Cochrane podcasts. Yes, podcasts!

Maybe I’m just a bit behind with the times here? Maybe they’ve been doing them for ages? But however long it’s been going on for, I’ve just stumbled across the Cochrane Podcasts page! You know that Web 2.0 is pretty old hat when Cochrane are online and forging ahead. They’re not too bad actually; they sort of remind me of the New Yorker podcasts. I’m listening to the “Music Therapy for Depression” podcast as I’m typing this, which is an interview between one of the authors and her sister (and why not?). The main conclusion was “more research in needed”, which is reassuring that it really is the Cochrane we know and love, but it’s still interesting to listen to. They mention sham music therapy; pretend music, I suppose. Michael Bolton, perhaps?

The expert strikes back

A recent article in the Newsweek, Revenge of the Experts, suggests that the “individual user has been king on the Internet, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals”, and asks if user generated content is dead?

“People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information”

As with so much of the internet, advertising has a role to play in the transition too…

“Nobody wants to advertise next to crap”

It goes on to discuss Google’s Knol, as well as Mahalo and the changing strategy of About.com. I don’t think that user generated content is going to die, it’s just finding its niche within the wider web experience. Of course, with web 2.0 came the adoration of the “wisdom of the crowd” and all that malarky (what would Socrates say [and I don't mean the Brazilian footballer]?), but that’s now peaked and sense is, arguably, slowly prevailing. The article finishes with

“…the nature of the Internet suggests that Web 2.0 populism will never be thrown out entirely. “There’s always a Big New Thing, but the old Big New Thing doesn’t really go away.”

… and then goes on to say something about onions. It’s never easy to finish an article.

RCT librarian shame

The open access, online journal Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, recently reviewed and did a commentary on the first RCT in librarianship: “Do Clinical Librarians Matter? The First Randomized Controlled Trial in Librarianship” (PDF), published back in 1981. The commentator, in his final paragraph, summed up:

The Marshall and Neufeld study stands out as the only RCT to evaluate a clinical librarian program [...] it seems most noteworthy that our profession has failed even to utilize a single RCT since then to answer what our profession considers to be the important question on the efficacy of clinical librarian programs!

I mean, he’s got a point, hasn’t he…

Designing webpages? Think ‘F’

For those of thinking of starting a blog (!) or a website, don’t forget to follow the ‘F’ pattern. Research on “Eye Gaze Patterns while Searching vs. Browsing a Website” suggests that:

…users tend to focus on the left side of the body of a webpage when reading and fixate very little on information located on the right-hand side. Users maintain this ‘F’ viewing pattern with a few horizontal scans, the first one being longer than the second and a long vertical scan. Implications of this are that users may miss valuable information located on the right-hand side of the page.

I think I might have to re-arrange my setup…

Checklists. The horror

I guess we’re all offended by checklists, we professionals. They seem to insult our expertise. I mean, anyone can follow a checklist. Healthcare professionals apparently don’t like following checklists; here is a blog entry, and an extract, about it…

… a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about what can be done to improve health care, and it focuses on a simple question — why, when there is overwhelming evidence that it works — are health care professionals so reticent to use checklists?

And a more recent follow-up post.

I’ve found checklists to be a great help, and I use them to ensure everything that should be done has been done for when I plan and do a search. Try it, but don’t tell anyone.

Google health goes to Cleveland

A blog post at IWR reports on how Google is partnering with The Cleveland Clinic to pilot their health records system , with the aim of furthering ‘Patient-centric’ access to health records. From the post:

Academic medical institution The Cleveland Clinic has announced a collaboration with Google to pilot a new health offering for up to 10,000 patients. The invitation-only initiative will test the secure exchange of patient medical records, such as prescriptions, conditions and allergies, between The Cleveland Clinic and a secure Google patient profile.

Personal health records are shaping up to be one of many battlegrounds between Google and Microsoft. Should be fun, watching from the sidelines.

Why?

Why does the world need another blog? What possible reason can I put forward in defending my decision to take up yet another corner (just how many corners are there?) of the world wide web with my small contribution?

Well, I have three objectives for this blog, and I’m afraid only one of them relates to other people (i.e. you, dear reader)

1. To encourage me to become and remain more aware of current developments in my field;

2. To act as a notepad or journal of interesting things I’ve read or heard about, so that when I think ‘hang on, didn’t I read something about that a while ago…’, I can refer back to my blog;

3. To possibly act as a useful current awareness tool for othes in the field of health informatics. I know that I appreciate blogs that help keep me in touch with what’s going on.

My field is that of health informatics, or maybe health informaticism, or maybe I’m a medical information professional, or maybe a health librarian who doesn’t work in a library. Whatever I am, I work for a small private company who do evidence based medicine, systematic reviews, evidence briefings and the such, and part of that revolves around finding the best evidence in a transparent, reliable, repeatable and systematic fashion, and, well, that is what I try and do.

My job also concerns aspects of knowledge management, copy and content editing, proofreading, market research, project management and HR management. As I say, we’re a small company!

So, I’ll give it a while, and I’ll see where I go with this… Thanks for reading.

Alan