The Emerging Infections Network electronic mail conference and web page.
(17/811)
In February 1997, the Emerging Infections Network (EIN) established an electronic mail conference to facilitate discussions about emerging infectious diseases and related topics among its members and public health officials. Later that year, the EIN opened its section of the Infectious Diseases Society of America's home page. The EIN Web page was developed to give its members an alternative route for responding to EIN surveys and to facilitate rapid dispersal of EIN reports. The unrestricted portion of the site allows visitors access to information about the EIN and to published EIN reports on specific topics. For the most part, these are brief summaries or abstracts. In the restricted, password-protected portion of the EIN site, members can access the detailed, original reports from EIN queries and the comprehensive listings of member observations. Search functions in both portions of the EIN site enhance the retrieval of reports and observations on specific topics. (+info)
Information needs and uses of the public health workforce--Washington, 1997-1998.
(18/811)
Substantial efforts have been made to ensure that state and local public health agencies have the information technology and training needed for public health communications, information access, and data exchange. Numerous public health-related data and information resources are available on the World-Wide Web (e.g., MEDLINE, MMWR, CDC Prevention Guidelines Database, and Emerging Infectious Diseases); however, little systematic work has been done to understand the information needs of the public health workforce. To identify these needs and patterns of use and to set priorities for developing new online public health information resources, the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine (UW SPHCM) and the Washington State Department of Health (WSDoH) held structured and facilitated discussions with segments of the local public health workforce in Washington during 1997-1998. This report summarizes the results of those discussions, which indicate that different segments of the public health workforce have different information needs. (+info)
Nutrition: a reservoir for integrative science.
(19/811)
In the last twenty years, powerful new molecular techniques were introduced that made it possible to advance knowledge in human biology using a reductionist approach. Now, the need for scientists to deal with complexity should drive a movement toward an integrationist approach to science. We propose that nutritional science is one of the best reservoirs for this approach. The American Society for Nutritional Sciences can play an important role by developing and delivering a cogent message that convinces the scientific establishment that nutrition fills this valuable niche. The society must develop a comprehensive strategy to develop our image as the reservoir for life sciences integration. Our efforts can start with our national meeting and publications, with the research initiatives for which we advocate, with our graduate training programs and with the public relations image we project for ourselves. Defining the image and future directions of nutrition as the discipline that can integrate scientific knowledge from the cell and molecule to the whole body and beyond to populations can be the most important task that our society undertakes. If we do not effectively meet this challenge, a golden opportunity will pass to others and nutritional scientists will be left to follow them. (+info)
Teaching resource and information management using an innovative case-based conference.
(20/811)
Physicians play a critical role in controlling resource use in medicine. This paper describes an innovative, interdisciplinary conference that teaches housestaff and medical students about resource and information management in the hospital setting. The objectives are to help foster communication between physicians and other members of the health care team, to improve the understanding of hospital reimbursement, and to influence attitudes toward practicing cost effectiveness. The conference structure includes the following components: case presentation by the treating physician and follow-up information provided by the primary care physician, a review of the itemized hospital bill, discussion of coding issues, discussion of hospital reimbursement comparing case data to institutional and state averages, and a summary of key take-home points and lessons. (+info)
Travels in Japan.
(21/811)
Following his attendance at the ICMART meeting, in Myasaki in 1988, the author, a BMAS member, resolved to revisit Japan. He found that acupuncture was widely practised throughout the country; although the patients were in the main elderly. The range of techniques used ranged from TCM to western, and broadly mirrored the styles practised in the West. Most young people in Japan considered acupuncture to be rather old fashioned, and it is postulated that this contrasts with the population seeking complementary medicine in the West. (+info)
Molecular pathology of solid tumours: some practical suggestions for translating research into clinical practice.
(22/811)
"Molecular pathology" can be broadly defined as the use of genetic data, in addition to the standard pathological parameters, to optimise diagnosis and to indicate treatment and prognosis. The benefit to be gained from the exploitation of molecular techniques to provide additional information to aid patient management is potentially vast. Currently, molecular pathology is rarely used in clinical practice, although it is anticipated that it will eventually become a part of routine practice. However, incorporating molecular techniques into routine practice will not be straightforward because there are several issues to be resolved. Following on from a symposium held at the Royal College of Pathologists to discuss some of these issues, the establishment of a committee of molecular pathology is proposed to plan and coordinate the introduction of molecular pathology into routine clinical practice. (+info)
Promoting social responsibility for health: health impact assessment and healthy public policy at the community level.
(23/811)
The 1997 Jakarta Declaration on Health Promotion into the 21st Century called for new responses to address the emerging threats to health. The declaration placed a high priority on promoting social responsibility for health, and it identified equity-focused health impact assessment as a high priority for action. This theme was among the foci at the 2000 Fifth Global Conference on Health Promotion held in Mexico. This paper, which is an abbreviation of a technical report prepared for the Mexico conference, advances arguments for focusing on health impact assessment at the local level. Health impact assessment identifies negative health impacts that call for policy responses, and identifies and encourages practices and policies that promote health. Health impact assessment may be highly technical and require sophisticated technology and expertise. But it can also be a simple, highly practical process, accessible to ordinary people, and one that helps a community come to grips with local circumstances that need changing for better health. To illustrate the possibilities, this paper presents a case study, the People Assessing Their Health (PATH) project from Eastern Nova Scotia, Canada. It places ordinary citizens, rather than community elites, at the very heart of local decision-making. Evidence from PATH demonstrates that low technology health impact assessment, done by and for local people, can shift thinking beyond the illness problems of individuals. It can bring into consideration, instead, how programmes and policies support or weaken community health, and illuminate a community's capacity to improve local circumstances for better health. This stands in contrast to evidence that highly technological approaches to community-level health impact assessment can be self-defeating. Further development of simple, people-centred, low technology approaches to health impact assessment at the local level is called for. (+info)
A DBMS-based medical teleconferencing system.
(24/811)
This article presents the design of a medical teleconferencing system that is integrated with a multimedia patient database and incorporates easy-to-use tools and functions to effectively support collaborative work between physicians in remote locations. The design provides a virtual workspace that allows physicians to collectively view various kinds of patient data. By integrating the teleconferencing function into this workspace, physicians are able to conduct conferences using the same interface and have real-time access to the database during conference sessions. The authors have implemented a prototype based on this design. The prototype uses a high-speed network test bed and a manually created substitute for the integrated patient database. (+info)