Comparing Web search engine performance in searching consumer health information: evaluation and recommendations.
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Identifying and accessing reliable, relevant consumer health information rapidly on the Internet may challenge the health sciences librarian and layperson alike. In this study, seven search engines are compared using representative consumer health topics for their content relevancy, system features, and attributes. The paper discusses evaluation criteria; systematically compares relevant results; analyzes performance in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of the search engines; and illustrates effective search engine selection, search formulation, and strategies. (+info)
Internet resources for dental anesthesia.
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The extraordinary growth of the Internet has created a revolutionary leap in the ability of health professionals to easily communicate and access information. These resources are readily available to the public as well, and an understanding of these sources is important in determining the validity of the content. A few Internet sites of interest to dentists interested in anesthesia and pain control are presented to demonstrate the depth and breadth of these resources via the Internet. (+info)
Powerful connections for public health: the National Library of Medicine and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine.
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As incorporated in Healthy People 2010 objectives, data and information systems and a skilled workforce are 2 of the critical components of the public health infrastructure. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) are important resources for improving Internet access and providing related training to the public health workforce and to those in training for public health careers. The NLM and the NN/LM have joined forces with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the National Association of County and City Health Officials, and the Public Health Foundation. The goal of this collaboration is to improve electronic resources useful in public health practice and increase awareness of them, to train public health professionals to use electronic information services, and to help public health agencies obtain the equipment and Internet connections needed to use these services effectively. The databases, outreach programs, and connection grants available to public health professionals from the NLM, and the training and ongoing support available from the NN/LM for accessing these programs and services, are described. (+info)
A public database for gene expression in human cancers.
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A public database, SAGEmap, was created as a component of the Cancer Genome Anatomy Project to provide a central location for depositing, retrieving, and analyzing human gene expression data. This database uses serial analysis of gene expression to quantify transcript levels in both malignant and normal human tissues. By accessing SAGEmap (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SAGE) the user can compare transcript populations between any of the posted libraries. As an initial demonstration of the database's utility, gene expression in human glioblastomas was compared with that of normal brain white matter. Of the 47,174 unique transcripts expressed in these two tissues, 471 (1.0%) were differentially expressed by more than 5-fold (P<0.001). Classification of these genes revealed functions consistent with the biological properties of glioblastomas, in particular: angiogenesis, transcription, and cell cycle related genes. (+info)
Neuronal database integration: the Senselab EAV data model.
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We discuss an approach towards integrating heterogeneous nervous system data using an augmented Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) schema design. This approach, widely used in implementing electronic patient record systems (EPRSs), allows the physical schema of the database to be relatively immune to changes in domain knowledge. This is because new kinds of facts are added as data (or as metadata) rather than hard-coded as the names of newly created tables or columns. Because the domain knowledge is stored as metadata, a framework developed in one scientific domain can be ported to another with only modest revision. We describe our progress in creating a code framework that handles browsing and hyperlinking of the different kinds of data. (+info)
Terminology issues in user access to Web-based medical information.
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We conducted a study of user queries to the National Library of Medicine Web site over a three month period. Our purpose was to study the nature and scope of these queries in order to understand how to improve users' access to the information they are seeking on our site. The results show that the queries are primarily medical in content (94%), with only a small percentage (5.5%) relating to library services, and with a very small percentage (.5%) not being medically relevant at all. We characterize the data set, and conclude with a discussion of our plans to develop a UMLS-based terminology server to assist NLM Web users. (+info)
Aspects of certainty in patient classification using a health-related quality-of-life instrument in inflammatory bowel disease.
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The study has focused on deriving a certainty measure for the classification of disease activity in patients suffering from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The aim is to build an Internet-based health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) questionnaire to continuously monitor a patient's condition. Data from 109 patients was collected four times in intervals of three months, using a standardized disease-specific quality-of-life questionnaire, the Rating Form of IBD Patient Concern (RFIPC), extended with 11 additional questions. Correlation analysis showed that the RFIPC items along with "general wellbeing" were highly correlated (significance < 0.001). Factor analysis confirmed this high correlation and only one factor was identified among those variables. Multivariate discriminant analysis was successful to 78.1% in classifying between cases of remission and relapse. Implementation of a smooth threshold function decreased the classification error. However, discrimination regarding change in disease activity over time has to be further improved. (+info)
Multiresolution browsing of pathology images using wavelets.
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Digitized pathology images typically have very high resolution, making it difficult to display in their entirety on the computer screen and inefficient to transmit over the network for educational purposes. Progressive zooming of pathology images is desirable despite the availability of inexpensive networking bandwidth. An efficient progressive image resolution refining system for on-line distribution of pathology image using wavelets has been developed and is discussed in this paper. The system is practical for real-world applications, pre-processing and coding each 24-bit image of size 2400 x 3600 within 40 seconds on a Pentium II PC. The transmission process is in real-time. Besides its exceptional speed, the algorithm has high flexibility. The server encodes the original pathology images without loss. Based on the image request from a client, the server dynamically generates and sends out the part of the image at the requested scale and quality requirement. The algorithm is expandable for medical image databases such as PACS. (+info)