The Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) has published a US study that considers whether health information technology, such as apps and patient portals, has the potential to create another digital divide.
Open access. Online health information is increasingly popular and may bring both benefits and potential harm to users with mental health problems. The encouragement of harmful behaviour among this population is a particular concern. The website healthtalk.org provides the benefits of shared experience by publishing excerpts from rigorous research interviews with patients, contextualised with medical information. This article sets out evidence for the positive and negative effects of online mental health information and describes the methodology behind healthtalk.org, with an overview of the mental health information it provides and how it can benefit patients and health professionals.
‘Google’ is now officially a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary—considered the most authoritative dictionary of the English language. With all of this technology and freely available digital information, Google is changing the way doctors practise medicine and how doctors consult patients. For all the benefits technology provides, it does provoke anxiety. In a recent letter, a rheumatologist describes a scene at rounds where a professor asked the presenting fellow to explain how he arrived at his diagnosis. ‘I entered the salient features into Google, and [the diagnosis] popped right up’.1
The phrase ‘Please do not confuse your Google search for my medical degree’ printed on a mug has been making the rounds on multiple social media forums and internet sites in recent times. This reflects the emerging use of the World Wide Web by patients to obtain information (and misinformation) and how the internet impacts the practising of modern medicine. Most clinicians will be familiar with the increasingly …...To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details
This commentary provides an overview of the author's experience as a virtual embedded librarian with the University of South Alabama College of Nursing. His involvement has increased every semester, and most recently, he has been assigned as the solo librarian to classes with 300-500 students. As a virtual embedded librarian, he has never interacted with an enrolled master of science in nursing (MSN)/doctor of nursing practice (DNP) student face to face; however, he has spoken live via telephone with students throughout the US and abroad, including from Canada, Germany, and Japan. Herein, he presents a brief overview of the embedded concept. In addition to summarizing his responsibilities, he discusses the challenges that he has faced and best practices for developing an embedded librarianship program. The embedded model allows librarians to engage users where they are. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details
The study tested the performance of adverse effects search filters when searching for safety information on medical devices, procedures, and diagnostic tests in MEDLINE and Embase. The sensitivity of 3 filters was determined using a sample of 631 references from 131 rapid reviews related to the safety of health technologies. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details
The new updated People with Learning Disabilities in England 2016 has been published today and can be found here here
It is a compendium of statistics about the lives of people with learning disabilities. The report covers a wide range of information about population numbers, education, health and social care.