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Tuesday, September 07, 2004 |
"Information prescriptions" work, and would work better with OA. Donna M. D'Alessandro and three co-authors, A Randomized Controlled Trial of an Information Prescription for Pediatric Patient Education on the Internet,
Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 158 (2004) pp.
857-862. Excerpt: "We conducted a randomized controlled trial of
parents visiting an academic general pediatric practice....The
intervention group was offered computer training and received the IP
[information prescription] and training summary handout....Parents of
children in pediatric practices commonly use the Internet for general
and children's health information. In this study, IPs were associated
with specific parental attitude and behavior changes resulting in
increased Internet utilization for general and child health information
and for specific high-quality information resources. Pediatricians can
implement IPs in their office."
Here's how John O'Neil summarizes the result in today's New York
Times: "A new kind of prescription can be filled online, but it does
not involve using the Internet to order drugs. Physicians call it an
information prescription, and a study released yesterday found it to be
effective in guiding parents toward reliable Web sites....[A] large
body of research had [already] found that well-informed patients tended
to do better. The Internet has made medical information more accessible
than ever. But the health care field has struggled over the last decade
to find ways to tap that potential while helping patients avoid the
many sources of misinformation that have become more available as well.
In the new study, about half of 197 parents of patients at the
pediatric clinic of the University of Iowa were randomly chosen to
receive a short session of Internet training and an information
prescription. The prescription was on a form that listed three Internet
sites the study described as authoritative and that left room for the
pediatrician to add others....Over the next few weeks, the parents who
received the information prescriptions used the Internet significantly
more than those who had not. And their searches appeared to be guided
in large measure by their doctors' recommendations: two-thirds of the
sites they reported using had been included in the lists." See John
O'Neil, Information's Healing Power, New York Times, September 7, 2004 (free registration required).
(PS: Imagine how much more useful this practice could be if the NIH adopts its proposed open-access plan.
Open access would remove the access barriers to a very large and
continuously growing body of of peer-reviewed medical literature that
doctors could "prescribe" to their patients --and that patients could
then access from home without payments, passwords, or permission.) [Open Access News]
6:26:45 PM  .
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The Future Is Here... in Korea. KTF to Pioneer Ubiquitous Orchestra With Mobile Baton
"Today the number of mobile phone subscribers has surpassed 35 million, and accounts for 75 percent of the total population.
In particular, almost all people in their 20s and 30s own their
mobile phones and a mobile phone is the most wanted birthday present
among elementary school students. Not too long ago a mobile phone symbolized wealth and power, now, in such a short time it has become a necessity....
With such advanced mobile infrastructure in place, everyday life is rapidly going mobile.
Sookmyoung Women¡¯s University in Seoul is the case in point and currently attracting attention from all over the world.
Under an initiative to build a mobile campus with KTF, students now
use their mobile phones with built-in student ID card to enter a
library, borrow a book and inquire about personal records.
They installed an attendance check system at a large lecture hall
whereby students can simply touch their phone to the system to record
their attendance.
And hospitals are now getting in on this too. Samsung Medical Center
now uses PDAs to identify and check patient records including the
status of a patient, treatment records, prescription, test results
anytime and anywhere. Much more convenient and reliable than the bulky,
paper records of the past....
More interestingly, now mobile phones are used as means for
well-being by providing information such as blood sugar, diet and
meditation. A mobile phone even offers services like driving away
mosquitoes, a finger vibrator for hand acupuncture and music therapy, a
guard service by sounding a siren, a location tracking service and
product information in which a camera phone is used to read a barcode."
[The Korea Times, via textually.org]
Sales of MP3 Mobile Phones to Break 5 Million at Home This Year
"This year, LG Electronics introduced Korea's first MP3 mobile
phone, the LP3000, which has sold over 300,000 units, and the company
expects that the sale of their MP3 models will easily smash through 1
million units this year. An LG official noted that of the 20 new models
to be introduced in the domestic market by the end of this year, 80~90
percent of them will be MP3 phones. He also said MP3 functions will
become a basic function of mobile phones like camera function.
Pantech & Curitel said it expects 1 million of its 3 million
units of supply to be MP3 phones. Most of its 15 new models will be MP3
mobile phones. The company added, 'We plan to provide MP3 function as a
basic function.' It explained that therefore, the domestic MP3 market
should greatly expand." [The Digital Chosunilbo, via textually.org]
Samsung Shows 'World's First' Hard Drive Phone
"The SPH-V5400, unveiled today in Japan, includes 1.5GB of hard disk
storage. That's barely more than you can get from a SD or CompactFlash
card, but it's a start, presaging the day when handsets are as much
iPods as phones." [The Register] [The Shifted Librarian]
11:09:50 AM Google It!.
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P2P sharing of bibliographic data. Jeen Broekstra and seven co-authors, Bibster - A Semantics-Based Bibliographic Peer-to-Peer System,
apparently a preprint. Abstract: "This paper describes the design and
implementation of Bibster, a Peer-to-Peer system for exchanging
bibliographic data among Computer Science researchers. Bibster exploits
ontologies in datastorage, query formulation, query-routing and answer
presentation: When bibliographic entries are made available for use in
Bibster, they are structured and classified according to two different
ontologies. This ontological structure is then exploited to help users
formulate their queries. Subsequently, the ontologies are used to
improve query routing across the Peer-to-Peer network. Finally, the
ontologies are used to post-process the returned answers in order to do
duplicate detection. The paper describes each of these ontology-based
aspects of Bibster. Bibster is fully implemented on top of the JXTA
platform, and is about to be rolled out for field testing." (Thanks to ResourceShelf.) [Open Access News]
10:43:38 AM Google It!.
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© Copyright 2004 Bruce Landon.
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