Privacy vs. Data: Electronic Medical Records (EMR)

My province, British Columbia, is one of many jurisdictions currently in the process of implementing eHealth, which is basically a large scale, provincially-coordinated  implementation of the Electronic Medical Record (EMR).
And I’m gonna come out and say it: I’m a privacy advocate who is pretty much in favour of government-administrated EMRs.
(Of course, there is a catch…)
I [...]

“Fake” journals and recent CMAJ article on librarians

“Fake” Journals
In late April, when the Scientist broke the “Merck/Elsevier fake journal” story, my initial reaction was cynical surprise that this story was getting so much attention.
Honestly, we see “fake” (i.e. sponsored) journals and “fake” (i.e. ghostwritten) articles all the time. Every week.
And that’s not even mentioning the articles that are “merely” subject to gigantic [...]

Hark – PubMedCentral Canada on the horizon!

Thanks to Dean Giustini for the original heads-up on this:
In a press release titled “Canada joins international effort to provide access to health research,” the NRC (parent organization of CISTI, the de facto Canadian national library of science & medicine)

PubMed Central repository will open new pathway to Canadian health research
July 06, 2009, [...]

Canadian DTCA Charter Challenge Indefinitely Adjourned…and a tree falls in the forest

The News
In the middle of financial turbulence, potential bankruptcy, and a storm of management changes, CanWest Global has decided to seek indefinite adjournment of their court case challenging Canadian restrictions on direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs.  In summary, CanWest was alleging that the ban on certain types of DTCA was infringing on their freedom [...]

CIHR using OSS for learning modules

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) recently unveiled three knowledge translation learning modules, the first of their new CIHR Online Tutorial courses.
I don’t know much about the background or driving force behind creation of these modules, but from the website it looks like the plan is to develop learning tutorials in several categories, with [...]

Another Canadian Health Research Funder OA Policy: CHSRF

The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (CHSRF) now has an OA policy for grantees!
Apparently the Policy on Open Access to Research Outputs (FAQ here, actual policy in PDF here) went into effect in October, but perhaps it was quite a soft launch at the time, as it’s not in Sherpa JULIET funder mandate list yet [...]

Chief Public Health Officer offers CHN postmortem

Okay, who has seen this? (Non-OA)
Butler-Jones D. (2008). Streamlining How We Deliver Public Health Information Online: From CHN to PHAC. The Serials Librarian, 55 (4): 625-627. DOI: 10.1080/03615260802282559
It came to me via the CANMEDLIB listserv, so I’m sure some of you who have access to to journal have also linked into it and taken a [...]

YouTube videos on CanWest info issues

I don’t have a television, but I do love to watch stuff on my computer.  Back in the last millenium, when I did have a TV, I didn’t have cable anyway, so I am easily impressed with the amazing diversity of media to which I have access via the Internet.
As you may have noticed from [...]

Irresponsible health news reporting redux: the CBC on bone density & breast cancer

Can you stand to hear me kvetch again about irresponsible health reporting?
Today it’s the CBC (among others), whose health headline screams: Bone density level may act as predictor of breast cancer
It’s one of those articles without a byline, and the nameless reporter who penned this brief article clearly has no idea what they are [...]

DTCA 2.0 & RareShare

I know, I know, everything is “such and such 2.0” now, and it’s getting really old.  I agree!  However, this really is “2.0,” as direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of pharmaceuticals has officially moved from being all “push” media into its own special social networking universe. Check it out:
The Toronto Star called my attention to the [...]