QMedCONNECT: March 2009

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: March 2009

Dear friends,

It is the end of yet another Financial Year. For our Foundation, it is the end of our first active Financial Year. Between April 2008 and March 2009, we have had some excellent achievements.

We conducted 21 training programs and delivered 15 lectures on the art of literature searching and related topics.

We did three new website projects - www.niih.org.in, www.issrf.org.in. and www.iapmumbai.org. We also helped with inputs for www.informer.org.in - a website of Undergraduate Medical students.

We worked for the Foundation for Medical Research to help them computerize their library catalog. We created an E-Library for the IAP Mumbai chapter - available only to IAP Mumbai members who subscribe to the same.

We delivered about 825 articles this year to various individuals and institutions. For the coming year, we have entered into a "document delivery" contract with a major Pharmaceutical company and a well known medical association.

We have 22 doctors, 2 PG students and 1 PhD Scholar (a Nurse) who have availed of our membership schemes for Information Services.

The Foundation has become a knowledge partner for Sorento Healthcare to help them with their activities relating to medical communication. Through this partnership, we hope that Pharmaceutical companies that sponsor knowledge based products and services will spread our offerings amongst healthcare professionals.

Our annual income for the year was approximately Rs 12 lakhs and expenses for the year were Rs. 16 lakhs leaving us with a deficit of Rs. 4 lakhs.

We have had monetary donations of the value of Rs. 58000/- and in kind we received two second hand computers and some related accessories. We have had these donations either spontaneously or in response to appeals in earlier issues of our Newsletter.

This year, we would like to ask for donations for specific activities / projects. For a start, we would like support to cover expenses for the venue and related infrastructure for our training programs. The amount involved is about Rs. 4000/- per month. If we get this amount for the coming 12 months, we can plan programs for a whole year. This will help doctors, medical students and other healthcare professionals plan well in advance to attend our programs.

We plan to come up with similar ideas for sponsorship and we hope we can achieve lots more this year, with such help.

I would like to highlight the Article of the month - on publication ethics. The article and the author's rejoinder as well as the Editor's remarks serve to teach all those who are/aspire to be medical writers / authors. In developing countries our education systems do not cover these issues in detail, leaving authors confused about matters regarding copyright, plagiarism and related matters.

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

Membership

A Gynecologist from Chennai and one PG student from Bhopal joined us as members in March 2009. We'd like to thank our member - Dr. Tushar Maniar - a Pediatrician from Mumbai for his feedback on our monthly article alerts in his specialty (Pediatrics). He sent us an email "Thank you QMed - the long awaited need for journal article updates is now taken care of". We appreciate this feedback.

What we did- March 2009

Training programs: PubMed - Basics and Talks on Literature Searching

Forthcoming Programs

We invite medical colleges / hospitals to contact us for organizing a program for PG students, faculty and health professionals. Please check out details from our website.
We will also announce a monthly schedule of programs that we initiate, very soon.

Talks Invited

Vasumathi Sriganesh has been invited to give a talk on Library Science as a Career Option, at the Co-operative Education programme (CEP) - a unique Career Guidance Workshop for the undergraduate students of Wilson College, Mumbai, on the 8th of April.

Talks Delivered

Vasumathi Sriganesh delivered the following talks in the month of March 2009.

1st March, 2009 - Searching medical literature - at a one-day workshop on Medical Research organized by the Maharashtra Ophthalmological Society, at the NDMVPS, Medical College, Nashik.

2nd March, 2009 - Literature Searching - at a DBT sponsored workshop on Clinical Research at the KEM Hospital, Mumbai.

2nd March, 2009 - How to find free journal articles on the net - at a CME session of the General Practitioners' Association, at PD Hinduja National Hospital auditorium.

28th March, 2009 - Searching PubMed - at a two day workshop on Medical Informatics organized by Dr. Rajeev Joshi, in association with the Indian Association for Medical Informatics, at the Management Development Centre, YASHDA, Pune.

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.

Special Announcement!!

Medicon 2009 - The Second Asian and Third National Medical Students' Research Conference will be held from 24th to 28th June, 2009, at the Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore. Organized by INFORMER, the target audience is UG medical students. For more details check outhttp://www.informer.org.in/Conferences

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.

Article of the Month:

Mahmood KR.

Plagiarism, copyright violation, duplication, fabrication, false statements, breach of research and publication ethics.

Indian J Dermatol Venereol Leprol 2009;75:182-3

Once again the issue of various aspects of publication ethics raises its head. The author has pointed out how another article in the journal has a lot of matter from various sources. It is important for authors / potential authors to read articles (this is a Letter to the Editor) like these and understand the rights and wrongs of medical writing / authorship. Do read the author's response and the Editor's remarks to understand the issues well. Strongly recommended for medical students.

Quote of the Month

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
And where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

- T S Eliot

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

We have added 45 new sites in the last month and the total number of sites is about 2300.

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.