QMedCONNECT: February 2009

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: February 2009

Dear friends,

As we are now settling into our second year of existence, we are getting a little more comfortable with our plans of action. We realize that we need to "invest a lot" (time, money, energy, creativity, lateral thinking...) in order to reach the destination that we visualize.

Our requests for donations are slowly and steadily being noted by some of our well wishers - especially those who believe in our work. This month, we were touched when we received a Personal Computer from Mr. Gurudutt Kamath - a well known technical writer and a good friend. This donation came at a time when we badly needed one. Thank you Guru, your gesture is very important to us. Our colleague Khadija is delighted to have a good machine to work with.

We have completed the website and E-library for the Indian Academy of Pediatrics, Mumbai. The website is www.iapmumbai.org. We hope to do many more such projects for various associations.

In February, I had the pleasure of a visit to Jaipur, where I delivered a lecture at the AIOS Annual Conference. I also visited the SMS Medical College and the IIHMR; we hope to do some training programs in these institutions in the coming months.

I have highlighted an interesting article, A case study for teaching information literacy skills. This article corroborates what we also have found - information literacy needs to be incorporated in the medical curriculum.

Our Foundation is taking up an initiative - a Survey on Issues faced by PG Students working on their thesis. So far more than 50% of the respondents have said that they would apprieciate getting help in searching the literature. We'd really appreciate it if every reader talks to one or more Post Graduate student and reqests him/her to fill up the form.

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

New project/initiatives

ELibrary for IAP Mumbai Chapter

We completed the E-Library project for the Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP), Mumbai this month. We have created a website for the Association's chapter. The E-library access is restricted to members of the IAP Mumbai branch, who choose to register for this utility.

The E-Library covers 50 diseases under 10 Pediatric specialties. Each disease has four topics - (Systematic Reviews, Etiology, Diagnosis and Treatment). Each topic has two hyperlinks - one that retrieves references with Free articles and the other that retrieves Abstracts. The "free link" will instantly give access to articles available free online.

Each hyperlink retrieves highly relevant references on the specific topic. An expert search strategy is built into each hyperlink, and since a real time search is run each time a link is clicked, any updates are automatically retrieved.

The references retrieved will be from a large number of Pediatrics (and related) journals and not only a small number that most pediatricians usually have access to.

ELibrary for the Diabetic Foot Society of India

The Diabetic Foot Society of India (DFSI) is also discussing a similar project with us. We hope to initiate the project this month.

Document Delivery Initiatives

The Indian Journal of Ophthalmology (IJO) has made an arrangement with us for offering a document delivery service to members of the All India Ophthalmological Society. The IJO office will send us requests and we will source articles from libraries in India and abroad and provide them to concerned doctors. These articles will be provided under the Fair-Use clause; doctors receiving them will use them only for their personal research and study.

What we did- February 2009

Training programs: PubMed - Basics and Talks on Literature Searching

Grant Medical College

The Department of Neurosurgery, Grant Medical College and J J Hospital, invited us to conduct a "PubMed Basics" training program for the faculty and PG students, on February 21, 2009. In all, there were 21 participants from the Departments of Neurosurgery and Anesthesiology. It was quite encouraging, as the Dean of the College also participated in the program for a short period of time. The overall feedback was excellent. We would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Deepak A. Palande HOD, Neurosurgery Department, who took the initiative in organising this event and was also able to get a sponsor for the event!

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.

Talks Invited

1. A Research methodology workshop organized by the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology on March 1, 2009 at Nashik.

2. A Training Program on Clinical Trials, (funded by the DBT) and organized by the Dept of Clinical Pharmacology, KEM Hospital on March 2, 2009.

3. A CME for GPs, organized by the General Practitioner's Association, at the Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai, on March 2, 2009

Talks Delivered

Vasumathi Sriganesh delivered a talk on the Art of Proper Literature Search, at the All India Ophthalmological Society's Annual Conference in Jaipur, on February 5, 2009.

Donations to QMed Knowledge Foundation

Between Jan 2008 and now, we have received monetary donations of Rs. 50,000/-, Rs 5,000/- and Rs. 2000/-. Donations in kind were two personal computers and the necessary upgrade components for the same. As an "offering" we have had free legal help for checking out any agreements we have had to make as part of our services. We think we have been lucky to have all these donations and thank all our donors!

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.

Traditional Knowledge Digital Library(TKDL) to stop piracy - A great job done!

There is good news for traditional medical fraternity and information professionals in India! After eight years of great effort, the scientists from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Health Ministry's Department of Ayush have scientifically completed the documentation work of over two lakh medical formulations of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani at TKDL. This has led to preventing those living abroad from claiming patent for existing formulations.

This Herculean task of converting formulations of traditional Indian medicine from Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Tamil to five international languages - English, Japanese, French, German and Spanish has been accomplished by over 200 research professionals and will certainly save our traditional knowledge from piracy.

India, till now, has lost over 15000 patents of medicinal plants to the West. Without such a commendable initiative, we would have further lost nearly 2000 new patents every year, said Dr. V.P. Gupta, who created the TKDL at CSIR. Kudos to the entire team of TKDL for this achievement!

The website of the TKDL is http://www.tkdl.res.in/. You can check out a lot of basic stuff about Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani systems of medicine. The Digital Library of scanned information resources is available only to Patent offices at present.

Source: The Times of India, 10 February 2009.

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

Article of the Month:

Kingsley KV, Kingsley K.

A case study for teaching information literacy skills

BMC Med Educ. 2009 Jan 29;9:7.

The authors specifically describe something that we have been encountering all the time. Older health professionals very often think that younger ones "know it all" when it comes to using computers. In this paper, the finding is that while young professionals are very comfortable with computers, information literacy is a lacuna, and training in this area is vital for inclusion in the curriculum.

Quote of the Month

"Every day doctors have to deal with people who are worn out and unable to stand up to the life they lead. They generally assert that it is impossible to alter the way they live, and sincerely believe that their overwork is the product of circumstance, whereas it is bound up with their own intimate problems. It is ambition, fear of the future, love of money, jealousy, or social injustice that makes men strive and overwork, invent all sorts of unnecessary tasks, keep late hours, take too little sleep, take insufficient holidays, or use their holidays badly. Their minds are overtense, so that at night they cannot sleep and by day they doubly fatigue themselves at their work."

- Paul Tournier, M.D.

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

We have added 21 new sites in the last month and the total number of sites is about 2268.

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.