The New Alchemist

Introduction

Started as an information resource project for pharmacy students, The New Alchemist now focuses on new technologies and resources aimed at improving the ability of health care professionals to retrieve information relative to drug utilization, medication management, patient care, and continuing professional education.

The purpose of this site is not to replace or compete with established online references or resources in the health care information field, but rather to focus on leading-edge technologies, improved search engines and indexes, and various tools that the user may find useful in his/her role as an information specialist. Material will be updated monthly, and comments and suggestions are welcome (see Contacts).

The author or his agents are in no way compensated for the views expressed on this site. This site does not host any form of advertisement (other than providing URLs and widgets) nor does it derive any income from third party advertising. Funding for this project is derived solely from personal assets of the author.

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Emerging Technologies

• Veterans to Create World's Largest Medical Database:  The Million Veteran Program is building a huge database with both medical histories and blood sample analyses from 1 million U.S. veterans. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has been collecting such data for more than two decades and will be de-identifying the data so that it can be used for medical research.
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• Pharmacists' Role Critical to Patient Safety: "Partnership for Patients: Collaborations to Improve Safety and Care Transitions" was featured as a podium presentation at the American Society of Health System Pharmacists 46th Midyear Clinical Meeting & Exhibition, the largest international gathering of pharmacists focusing on improving patient care, held December 4 to 8, 2011, in New Orleans, LA. To find out more about improving safety and healthcare transitions, Medscape Medical News interviewed Brian J. Isetts, PhD, BCPS, a professor at the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy in Minneapolis. He is currently on sabbatical and is serving as a health policy fellow for the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation in Baltimore, Maryland.
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• Website Helps Researchers Recruit Study Participants: The task of finding and recruiting the right participants for research trials has recently improved with the launch of ResearchMatch, an onlne patient registration system that matches volunteers with researchers looking to enroll qualified participants into their clinical trials. Developed by the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) organization in 2009, the tool now contains a greatly expanded database of participants and research organizations, a new set of selection and recruiting tools for researchers, and promotional material to assist research organizations in reaching out to potential patients.
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• National Library of Medicine Launches MedlinePlus Connect: Fomally launched last month, this free service from the NLM allows health information organizations and information technology providers to link patient portals and electronic health record (EMR) systems to MedlinePlus, a trusted source of authoritative, up-to-date health information for patients, families, and health care providers. Using a special URL encoding system, similar to the Entrez query system using in Medline database searches and using common coding standards already in place (e.g., ICD-9, SNOMED, RxCUI, NDC, LOINC), any health IT system or service can build patient parameter-specific links to a variety of health topics maintained by the NLM and made freely available to patients and providers.
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• On-Demand Medical Records for On-the-Go Patients: KARE Information Services (KIS) has developed a new and exciting medical resource, a service created to provide to any individual their medical records information upon request. Through this extremely effective service, KIS Electronic Health Records (KIS-EHR) can provide the single most important source of information, your medical records, 24 hours a day, any place you need. KIS-EHR was developed by Martin H. Orens M.D.,FACEP, an emergency room physician, to better serve patients, and empower them to provide their lifesaving and often critically important medical information, regardless of their status. Orens describes the service as a "hybrid" system - a little bit personal health record and a little bit emergency medical record.
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• PubMed Mobile Beta Goes Live: The current beta release of PubMed Mobile from NLM is available at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/ and features a simplified mobile device-friendly web interface for searching PubMed and includes all the standard fields and display options as well as options for sharing abstracts and search strategies. See the National Library of Medicine's announcement at
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• FDA Deploys Sentinel Active Surveillance System: A national electronic system that will transform FDA's ability to track the safety of drugs, biologics, medical devices is now on the horizon. Launched in May 2008 by FDA, the Sentinel Initiative aims to develop and implement a proactive system that will complement existing systems that the Agency has in place to track reports of adverse events linked to the use of its regulated products. The Sentinel System would enable FDA to actively query diverse automated healthcare data holders to evaluate possible medical product safety issues quickly and securely. Sentinel will be developed and implemented in stages. As the system is envisioned, data would continue to be managed by its owners and questions would be sent to the participating data holders. Within pre-established privacy and security safeguards, these data holders would evaluate their information and send summary results to FDA. It is also anticipated that Sentinel will facilitate the development of active surveillance methodologies related to signal detection, strengthening, and validation
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• Quertle: The Conceptual Relationships Alternative Search Engine for PubMed: Created by two biomedical professionals to pinpoint the most relevant citations for their research, Quertle is based on citation relationships, sentence diagrams, and conceptual mappings of the PubMed database. Searching works particularly well for queries that do not have a Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) equivalent. Citations are displayed with several format options including full PDF files available via Pubget, NLM's new document access interface that can provide links to journal subscriptions licensed by the user's institution. The search engine is free but does include occasional sponsoring ads
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• The National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) have been providing consumer health classes throughout the country, reflecting the NN/LM's commitment to providing Consumer Health Outreach programs as part of its' mission. Many courses carry continuing education credit, and are offered online as well as face-to-face. For more information, please go to www.nnlm.gov, click on the appropriate region, and then on to Training and Educational Opportunities.
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New and Improved

• The NABP Continuing Pharmacy Education (CPE) Monitor System: The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) has recently announced changes to the reporting of continuing pharmacy education (CPE) for both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. The CPE Monitor Service will launch late in 2011. CPE Monitor is a national, collaborative effort by NABP and the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) that will provide an electronic system for tracking of CPE credits. Medscape spoke with Carmen Catizone, RPh, DPh, Executive Director of NABP, about this new program and its implications for pharmacy professionals.
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• PharmGuide is a new project from the Pharmacy and Drug Information Section of the Medical Library Association (MLA). PharmGuide is intended to help librarians quickly identify the best free resource to answer the most common drug information questions.
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• Medicines in My Home (MIMH) is a multimedia educational program to teach consumers from adolescence through adulthood how to choose over-the-counter medicines and use them safely. "Rooms" of the program contain presentations, print materials, and resources that teachers, students, and adults can use online or download. Be sure to visit the newest room, the Interactive Home video presentation.
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• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Launches Web Site to Help Patients Compare Local Hospitals and Physicians: In every community, both good and bad health care is being delivered in doctor's offices and hospitals. Measuring and publicly reporting on the quality and cost of care physicians and hospitals provide is crucial to improving the quality and lowering the costs of health care nationwide. This new online resource, including a map-based listing of health care "performance measurement" resources available across the country, allows patients to review data on physicians and hospitals in their communities, provide feedback, and choose providers based on real patient experiences and actual care outcomes.
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• The Pharmacy and Provider ePrescribing Experience Reporting Portal (PEER), developed in conjunction with the PQC™ continuous quality improvement program, collects your experiences with e-prescribing technologies in a confidential manner. All comments – whether suggestions for improvement or complaints about the process – are welcome. The purpose is to allow the Alliance for Patient Medication Safety (APMS), a patient safety organization, to gather detailed information that may be used to improve the quality and effectiveness of electronic prescribing technologies. The PEER worksheet can be downloaded for offline completion and there is an FAQ available with additional information and instructions
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• CLIC-on-Health from the Rochester (NY) Regional Library Council is a collaboration of hospital, public and school librarians, in order to provide all the people of the greater Rochester (NY) area with the high-quality healthcare information and resources they need to make wise lifestyle and healthcare choices. The project features websites and RSS feeds from reliable, up-to-date websites (those following the Health on the Net Foundation guidelines for authoritative content), information on medical and healthcare providers in the Rochester region, and training in the use of health information on the Internet
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• Changing the 'One Size Fits All' Approach to Online Health: A newly launched website called HealthTap offers patients the same personalized experience they have come to expect from popular interactive sites such as Pandora, Mint, and Netflix. HealthTap presents users with physician-validated health content based on their own health profile (created when the user first registers) and on the types of information they have retrieved during previous online sessions. HealthTap will also offer a referral link that physicians can give their patients or post on their own professional/practice web sites
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• My NCBI Redesign: The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is pleased to announce that an improved user interface will be released for My NCBI. The new interface will eliminate complexities and provide a streamlined interface, robust performance, and intuitive navigation. The most visually significant enhancement is that all functions are viewed directly from the My NCBI homepage, where they are made readily accessible for set up and customization.
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• HathiTrust Collection Integrates Digital Books Into Academic Libraries: Debuting in 2008, HathiTrust's origin was an effort led by the University of Michigan and the University of California library system to provide a systematic and controlled means of storing, managing, and discovering the millions of scanned books created by the Google Books Project. The Trust currently contains over 7.6 million volumes with some 1.8 million volumes in the public domain. The database is fully searchable and contains links to OCLC's WorldCat online catalog for locating copies of the books at other libraries.
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• The Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) has recently redesigned its website to provide reliable, science-based facts on dietary supplements; news and events; resources for researchers; and information about the composition and function of supplements. Its facts sheets, including a series of QuickFacts, are available in version designed for the health professional and for the consumer.
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• The AMA's Atlas of the Human Body is a helpful patient education resource published by the American Medical Association. It provides clear, colorful, and effective diagrams of the human torso, brain, and ear, as well as the circulatory, endocrine, female reproductive, nervous, and respiratory systems. The diagrams are accompanied by explanatory notes.
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