Infodemiology and Infoveillance
The Journal of Medical Internet Research has just published an article on “Infodemiology and Infoveillance: Framework for an Emerging Set of Public Health Informatics Methods to Analyze Search, Communication and Publication Behavior on the Internet.” The paper defines infodemiology as, “automated and continuous analysis of unstructured, free text information available on the Internet.”
Remember the news of how Google was tracking flu outbreaks through search queries? Apparently it wasn’t such a new idea.
FDA Notices of Judgment Collection, 1906-1963
Search over 4,300 pages of evidence files used to prosecute cases by the FDA. This new digital library includes legal correspondence, lab reports and data, photographs, and product labeling and containers. Facinating to poke through and a treasure trove for public health historians.
Free Screencasting Tools
If you want to create a free and easy screencast*, Jing is the tool for you. Jing works on both Macs and Windows computers and it’s simple to install and get working. My six year old was able to start producing screencasts with only 3 minutes of instruction. The biggest problem- you can’t edit your recording after you are finished. This can be a deal breaker.
Looking for something other than Jing? Check out Mashable.com’s list of screencasting tools, both free and commercial.
*Why would you want to create a screencast? For a video tutorial of how to do something on the computer or a recording of a powerpoint presentation are two examples.
Read the First Biennial Report from NIH Director
Take a look at the first congressionally mandated “integrated portrait of NIH research activities” in the Biennial Report from the director of the NIH.
Why is it so hard to search for interventions in PubMed?
I wish the National Library of Medicine would think about public health a little more when they’re tinkering with PubMed. For as much as I love MeSH (and trust me, I REALLY love MeSH), it is entirely inadequate for public health. Especially when you need to search for interventions on a particular topic- as I am currently doing. Why is PubMed so bad for finding interventions but so good for finding things like etiology, diagnosis, and treatment?
Here’s my top five list why I can’t easily find interventions in PubMed:
- The subheadings are extraordinarily inconsistent.
“Methods” is a subheading defined as “Used with techniques, procedures, and programs for methods”. Huh? I’m still not sure what that covers. Even if I did, the subheadings are notoriously inconsitently applied and while including the term “methods” in your search will increase the number of relevant results, it will also greatly increase the irrelevant ones. - “Program evaluation” also seems inconsistently applied
Now I’m repeating myself, but I really wish I could count on using the MeSH term “Program evaluation” in order to find program evaluations. Yes, it helps, but it is wildly underused. - “Intervention studies” is not quite right
This is another MeSH terms that doesn’t really get you what you want. In fact, it gets you far more of what you don’t want than what you do. Plus… - Searching for “intervention” doesn’t map to “intervention studies”
As mentioned above, I love MeSH. One of the main reasons I love it is that PubMed maps your search terms to appropriate MeSH terms behind the scenes and generally makes your results vastly superior to what they would have been otherwise. Come on, PubMed, is it too much to ask that you map the search term “intervention” to the MeSH “intervention studies”? - Maybe PubMed isn’t the best place to search
I sometimes get much better results simply Googling for interventions or looking at model practices web sites and then searching PubMed for articles on particular interventions. However, I’d rather be able to search a public health-friendly PubMed.
Unveiling the “beauty of statistical time series”
Ok, I admit it. I’m in love with Gapminder’s animations of statistical time series. It’s amazing how powerful a simple animation can be. I saw Hans Rosling’s TED lecture on Debunking Myths about the Third World a long time ago, but I’ve never forgotten his fab animations. Finally, I can get my hands on the software used to create them! (When you go to the Gapminder site, watch the 2.5 minute tutorial.)
Google has created a gadget using this same software to create Motion Charts so you can easily create your own animations. If you have data that you want to share with others, you can jump through a few hurdles and join the Gapminder community.
Searching for Health Disparities in PubMed
Hooray! PubMed has finally added subject heading for Health Disparities in PubMed. (Unfortunately this will make obsolete one of my favorite examples for showing how PubMed ignores public health issues.) Here are the new subject headings:
- Health Status Disparities
- Healthcare Disparities
- Minority Health
Since these terms were only introduced in 2008, you will still have to be creative with your keywords for articles published in 2007 and earlier.
A Day in the Life of a Public Health Librarian
So what exactly do I do all day? I don’t sit at a reference desk, I’m not buying books and journals, and I’m not teaching workshops- what else does a librarian do?
This is what I did today:
1) First thing in the morning, I responded to email that accululated during the night. I sent someone the link to this blog, I replied with a “thank you!” to someone who really likes our Second Life video, I declined a meeting, I read an update on the new MLibrary web site, etc.
2) Next, I lead a discussion about the future of the Public Health Library web site. We’ve been through a lot of transitions over the past year and our web site is now hopelessly out of date. Plus, we really want people to just use the Health Sciences Libraries web site.
3) Following the meeting, I created a quick mock up of the new site that we decided on and sent it off to the SPH web administrator and my bosses.
4) Before running out to grab lunch, I dealt with more email, blogged, and read my Twitter feed.
5) While eating some Spicy Tofu from Rich JC, I attended a meeting in Second Life discussing SLoodle, an open source content management system for SL.
6) Next, I prepped some more for my upcoming School of Public Health course and panicked a little because I still have so much to do.
7) Finally, I met with my supervisor and talked about things like my involvement with the Informatics unit at the school and the Open Michigan project.
Oh… and I wrote this blog post.
Public Health Informatics Training from AMIA
From the AMIA web site*:
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently launched a 5-year cooperative agreement with AMIA funded by the National Center for Public Health Informatics (NCPHI) and the Office of the Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (ODCDC). The purpose of the program is to strengthen the breadth and depth of the public health workforce by providing training in public health informatics. As a first step AMIA is accepting applications from public health workers at state or local public health agencies interested in participating in informatics training. “
*AMIA = American Medical Informatics Association
Second Life and Public Health Video
I worked with Anne Perorazio to produced a video highlighting Second Life and Public Health. Writing the script for the video highlighted the fact that Second Life is just not very useful yet. It is difficult to use, it is confusing to find anything, and it is difficult to use. I think, however, that the potential for virtual worlds is fantastic and Second Life is still the best thing out there. You can view the video on our web site (best quality): http://www.lib.umich.edu/hsl/SecondLifePublicHealth.mov or on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wDl5suE2Uo.
