A fascinating post from Google on how we track data on search results:
See the full post for further information.
I’m very excited by this piece of news ‘New format for BMJ research articles in print‘ which is announcing two abridged versions of BMJ articles:
- PICO model. A ‘classic’ EBM method of structuring a clinical question (see this article on the CEBM site for further details) where P = patient, I = intervention, C = comparison and O = outcome.
- Short cuts. Articles written by the BMJ itself.
I think both methods have merit, PICO as it structures the paper into a clinical question and answer and Short cuts as the BMJ take an independent view of the paper. The rapid responses are worth a read.
For those of you not familiar with the name, Adam Bosworth used to be Vice President of Product Management at Google heading up Google health. A couple of talks of his can be seen via this page. To link directly to the presentations, see below:
…that have caught my eye:
- iPlato supports Southwark MMR drive, using text messages to improve MMR uptake!
- Dean Giustini has posted on the new Google Latitude service. I’ve tried it and it works well, slightly disturbed by the potential consequences!
- HRT cancer connection ‘confirmed’ a long-running controversy rears its head in the news.
- Rare diseases day is coming soon! I’ve long been intrigued by rare diseases and was delighted when the wonderful Orphanet appeared.
- Another long-running interest has been services that critique news stories. David Rothman ran a great blog article on (click here) and has just updated it (click here) after finding a new service that I too hadn’t been aware of!
Happy reading
The Yale medical library have been very busy creating a batch of very professional video tutorials on various ‘evidence’ tools, the complete list (to date) is below:
- Introduction
- The Clinical Question
- The Pyramid of Resources
- The Cochrane Library
- Clinical Evidence
- ACP’s PIER
- Critically Appraised Individual Articles
- Clinical Queries in MEDLINE
- The TRIP Database
We’re very thrilled to see TRIP mentioned alongside such luminaries.
Monday morning and two new batches of records added to TRIP:
RCOG – Due to URL changes I needed to re-index the whole lot (n=46)
Cochrane – In total 256 new (n=112) or updated records (n=144) systematic reviews
These will not be searchable until tomorrow.
NOTE: If you haven’t undertaken our survey yet, can you do so PLEASE – click here.
It’a always nice for TRIP to look back and see how well we’re doing, it helps remind us that we’re doing something right. As you’ll see (at the bottom of this post), since September our visits have increased by nearly 250% while our page views have increased by 330%.
Arguably the biggest change has been the massive speed increase we had in mid-October. As well as making people more likely to stay on the site and explore it also meant more people returned to the site.
How big will TRIP go? I’m staggered by how well it’s doing at present and it far exceeds my expectations. However, I’m determined to push ahead with changes to improve TRIP and work will start in early April on our next significant upgrade. I’m keen to further improve the speed of TRIP and respond to users feedback which has been significant and 100% constructive (if you haven’t already please take our 5 minute survey (click here).
January
954,825 Visits
2,445,659 Pageviews
December
745,085 Visits
1,960,785 Pageviews
November
751,890 Visits
2,101,726 Pageviews
October
453,539 Visits
1,042,808 Pageviews
September
387,539 Visits
740,697 Pageviews
medgadget, a site dedicated to emerging medical technologies has an annual Medical Weblog Awards and the winner for 2008 (announced recently) was KevinMD. Medgadget reports:
“The winner of the Best Medical Blog of 2008 is the legendary KevinMD. Dr Kevin Pho has built an exemplary blog that features timely news and opinion of the latest in medicine, bringing in one of the most devoted audiences and keeping thousands of curious minds satisfied with smart and funny writing.”
For those eagle-eyed amongst you, you will have already spotted a KevinMD badge on the homepage of TRIP. In return we’ll soon have a ‘search TRIP’ box on the KevinMD homepage.
Reciprocity can be very useful at times!
The health video site icyou has thousands videos, all related to healthcare. The site tells us:
“icyou is a user-generated video community that empowers you to make informed decisions about your health”
I was made aware of it via twitter and following this link will highlight the discussion – click here.
I’d welcome any other thoughts on icyou!
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