Category: Quick Tips

How to create an alert for a specific author in PubMed

Post author By Eugene Barsky
Post date July 30, 2007
4 Comments on How to create an alert for a specific author in PubMed

1. Go to the US National Library of Medicine PubMed website – www.pubmed.gov

2. Create a free account, called myNCBI (right-top corner of your screen) if you don’t have one already

3. Click on “Single Citation Matcher” link on the left side blue toolbar

4. In the “Author name” box, type the name of a researcher you want to keep current, for example Hodges Paul and click on “Go” button

5. You will see everything this person has published so far (that indexed in PubMed database – the largest biomedical database, however, to be really comprehensive you also have to work with CINAHL and EMBASE databases)

6. Click on “Save Search” blue link on the right side of the search box to subscribe to anything new published starting with today

7. Select the desired frequency and format of your updates and click on “OK” – congrats! You are done! From today on, you stay up-to-date with this particular author, isn’t it cool?

How To - Technicalities Main Physiotherapy and Web 2.0 Quick Tips

PhysioSearch is alive! Using Google interface :)

Post author By Eugene Barsky
Post date November 10, 2006
1 Comment on PhysioSearch is alive! Using Google interface :)

PhysioSearch is alive!

All some of you may have noticed our earlier version of the physiotherapy search engine is not with us any more.

I admit that I sinned – I switched to Google. I created a new version of a search engine for high quality physiotherapy information using Google customized search engine (Google Co-op).

How to search it?
The PhysioSearch is searchable from this blog. Just type your search terms in the search box found on the right upper part of the screen and a new window will open up with your search results which you would be able to narrow down by clicking on the labels on the upper part of your screen. Good luck – let me know how it works for you. It is also searchable from here – http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=009072055596341291981%3A7ldb1tpbl-w

Why I did it? Why switching from the previous Rollyo engine using Yahoo indexes?

Well, four (4) reasons mainly: 1) No ads – by using Google I eliminate all unwanted advertising that clutter our web results, so we don’t have any ads at all right now!; 2) Easier interface – many people are used to Google layout – so why not using it; 3) Number of sites indexed – with Rollyo tool I could use only 25 sites , with Google I am unlimited to use as much site as I want; and finally 4) Narrowing the results – with Google tool I can narrow the results by simply labelling them, so if you want Canadian content – sure , just click on the Canadian content link and there you go!

What’s included? The following sites were included in the current version of the search engine:

1. 129.78.28.173 – PEDro database – not working yet, I am working with PEDro to resolve this problem
2. www.ptjournal.org – Founded in 1921, Physical Therapy is the official publication of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) and is an international, scholarly, peer-reviewed journal
3. www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus – MEDLINE Plus. MedlinePlus will direct you to information to help answer health questions. MedlinePlus brings together authoritative information from NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other government agencies and health-related organizations.
4. www.canadian-health-network.ca – Canadian Health Network – The Canadian Health Network (CHN) is a national, bilingual health promotion program found on the Web at www.canadian-health-network.ca. The CHN’s goal is to help Canadians find the information they’re looking for on how to stay healthy and prevent disease.
5. www.csp.org.uk –The U.K. Chartered Society of Physiotherapy is the professional, educational and trade union body for the country’s 47,000 chartered physiotherapists, physiotherapy students and assistants.
6. www.hc-sc.gc.ca – Health Canada. Health Canada is the Federal department responsible for helping Canadians maintain and improve their health, while respecting individual choices and circumstances.
7. http://apa.advsol.com.au – Australian Physiotherapy Association. The Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) is the peak body representing the interests of Australian physiotherapists and their patients. The APA is a national organisation with non-autonomous state and territory branches and specialty subgroups
8. www.physiotherapy.ca – Canadian Physiotherapy Association. CPA is the national professional association representing almost 10,000 members distributed throughout all provinces and territories.
9. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez – PubMed
10. www.opa.on.ca – Ontario Physiotherapy Association
11. www.physiosa.org.za – South African Society of Physiotherapy
12. www.rehab.queensu.ca – School of Rehabilitation Therapy, Queen’s University
13. www.omni.ac.uk/subject-listing/WB460.html – U.K. OMNI gateway
14. www.bcphysio.org – PABC
15. www.cirrie.buffalo.edu – Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information and Exchange – University of Buffalo
16. www.phac-aspc.gc.ca – Public Health Agency of Canada
17. www.ubc.ca – UBC
18. www.utoronto.ca – UofT
19. www.guidelines.gov – U.S. National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC), a public resource for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines.
20. bmj.bmjjournals.com – Venerable BMJ journal from UK
21. www.otseeker.com – OTseeker is a database that contains abstracts of systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials relevant to occupational therapy
22. www.cma.ca – Canadian Medical Association site
23. www.healthportal.gc.ca – The Canada Health Portal (CHP) is an internet site that provides Canadians with an authoritative and integrated view of health information and services from various government jurisdictions and organizations across Canada.
24. www.gov.bc.ca – All BC provincial government sites

More sites would be added after some evaluation process. Please do keep recommending sites!

Main Physiotherapy and Web 2.0 Quick Tips

Google Trends use in Physiotherapy 2.0

Post author By Eugene Barsky
Post date July 6, 2006
1 Comment on Google Trends use in Physiotherapy 2.0

Have you already heard about Google Trends?

Alive from mid-May 2006, Google Trends is a service that allows you to tap into Google’s database of searches, to determine what’s popular. For example, do a trends query on cars, and you can see the volume of queries over time, by city, regions, languages and so on.

In other words, it shows you search volume trends over time for a keyword or for multiple keywords.

Why you want to know about this service? Because this is a “database of intentions“, according to John Battelle, the founder of Wired magazine. This is a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes. Google Trends allows you to check the relative popularity of any search term, to look at how it has changed over the last couple years and to see the cities where the term is most popular.

How useful might it be you could ask? Well, tremendously useful! Let’s see, in this example I asked Google Trends to compare the following phrases searched on Google – physical therapy, physiotherapy, chiropractic, acupuncture, massage therapy. I wanted to see what people are searching for when they are in need for some kind of therapy.

We can see that physical therapy (the US term) and chiropractic are very competing terms during the recent few years, but when you add physiotherapy (the Canadian term) to physical therapy it is still the most searched concept. Please also note that the search volume for physical therapy / physiotherapy has not decreased during the recent few years – isn’t it a handy tool for physiotherapy lobbying?

Of course, Google Trends is not a comprehensive tool. It shows only graphs, not actual numbers, and its data is always about a month out of date, however – it is free.

Play around with this tool and see how it works for your needs, but beware – it might be addictive 🙂

How To - Technicalities Main Quick Tips

Evaluating Health Information on the Web – The very quick guide

Post author By Eugene Barsky
Post date May 29, 2006
No Comments on Evaluating Health Information on the Web – The very quick guide

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How do you know whether information on a particular website is trustworthy or correct? This is a problem many of us encounter daily. Here is the very quick guide to evaluating health information on the Web.

Always check the following:

1. Who runs the website? Check the “About Us” section to learn who is responsible for the site and its information. If this information is not listed – not good, this is a warning sign.

2. Who pays for the website? A website is an expensive endeavour. The source of website’s funding should be clearly declared. It is obvious that the source of funding can affect what content is presented. Remember that “.gov” are U.S. federal government-sponsored sites, “.edu” indicates U.S. educational institutions, “.gc.ca” indicates Canadian federal government, “.org” is often used by noncommercial organizations, and “.com” denotes commercial organizations.

3. What is the purpose of the website? “About This Site” section should clearly state the purpose of the site and help users evaluate the trustworthiness of the information on the site.

4. What is the original source of the information on the website? Many sites post information collected from other resources. If the person or organization in charge of the site did not write the material, the original source should be clearly identified.

5. How current is the information on the Web site? It is particularly important for health Web sites that medical information is current, and that the most recent update or review date be clearly posted.

6. What information about users does the Web site collect, and why? Any Web site asking users for personal information should explain exactly what the site will and will not do with the information. Please do read and understand any privacy policy or similar language on a site, and not sign up for anything you do not fully understand.

7. How is information reviewed before it is posted on the website? Health-related websites should give information about the medical credentials of the people who prepare or review the material on the website. Moreover, medical facts and figures should have references to the original research.

8. How the Web site does interact with users? There should always be a way for users to contact the Web site owners with problems, feedback, and questions.

This guide was adapted from the following publications:

• 10 Things to Know about Evaluating Medical Resources on the Web (U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine), NCCAM Publication No. D142

• How to Evaluate Health Information on the Internet (U.S. National Cancer Institute)

For more interactive information on evaluating health information on the Web, see the Flash tutorial prepared by the U.S. National Library of Medicine – Evaluating Internet Health Information: A Tutorial from the National Library of Medicine (* this tutorial requires a Flash Player)

How To - Technicalities Main Quick Tips

Quick tips – Google

I decided to add this “Quick Tips” section to our blog for those of you, who don’t really have time to go through all my rambling….:), here I will offer only the very brief tips.

Today, we will cover Google’s SITE: command. When you type this command to your search box together with your search terms, Google will restrict your search results to the site or domain you specify. Useful domains include the following – .edu (US universities), .gov (US government), .ca (Canadian content), .ac.uk (UK universities), .org (mostly NGO’s). You can also restrict your results to a site or domain through the domains selector on the Advanced Search page.

For instance, if you search Google in a usual manner for arthritis, you get approximately 86 million hits! With some .com websites coming at the tops of the list. Can you trust this information? Can you recommend it to anybody? Not always!

So, how about maybe searching information on arthritis published by the Canadian government (of course I am assuming here that you trust the information compiled by the Canadian government 🙂

So, you could type arthritis site:gc.ca into your Google search box, and this command will restrict Google to search only information on arthritis published on the Canadian Federal Government websites (which end with gc.ca)

You can see that by using this simple command we retrieve only 80,000 results and the first hits are an information sheet and a book on arthritis in Canada, published by the Public Health Agency of Canada (http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/). Reliable information, isn’t it?

Play around with the site: command and let me know how do feel about using it 🙂