral presentations, adhered to time limits and prescribed formats. All faculty, judges and guest speakers unanimously agreed that this was not too common in regular medical conferences. Something else that struck a chord was the sheer enthusiasm that pervaded amongst students. For many the conference was a first time experience. They gave their ALL not only their presentations, but also to admiring, enjoying and learning from the entire experience. They were not there with any "agenda". I do hope that this enthusiasm and learning does good for them, and they carry on the same when they become full fledged doctors. Let me emphasize once more - all seniors openly shared that this conference was a refreshing change from the usual medical conferences, and they hoped that this generation would bring in the changes that are much needed. Personally I will also add, that my hopes for great changes in the area of medical research, are greatly reinforced after attending this event. On behalf of QMed I have offered to get more involved in future Medicon events and to help the students with whatever suggestions and advice that we can.

We would be happy to receive more views/suggestions by email at info@qmedkf.org.in.

In case you have not received our earlier issues - do check them out on our website.

Vasumathi Sriganesh

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Membership

We welcome two individual members in the month of June 2009 - an Internist and a Dentist.

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QMedLINKS - E-Library project

We successfully completed the creation of an E-library on a gastrointestinal disease as mentioned in our last newsletter. Access to this E-library is through a CD; the doctors will be led to the most relevant articles and abstracts on the net. This CD is being distributed to over 1000 doctors.

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Medicon 2009

This was an event organized by INFORMER - an association for and by undergraduate medical students. A big kudos to the students of KMC, Mangalore for doing a great job. There were a few hitches, but considering that they organized a conference for the first time and that too for about 800 participants, that is absolutely understandable.

The conference had a great balance of talks by invited speakers and paper/poster presentations by students. Most of the students made excellent presentations and the judges for each session offered good suggestions and words of praise. 

The preconference workshops were on topics like Research Methodology, Medical Informatics and Basic and Advanced Life Support. The invited talks covered interesting and diverse topics like "The dynamics of ideas","Plagiarism", "Doctors without borders" and "Can our future doctors be trusted to offer the best medical care". The last was on the importance of Evidence Based Medicine and the speaker (Dr. Prathap Tharyan) told students that he was actually concerned as to whether his generation of teachers was teaching students how to practice EBM. 

A big "attraction" at the conference was the presence of Dr. Vinay Kumar - co author of the book Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease. He not only delivered a lecture, but also signed autographs and posed for photographs with every student who made a request to him! Other dignitaries included Dr. Fatema Jawad - Editor of the Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association, Dr. Sanjoy Nayak from the WHO and several others. 

And finally a wonderful development is that the IJMR has promised to publish the papers of those who won prizes at the event.

QMed Knowledge Foundation was happy to be associated with INFORMER in initially guiding them in the creation of their website. In addition, Vasumathi Sriganesh delivered two preconference workshop lectures - one on searching PubMed and the other on Citations and References.

QMed will be happy to be associated with the conference every year and offer whatever support it can. 
We hope that the foundations laid during this conference, in the area of medical research get strengthened from the undergraduate level and rise to heights.

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Talks Invited

Vasumathi Sriganesh has been invited to deliver a lecture on Searching PubMed, on July 4, 2009 at a workshop on Clinical Research conducted at the Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai. (Since this event has already taken place, we are pleased to report that it was well attended and appreciated).

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Document Delivery Of Journal Articles

In the month of June 2009, we delivered 165 articles to individual members, libraries and corporate clients. We are getting more and more inquiries for this activity and hope that we can change the sentiment that many doctors / students I meet echo "Getting articles is so difficult"!

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Donations to QMed Knowledge Foundation

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.

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Special Announcement!!

1. ICMR-DCI-MMU - Two Day Research Methodology for Dental Professionals on the 24th and 25th August 2009 at Maharshi Markandeshwar University, Mullana at Ambala. The workshop is aimed to help Dental Health Professionals to develop the research proposal writing skills needed to study local, national, or international health issues including development and evaluation of interventions. 

For complete details check - http://icmr.nic.in/icmrnews/dental_workshop.pdf

2. "Indian Pediatrics" announces the 1st Workshop on “ART AND SCIENCE OF WRITING A PAPER” . 26-27th September 2009, Auditorium, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi. For more details - seehttp://www.indianpediatrics.net/ipworkshop%20.pdf

3. 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.

4. Supercourse Lectures. Supercourse is a repository of lectures on global health and prevention designed to improve the teaching of prevention. Supercourse has a network of over 64000 scientists in 174 countries who are sharing for free a library of 3623 lectures in 30 languages. The Supercourse 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 the entire content, and we are willing to copy it - as requested by Ronald and give it to interested individuals/institutions. 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.

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.

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Article of the Month:

Dangayach NS, Kulkarni UP, Panchabhai TS.

Mentoring medical student research through studentships and fellowships: Reflections from India.

J Postgrad Med 2009;55:152-3

The authors have shared some good ideas (based on experience) about improving prospects of research among medical students. We hope that authorities of medical colleges and bodies like the ICMR will take them up and that there will be a steady increase in the number of medical researchers in India
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Quote of the Month

"Medical research in the twentieth century mostly takes place in the lab; in the Renaissance, though, researchers went first and foremost to the library to see what the ancients had said."
Peter Lewis Allen.

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

We have added 30 new sites in the last month and the total number of sites is about 2380. 

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.

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