Read the Spring 2009 issue of the NIH MedlinePlus Magazine
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/magazine/issues/spring09/toc.html

If you would like to receive this magazine email whenever a new issue is published (4 times per year), subscribe here. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/magazine/subscribe.html

• Special Section: Colorectal Cancer
• Orthopedic Health
• Headaches and Migraines
• Feature: Hepatitis
• Then & Now: Research Pays Off for All Americans / Darwin, DNA, and The Genome

http://nihseniorhealth.gov/medicare/toc.html
If you’re caring for an older friend or family member, you’ve probably had questions about Medicare, the federal health insurance program for adults 65 and older and people under age 65 with disabilities. While you may know that Medicare helps pay for medical and prescription drug costs, you may want to become more familiar with the Medicare benefits and resources available to your friend or loved one. An easy-to-read overview, “Medicare Basics for Caregivers,” is now available at NIHSeniorHealth.gov, the Web site for older adults from the National Institutes of Health. This brief, yet comprehensive introduction to Medicare gives caregivers the basics and helps them find answers to their questions. The complete NIH News Release is available online at: http://www.nih.gov/news/health/may2009/nia-13.htm

MedlinePlus Health Topic on Swine Flu
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/swineflu.html

Environmental Health and Toxicology Links on Swine Flu
http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/swineflu.html
The National Library of Medicine Division of Specialized Information Services has released an Enviro-Health Links page on Swine Flu. This page contains links to resources about the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak, including transmission, prevention, treatment, and the genetic makeup of the influenza virus.

CDC has updated travel recommendations with regard to travel to Mexico.
http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/contentSwineFluMexico.aspx

HealthMap added a page just for swine flu
http://www.healthmap.org/swineflu

MedlinePlus Search Cloud: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/cloud.html
MedlinePlus en español Search Cloud: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/spanish/cloud.html

The MedlinePlus search cloud displays the top 100 English searches, and the MedlinePlus en español search cloud displays the top 100 Spanish searches. The search clouds are linked from the MedlinePlus and MedlinePlus en español homepages.

The search clouds are usually updated every week day. The search terms appear in alphabetical order, and their size represents their relative frequency. The bigger the term, the more often it is searched by people who visit MedlinePlus. A term’s exact ranking is found by placing your cursor over the term, and you can click on any term in the search cloud to conduct a search for that term in MedlinePlus.

As the most popular searches change over time and with the seasons, visitors can see the dynamic and diverse interests of MedlinePlus users. For instance, the term “tick bites” might appear in the cloud during the summer, and the term “frostbite” might appear in the winter.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) offers Applied Informatics grants to health-related and scientific organizations that wish to optimize the utility and use of clinical and research information. These grants are for organizations that wish to exploit the capabilities of information technology to bring usable, useful biomedical knowledge to end users by translating the findings of informatics and information science research into practice through novel or enhanced systems and services. http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-LM-09-001.html

On Wednesday, April 22 at 1:00 MT, 2:00 CT for one hour - presented by Jim Honour. Tune in to see multiple  resources for drug information, such as the NLM Drug Information Portal http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/drug.html. Class includes hands-on exercises!
This online training is FREE, and requires no registration. All you need is a computer with Internet access and a phone. You’ll sign in as a guest, enter your phone number when prompted and the system will call you! Access it by going to: https://webmeeting.nih.gov/mcr

The series is targeted for the fourth Wednesday each month. And our May offering will be on May 27th, covering the Hazardous Substances Data Bank, Haz-Map, and WISER, which I will be presenting.

Friends of the National Library of Medicine
2009 Annual Conference
Personal Electronic Health Records: From Biomedical Research to People’s Health
http://www.fnlm.org
May 20 - 21, 2009
National Institutes of Health, Natcher Conference Center
9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland

https://ww2.eventrebels.com/er/Registration/LandingPageEntry.jsp?ActivityID=3759
Individual Registration - $195 (late registration May 1 at $295); Government employees complimentary

Reflecting the NIH mission, the National Library of Medicine and the non-profit Friends of the NLM have organized this conference to develop and promote new information and knowledge regarding the critical and recent developments in health information technology.  The conference is structured to offer cross-cutting perspectives from government, industry, health centers and research, and to align closely with the priorities of the current Administration around the development and widespread implementation of personal electronic health records.  Please visit http://www.fnlm.org for additional information on the conference.

Please find a selection of sessions and speakers listed below:

• Electronic Health Record and Economic Recovery David Cutler, PhD, Harvard University
• Biomedical Research and Electronic Health Record George Hripcsak, MD, MS, Columbia University
• Our Search for the Best Personal Health Electronic Health Record Alfred Spector, PhD, Google
• Health Records and Systems Interoperability Daniel S. Pelino, IBM and Dan Drawbaugh, UPMC
• Microsoft Experience with Electronic Health Records James Mault, MD, FACS, Microsoft Health Solutions Group
• Patient Access to Electronic Health Records Rich Umbdenstock, FACHE, American Hospital Association
• New Initiatives in Personalized Health Information Clement McDonald, MD, National Library of Medicine
• Ethical and Legal Issues of Personal Health Records Arthur Caplan, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
• If We Were Starting Now: What is Needed for the Electronic Health Record of the Future? Donald Lindberg, MD, National Library of Medicine

http://medlineplus.gov/
Last weekend, I spent a lot of time talking and chatting with people about health information. I was at a local health fair, and spent a morning telling people in 30 seconds or less about the great resources the National Library of Medicine has to offer, especially MedlinePlus. I was inspired by that experience and by chatting with friends online on health issues we all face in our lives and that of family members, to post this simple summary of MedlinePlus, the place to start when beginning to search for reliable trusted health information.

MedlinePlus has extensive information from the National Institutes of Health and other trusted sources on over 750 diseases and conditions. There are directories, a medical encyclopedia and a medical dictionary, easy-to-understand tutorials on common conditions, tests, and treatments, health information in Spanish, extensive information on prescription and nonprescription drugs, health information from the media, and links to thousands of clinical trials. There is no advertising on this site, nor does MedlinePlus endorse any company or product.

Take a tour of MedlinePlus and learn more about the great tools it offers in finding health information you can trust http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/tour/tour.html

From Fox Business News: A.D.A.M., Inc. today announced it has extended its relationship with the National Library of Medicine . As part of the agreement, NLM will use A.D.A.M.’s Multimedia Encyclopedia to enhance the health content on its MedlinePlus web site http://medlineplus.gov, an award-winning, free resource that brings together authoritative health information from the NLM, the National Institutes of Health,and other public agencies, and respected private health-related organizations. http://tinyurl.com/cogy36 Copyright Business Wire 2009

This tutorial teaches you about medical words. You’ll learn about how to put together parts of medical words. You’ll also find quizzes to see what you’ve learned http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/medicalwords.html