Smartphone

Medical Libraries Use uCentral on iPhone to Deliver Mobile Information to Students and Clinicians

by  • 

Unbound Medicine : Press Release:

Today, Unbound Medicine, a leader in knowledge management solutions for healthcare, announced an application for iPhone™ and iPod® touch devices in institutions that subscribe to uCentral™. uCentral, a custom point-of-need solution for institutions, delivers trusted medical information where and when it is needed. Among the references now available for iPhone within the uCentral application are 5-Minute Clinical Consult, Harrison’s Manual of Medicine, The Merck Manual, Davis’s Drug Guide, and Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary.

The rapid adoption of iPhone technology by members of the health care community has significantly increased demand at medical libraries for mobile content. Medical Students and physicians at Yale University School of Medicine and the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University have just completed a beta test of uCentral. When surveyed, all participants reported that the uCentral application was simple to download and use. Eighty-one percent stated that they referred to uCentral while with a patient, whether at the bedside or in the clinic.

“I was excited to learn that our library could provide me with a free download of my favorite medical references for my iPhone,” said medical student Heather Abbott. “Within uCentral all of my references are cross-linked for quick navigation to related information. The full-color images and pronunciations are ideally suited to the device’s format.”

“With the escalating popularity of iPhone use in the clinical setting, the need to provide reliable mobile content has never been greater,” said Bill Detmer, president of Unbound Medicine. “By partnering with libraries we can support widespread delivery of up-to-date information wherever it is needed, thereby improving patient care.”

MLA

How MLA members use social networking tools

by  • 

This survey examined the use of social networking tools by the members of the MLA. A follow-up survey was sent out this year. Melissa Rethlefsen presented the data from the surveys on a poster http://posterexperience.com/index.php (#11). 233 MLA members participated in the Digg Deeper with Social Media online course offered this spring by the SNSTF. [via MLA Connections]

As a member of the respective EAHIL Taskforce I’m most interested in the results, but lost my fight with the sophisticated Cooliris-Display of Melissa’s poster. 🙁

Nachtrag: Melissa war so lieb, mir das PDF des Posters zu schicken! Bin gespannt, wie sich ihre Ergebnisse mit unserem Survey vergleichen.

MLA

MLA: Statement on Journal Publishing Ethics

by  • 

In response to the Elsevier fake journals und anderen Geschichten, the MLA delivered a Statement on Journal Publishing Ethics, worth to read:

In view of recent news reports regarding the publication of an industry-sponsored journal primarily for marketing purposes by the affiliate of a major medical publisher without disclosure of commercial support or publication purpose, the Medical Library Association (MLA) and the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) jointly endorse the need for transparency with regard to publication source and funding. MLA and AAHSL want to emphasize the importance of journal publishers’ adherence to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) policy that all participants in the peer-review and publication process must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest. http://www.icmje.org/index.html – authorship> Notably, the National Library of Medicine has a relevant policy regarding supplements that requires full disclosure of outside sponsorship in order for publications to be indexed in MEDLINE. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/supplements.html
We expect publishers to remain vigilant about revealing sponsorship relationships to uphold and support integrity and honesty in research and the scientific dissemination process.