Building the Systematic Review Core in an academic health sciences library.

BACKGROUND: The authors present efforts to build capacity at our institution for conducting systematic reviews and other forms of evidence synthesis through partnerships and a recharge model. This report describes how we successfully created and launched a for-fee systematic review core at our library. CASE PRESENTATION: Throughout 2014 and 2015, library leadership proposed different models for getting institutional and financial support for librarians and staff to better support university researchers conducting systematic reviews. Though well received, initial requests for financial support were not funded. The executive director of the Health Sciences Library released two years' worth of salary and benefits to fund an evidence synthesis and retrieval librarian position. With this new position, the team formed a charge-back core facility in partnership with our university's Clinical Translation and Science Award hub. A series of procedural decisions and operational changes helped the group achieve success. Within eighteen months after launching the Systematic Review Core, we reached maximum capacity with more than twenty ongoing reviews. DISCUSSION: Assigning a dollar value to our expertise put us on par with other subject matter experts on campus and actually drove demand. We could act as paid consultants in research projects and shifted the perception of librarians from service providers to research partners. Affiliating with our partners was key to our success and boosted our ability to strengthen our campus' research infrastructure.

Prescripción electrónica asistida (PEA) y su influencia en la comunicación verbal entre Médicos y Enfermeras en una planta de Medicina Interna, Neumología y Cardiología / Assisted Electronic Prescribing (EPA) and its influence on verbal communication between doctors and nurses in a plant of Internal Medicine, Pneumology and Cardiology

Introducción. Con el advenimiento de la informatización de la documentación médica, incluida la Prescripción Electrónica Asistida, la comunicación entre Médicos y Enfermeras es cada vez más electrónica y menos 'cara a cara' produciéndose efectos no deseados como cambios en los patrones de comunicación entre profesionales. Objetivos. Definir cuáll es el grado de comunicación verbal existente entre Médicos y personal de Enfermería en la unidad de Medicina Interna y establecer propuestas de mejora. Material y método: Revisión bibliográfica en bases de datos Pubmed, Medline, CINAHL, Scielo España y en base de datos de editorial Elseiver utilizando los descriptores DeCS o palabras clave (Relaciones Médico-Enfermero, Comunicación, Prescripción Electrónica, Pase de Guardia, Grupo de Atención al Paciente). Estudio observacional descriptivo, con una muestra de 19 Médicos y 19 Enfermeros, mediante cuestionario con 10 preguntas cerradas y varias opciones de respuesta. Resultados. Los resultados de la encuesta muestran que ambos colectivos consideran de gran importancia la necesidad de comunicación entre ambos tanto a nivel global como individual así como de trabajo en equipo. Conclusiones. Entre los aspectos más relevantes y que apoyan nuestro planteamiento inicial es que 78% (IC 95%; 85,6%-70,39%) de los encuestados piensa que tras la implantación del programa de PEA ha cambiado el patrón de comunicación entre ambos colectivos disminuyendo considerablemente la comunicación verbal directa (AU)

Introduction: With the advent of computerization of medical records, including electronic prescribing, communication between doctors and nurses is becoming more electronic and less 'face to face', thus producing unwished effects such as changes in the communication patterns. Objectives: Establishing the level of verbal communication between physicians and nurses in an internal medicine unit and suggesting improvement proposals. Material and method: Literature review in databases Pubmed, Medline, CINAHL, SciELO Spain and publishing database Elseiver using MeSH descriptors or keywords (Physician-Nurse Relations, Communication, Electronic Prescribing, Patient Handoff, Patient Care Team). Descriptive observational study with a sample of 19 physicians and 19 nurses, using a questionnaire with 10 closed questions with several answer options. Results: Both groups considered of great importance the need for communication, globally and individually, as well as teamwork. Conclusions: Among the most relevant aspects supporting our initial approach we have to point out that 78% (CI 95%; 85,6%-70,39%) of people being interviewed thought that after the implementation of computerized physician medication order entry the communication behaviour between both groups has changed significantly by reducing direct verbal communication (AU)

A review of the methods used to estimate the cost of Alzheimer's disease in the United States.

UNLABELLED: BACKGROUN/RATIONALE: To determine the suitability of published estimates of the US cost of Alzheimer's disease (AD) for use in cost-effectiveness models for new AD treatments. METHODS: A systematic literature review of published information on direct medical, direct nonmedical, indirect, and informal care costs for different levels of disease severity. RESULTS: Nineteen studies were included in the review. In studies presenting mean costs by disease severity, the change in different types of costs with increasing disease severity varied, depending on the data sources and characteristics of patients with AD. In studies presenting the results of regression analyses, costs were shown to be independently associated with cognition, functional status, behavioral symptoms, and dependence. CONCLUSIONS: Published US studies (1) did not include all the types of costs and AD populations, and (2) generally did not include all the measures of disease severity that are needed for cost-effectiveness models.

Searching for evidence in pediatric occupational therapy using free versus subscription databases: a comparison of outcomes.

OBJECTIVE: This study compared the results of searching free versus subscription databases and using brief versus comprehensive search strategies to locate evidence for three pediatric occupational therapy clinical questions. METHOD: Three clinical questions were nominated by practicing pediatric occupational therapists. Brief and comprehensive search strategies were then developed. Searches were conducted in three free-to-access databases and four subscription databases. RESULTS: Based on descriptive data, more relevant citations were retrieved using the subscription databases compared with the free databases and when using a comprehensive search strategy. Citations that were present in some databases were not always retrieved by the searches. This was mainly due to the inclusion of an insufficient number of search terms in the brief search strategies used in this study and a mismatch between terms used in the search strategies and the databases. CONCLUSION: Clinicians may need to use both subscription and free databases and use comprehensive search strategies to maximize retrieval of relevant articles to answer pediatric clinical questions.

The European Network of Health Economic Evaluation Databases (EURO NHEED) Project.

This paper provides a first outline of the European Network of Health Economic Evaluation Databases (EURO NHEED) project. The project is funded by the European Commission and will implement, in 7 European centres based in France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, databases on the economic evaluation of healthcare interventions. The network will be based on two existing and well-established resources, namely the UK's NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED), and France's Connaissances et Décision en EConomie de la Santé (CODECS) database. EURO NHEED will initially cover 17 European countries and will provide its users with bibliographic records, detailing the main characteristics of all included studies. In addition, structured abstracts will be provided for articles identified as full economic evaluations (cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness or cost-utility), which will offer a detailed critique of the findings and the methodology used. These databases will be accessible free of charge on the Internet. The EURO NHEED project is the first attempt to develop such a resource on a multi-national basis. The project will bring together Health Economists and Information Scientists from the European Union and beyond and is anticipated to facilitate a number of benefits and advances in the field of Health Economics. These include harmonisation and increased understanding of the theory and methodology of economic evaluation in healthcare, the interpretation of the generalisability of studies to target settings, and the influence of healthcare system variations among the European countries. The project will therefore advance the state of the art in collecting, summarising, critiquing and disseminating economic evaluations of healthcare conducted within Europe.

Distribution of medical research articles on the World Wide Web.

Ninety-eight percent of 51 polled medical editors felt that published research articles should be available to the public on the World Wide Web at no charge, after a mean time from publication of 1.4 years for viewing and 1.9 years for printing. Public libraries or other government institutions could be allowed to assume the responsibility of housing and distributing the electronically stored archived material, analogous to their role with printed material, lifting the financial burden from the publishing companies.

Comparison of literature searches on quality and costs for health technology assessment using the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases.

Biomedical databases are an important source of information for health technology assessment. However, there is considerable variation in the costs of accessing commercial databases. We sought to measure the quality, amount of overlap, and costs of information retrieved from two of the main database sources--MEDLINE and EMBASE. Librarians at two health technology assessment agencies ran a total of eight literature searches on various medical technologies, using both databases. All search results were independently reviewed by two researchers. The researchers were asked to identify relevant references and to rank each of these according to a level of evidence scale. The results were tabulated to show the number of references identified by each database, the number of relevant references ranked by level of evidence, and the number of these references that were unique to one or the other database. The cost of retrieving references from each source was also calculated. Each database contained relevant references not available in the other. Because of the longer time lag for indexing in MEDLINE, many of the references that originally appeared to be unique to EMBASE were subsequently available in MEDLINE as well. Since our study was conducted, MEDLINE has been made available worldwide, free of charge, via the Internet. Hence, the cost difference between the databases is now even greater. However, notwithstanding the costs, it appears that literature searches that rely on only one or the other database will inevitably miss pertinent information.

Complementary use of the SciSearch database for improved biomedical information searching.

The use of at least two complementary online biomedical databases is generally considered critical for biomedical scientists seeking to keep fully abreast of recent research developments as well as to retrieve the highest number of relevant citations possible. Although the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE is usually the database of choice, this paper illustrates the benefits of using another database, the Institute for Scientific Information's SciSearch, when conducting a biomedical information search. When a simple query about red wine consumption and coronary artery disease was posed simultaneously in both MEDLINE and SciSearch, a greater number of relevant citations were retrieved through SciSearch. This paper also provides suggestions for carrying out a comprehensive biomedical literature search in a rapid and efficient manner by using SciSearch in conjunction with MEDLINE.

Evaluation of drug interaction document citation in nine on-line bibliographic databases.

OBJECTIVE: To compare nine on-line bibliographic databases to obtain bibliographic references on specific drug interactions. DESIGN: Seven bibliographic databases were selected for their ability to provide information concerning drug interactions: EMBASE, MEDLINE, TOXLINE, BIOSIS, Chemical Abstracts (CAS), PHARMLINE, and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA). Two French on-line bibliographic databases (i.e., PASCAL, BIBLIOGRAPHIF) were also tested to compare them with the other international databases. Twenty drug interactions were selected randomly using the journal Reactions Weekly 1993. MAIN OUTCOMES MEASURES: The total number of references, the number of potentially relevant references, the number of case report references, the number of unique references in the total number of references, and the number of unique references between potentially relevant references were analyzed by using the Friedman two-way ANOVA by ranks. For each database, relevance and relative recall were calculated. RESULTS: For the total number of references, EMBASE was significantly more comprehensive then all other databases (p < 0.05). EMBASE had a significantly greater number of potentially relevant references than IPA, PHARMLINE, CAS, and BIBLIOGRAPHIF (p < 0.05). For the total number of case report references, only one significant difference, between EMBASE and BIBLIOGRAPHIF (p < 0.05), was observed. MEDLINE and TOXLINE had the lowest cost per potentially relevant reference. CONCLUSIONS: To obtain bibliographic references on drug interactions, the first step should be to search MEDLINE or TOXLINE; the second step, for completeness, should be to search EMBASE.

Database search services as a basic service in academic health sciences libraries.

Mediated search services, usually offered for a fee, are commonplace in academic health sciences libraries. At the same time, users of these services have numerous self-service options available to them; for example, CD-ROMs and locally mounted databases. In keeping with its philosophy of access to rather than ownership of information, the University of Washington Health Sciences Library and Information Center (HSLIC) changed its policy from charging clients for mediated searching to offering mediated searches as an essential service of the library. By taking this step, HSLIC moved closer to becoming a true "library without walls." This paper describes HSLIC's experience with changing its policy and examines the issues surrounding use of the collection budget to subsidize access to online information in academic health sciences libraries.