Familiarity with the literature.
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SEARCH · Search PubMed
Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.
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OBJECTIVE: To sample the amount and scope of information available on the internet about three common surgical conditions, identify the sources, and to examine the relevance of the web to the surgical community. DESIGN: Internet search. SETTING: General hospital, Republic of Ireland. MATERIAL: Three arbitrarily chosen conditions were sought--varicose veins, inguinal hernia, and gallstones. Four commonly used search engines--Yahoo, Altavista, Excite and Lycos, were used to search worldwide, and then sites restricted to the UK and Republic of Ireland. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Quality and quantity of information available. RESULTS: All four search engines retrieved patient-orientated information on the three conditions. The sites accessed from the web page matches generally presented a comprehensive summary of the condition including aetiology, risk factors and clinical features, but gave variable amounts of information on treatment options, surgical complications, comparisons between treatments, and expected outcomes. Online health magazines provided most of the information sites. CONCLUSION: The internet offers easily-accessible patient-orientated information. Surgeons should make more use of it to satisfy patients' increasing need for information.
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The EUROCARE-3 CD-ROM has been developed to provide more detailed data with respect to those published in the monograph. The CD-ROM provides estimates of age-specific and age-standardised survival figures, cumulative and interval-specific survival, observed and relative survival for 47 cancer sites or combinations of sites, based on >4 million adult cancer patients diagnosed from 1983 to 1994 and reported from 56 European cancer registries. In addition, the CD-ROM provides observed survival proportions for 25 childhood cancer entities based on 23,000 young patients diagnosed from 1990 to 1994. Survival indicators, corresponding standard errors and confidence intervals can be selected according to cancer site, registry or country, sex, age class and disease duration. Basic graphical display and export facilities have also been provided. As an example of how to use this CD-ROM, this paper will report a descriptive analysis of relative survival patterns for all cancers combined, by age, sex and country. The EUROCARE-3 CD-ROM can be ordered free of charge or directly downloaded at http://www.eurocare.it.
UNLABELLED: Chromosomes or other long DNA sequences contain many highly similar repeated sub-sequences. While there are efficient methods for detecting strict repeats or detecting already characterized repeats, there is no software available for detecting approximate repeats in large DNA sequences allowing for weighted substitutions and indels in a coherent statistical framework. Here, we present an implementation of a two-steps method (seed detection followed by their extension) that detects those approximate repeats. Our method is computationally efficient enough to handle large sequences and is flexible enough to account for influencing factors, such as sequence-composition biases both at the seed detection and alignment levels. AVAILABILITY: http://wwwabi.snv.jussieu.fr/public/RepSeek/
Experience around the world shows that health agencies can promote community-based surveillance for equity to focus low-cost interventions on priority needs. Social inequities which have seemed intractable can be resolved if care responds directly to demonstrated need. The concept of promoting equity as a basic principle of primary health care has an interesting psychological twist. The ethical imperative of equity can strengthen services when linked with the practical management tool of surveillance. Moral conviction in applying this social justice norm can facilitate action which is made efficient by the realism of statistically based methods of surveillance. If international agencies condition their aid on surveillance for equity their assistance will more likely go to those in greatest need. This is a more efficient and effective way of tracking their money than the previous tendency to set up vertical programmes which generally have poor sustainability. Surveillance helps mobilize political will and community participation by providing practical data for local, district and national decision-makers. The many field demonstrations of successful surveillance for equity tend to have been brushed off by development experts who say they are difficult to replicate nationally. The Model County Project in China shows how a systematic extension process can test procedures in experimental areas and adapt them for general implementation. Surveillance can help bureaucracies maintain capacity for flexible and prompt response as decentralization promotes decision-making by local units which are held responsible for meeting equity targets. Surveillance for equity provides a mechanism to ensure such accountability.
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Modern information technology provides the biomedical professional with powerful tools and processes for extracting useful information from large volumes of text. Presently, little use is made of the full capabilities of these tools to supplement research and teaching. This article gives an overview of these tools and processes, and shows the diversity of ways they can be applied to enhance the capabilities of biomedical professionals. The article defines information technology terms, presents the requirements for extracting high-quality information, describes some available techniques for extracting information, and summarizes myriad information-extraction applications. While the biomedical researcher or teacher can gain substantial benefits by using effective information-extraction techniques, substantial time and effort and technical expertise are required to generate a credible high-quality product, that is, the information needed.
OBJECTIVE: This is the second part in a series of sequential Tutorials in Clinical Research. The objective of this tutorial is to introduce methods of searching the vast stores of information now available, to review some of the computer resources available, to reintroduce the concept of an a priori design for the search, and to reveal the need for assessment of the clinical importance and validity of each pertinent article found. STUDY DESIGN: Tutorial. METHODS: An open working group has been formed with the specific aim of surveying and translating the large volume of complex information on research design and statistics into easily understood, useable, and non-threatening tutorials for the busy practitioner. The hypotheses under which this work is conducted are highly intelligent, but extremely busy, surgeons are interested in evidence-based medicine and will increase personal participation in critical reading of the literature, pending an expanded familiarity with clinical research design and statistics. RESULTS: Available resources for literature searching, methods of quick personal overviews, and quick question-specific reviews are discussed. Additionally, the methods, with examples, of beginning a critical literature review are presented. CONCLUSIONS: Rapid, personal, critical literature review requires succinct formulation of the question, efficient search for the best available evidence, and critical appraisal of the pertinent individual articles to determine if sufficient evidence exists to support a clinical contention.
A method for assessing the health status of communities has been under development for a decade at the University of South Florida. Known as CATCH (Comprehensive Assessment for Tracking Community Health), the method utilizes health status indicators from multiple data sources. With federal grant support, a unique data warehouse has been created to automate CATCH assessments and to enhance online analytical processing for efficient data browsing, knowledge discovery, and model testing. A comparison of two peer grouping methods (population size versus predicted age-adjusted mortality) is reviewed to demonstrate the warehouse capabilities.
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Looks at healthcare and technology and how home care service is coming more to the fore. Discusses IT and how it will further improve both cost and clinical procedures without losing the human contact part of it.
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Experience of knowledge management initiatives in non-health care organizations can offer useful insights, and strategies, to implement evidence-based practice in health care. Knowledge management offers a structured process for the generation, storage, distribution and application of knowledge in organizations. This includes both tacit knowledge (personal experience) and explicit knowledge (evidence). Communities of practice are a key component of knowledge management and have been recognized to be essential for the implementation of change in organizations. It is within communities of practice that tacit knowledge is actively integrated with explicit knowledge. Organizational factors that limit the development of knowledge management, including communities of practice, in non-health care organizations need to be overcome if the potential is to be achieved within health care.
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This paper provides an overview of the research into current medical vocabularies and their impact on searching the Web for health information. The Web provides growing opportunities for laypersons to gain knowledge about specific health conditions, though research to date has been incomplete. Many studies have examined aspects of controlled medical vocabularies. Other studies have examined aspects of medical Web searching vocabularies. In this context, there is a growing need to examine more closely laypersons' Web queries using controlled medical vocabularies that were designed to serve the needs of medical professionals. It may be the case that the average consumer of Web health services is not able to use correct medical terminology, and may not be able to choose analogous or synonymous terms from a search result list. Our review suggests a growing need for studies to examine the current applicability of controlled medical vocabularies as well as alternatives to semantic query by Web search engine users.