Tablet PCs for the Waiting Room

Too many times, the side effects of chemotherapy are not treated, partly because the patients don’t bring them up and partly because of the challenges in a busy oncology practice of “incorporating symptom screening into its daily workflow,” said Tami Mark of Thomson Healthcare to a writer at Healthcare ITNews. A recent study of a special assessment tool that provided physicians with real-time information gathered via a tablet PC was an aid in that discussion.

The results of the 3 year study show that when cancer patients completed self-assessments about their health, and specifically about the side-effects of cancer treatment, they were better able to remember their symptoms and were better prepared to discuss them with their physicians. See the full article online (UCSD faculty, staff & students only)

The participating physicians found that the system very helpful, especially in identify patient problems and focusing their patient interviews. With the information gathered in this manner, they found more time to discuss the problems with their patients.

Welcome Week Tours

Next week in the Biomedical Library we will be conducting Welcome Week tours, to orient new students to the library. Each session will last about half an hour and include a tour and a brief overview of our services and resources. Interested? Drop in and join. Looking for complete quiet? Avoid these times!

• Monday, 3pm

• Tuesday, 10am; 12:30pm
• Wednesday, 12:30pm; 2:30pm
• Thursday, 12 noon; 3pm
• Friday, 10:30am; 1pm

September 19: smiley’s birthday

September 19 marks an Internet milestone: tt’s the 25th anniversary of the first use of the “smiley” in online communication. Scott E. Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University first proposed using the punctuation string to denote comments meant to be taken lightly in postings on a bulletin board discussion system on Sept. 19, 1982. Since then, smileys or “emoticons” have been helping clarify the meaning of otherwise easily misinterpreted emails and chat postings. See http://www.cs.cmu.edu/smiley/ for more. September 19th is also Talk Like A Pirate Day, but that’s another story! Arr!

PDAs for Brain Injured Veterans

First piloted in North Carolina, the Veterans Administration (VA) is providing PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants or hand-held computers) for active duty military and veterans with brain injuries to help remind them of life’s important little details - i.e., appointments, time for taking medication(s), or family & job duties. The portable reminder is needed as a common effect of traumatic brain injury is the loss of short-term memory.

According to the story in the Raleigh News & Observer, the VA bought “46 PDAs last year and 135 so far this year.” It is unclear how wide-spread the program will be, but many more will be needed. A study by the Veterans Brain Injury Center found that “64 percent of injured troops examined had suffered brain injuries.”

Dr. Bruce Capehart, a psychiatrist at the Durham VA Medical Center, explains that this is not a frivolous expense. “These patients need it for their medicine, they need it for their health care appointment, and to live their lives from day to day.” The more effective ones have an audible alert to remind the users of a scheduled item, because without it, the veterans must remember to check it.

Fall class schedule up for Biomedical Library

We’ve got a record-breaking roster of classes available this quarter. You’ll find our old favorites like PubMed, Google, and EndNote, as well as a new series of classes focusing on the many tools available in our Library Information Commons, including PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat. We’ll also be hosting some special classes from the National Library of Medicine on ToxNet and the ClinicalTrials.gov service. Take a look at our Classes web page and sign up!

Emergency and Safety Expo on September 13

UC San Diego has designated September - the anniversary of the tragic events of 11 Sept. 2001 - as Campus Preparedness Month. An “Emergency and Safety Expo 2007″ will be held from 10 am to 3 pm on Thursday, September 13th in the Price Center Ballroom B. Speakers from Environmental Health & Safety as well as the Red Cross, Campus Police, and other groups will present information on being prepared at work and at home.

New personalization coming to CSA databases

Do you use PsycINFO, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, or other resources on the CSA Illumina platform? CSA will be rolling out a new personalization feature called My Research early next week.  This will bring together your personal profile and your e-mail or RSS alerts.  In order for accounts using the old system to be migrated to My Research, existing personal profiles will not be accessible on Monday, September 10th.

Residents’ Reduced Work Hours - beneficial?

“Is there a benefit to patients when Residents work fewer hours?” is a question that has been addressed in 3 recent articles. The short answer is yes & no.

Two articles from the September 5th issue of JAMA found conflicting results. One article looked at Medicare beneficiaries and found no improvement in regards to mortality when compared to pre-2003 data. The second study found “significant relative improvement in mortality for patients with 4 common medical conditions.”

Another recent article, this time in the Annals of Internal Medicine, measured inpatient mortality for over 1 million patients and found a decrease in mortality for medical patients but no changes for surgical patients. With so many patients, sub-group analysis was possible and the authors found “particularly large improvements in mortality” among two groups of patients — those admitted for infectious diseases and medical patients over 80.

Hat tip to iHealthBeat blog