Last week, I attended the National Rural Health Association Quality and Clinical Conference. The NRHA has made the handouts from the conference available at http://tinyurl.com/l48pgb. Topics include electronic health records, telemedicine, and models for rural health care. [SD]

The MCR has announced the availability of funding through its Continuity of Health Information Award. If you’ve started writing your proposal or are considering writing a proposal, attend a technical session to gain clarification of what is expected and consults on your project ideas. Claire Hamasu will review the request for proposal (RFP) explaining the different sections. You’ll then have the opportunity to describe your project to a liaison and receive feedback on what you should emphasize and other issues you may need to consider, and get advice on how to make your proposal fundable.

No registration is required. To attend you’ll need an Internet connection and a telephone. Sessions will be held at https://webmeeting.nih.gov/nnlmmcr. Sign in as a guest with your first and last name. Instructions will then follow about the phone connection. /ch

August Sessions (Additional sessions are being planned):

Wednesday Aug 5 - 2pm MT, 3pm CT

Tuesday Aug 11 - 3pm MT, 4pm CT

Last week, I attended the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) Quality and Clinical Conference in Park City, UT. At the conference, Doug Romer, Executive Director-Patient Care Services at Grande Ronde Hospital in LaGrande, OR, gave a fascinating talk and demonstration of the “remote presence” telemedicine services provided by the hospital in conjunction with various partners.

The hospital uses an inTouch RP7 robot that can be controlled remotely by physicians not located at the hospital. The robot has a monitor, camera and audio system so that the patients and remote physician can see and hear each other.

At the conference, Mr. Romer conducted a live demo of the system using the hotel’s wireless Internet access — participants were able to communicate with a patient undergoing an ultrasound and see the results of the ultrasound live. We were instructed that the patient did not want to know the sex of the baby, so to please not reveal that information when we saw the ultrasound!

To see the system in action, view the video the hospital has made available on this page: http://www.grh.org/srvTelmed.html. [SD]

TwitCam (http://www.twitcam.com) is a new free service that allows you to stream live video to your Twitter followers. You must have a Twitter account to use TwitCam.

TwitCam posts a video description and link for your Twitter followers to find your video. When you are broadcasting from your camera, you can chat with your Twitter followers directly from the broadcast page. You can also record an archive of the broadcast.

Although this is intended for live broadcast to an audience, it could also be used to create a promotional or informational video that you want others to view asynchronously.

At the moment the service has a lot of test videos as examples. It will be interesting to see the videos that are created as the service grows! [SD]

The NLM Online Users’ Meeting at the 2009 MLA annual meeting provided a preview of the upcoming PubMed redesign. David Gillikin, Chief of NLM’s Bibliographic Services will reprise this preview for anyone who did not get to attend the user meeting in Honolulu. This 15 minute presentation will review the draft design for the new search results page and abstract view presented at MLA. David will remain on the call for questions and answers. This session will be recorded for those unable to attend.

Members from 3 regions (Pacific Northwest, Pacific Southwest, MidContinental) have been invited to attend this session. Participation is limited to 125. Those who would like to attend should login early. The room will be open 15 minutes before the presentation is scheduled. Members are also encouraged to attend as a group by gathering around a workstation or projecting the presentation and using a conference phone.

When: August 11, 2009 12:30 - 1:00 MT, 1:30-2:00 CT

Where: https://webmeeting.nih.gov/nlmupdate/ Sign in as a Guest with your first and last name /ch

PHPartners is the product of a collaboration of U.S. government agencies, public health organizations and health sciences libraries. The August 26 webinar class will cover the website, which will include information on current topics such as Bioterrorism, ongoing projects such as Healthy People 2010, and public health resources including promotions and statistics.

Tune in on Wednesday, Aug. 26 at 1:00MT, 2:00CT for the MLA CE class PHPartners presented by Marty Magee.

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.

To receive Medical Library Association Continuing Education credit, you will need to attend the class, participate in the exercises and e-mail Marty Magee: mmagee@unmc.edu. An evaluation form will be sent to you to complete before the MLA CE certificate will be sent to you.

The inaugural class of Fellows in the Association of Health Care Journalists-National Library of Medicine (AHCJ-NLM) Fellowships was recently announced by AHCJ.

The Fellows, health journalists selected by AHCJ from dozens of qualified applicants, will receive training about NLM’s services and meet with physicians and researchers at NLM and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) during a weeklong visit to the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, September 13-17, 2009.

The journalists chosen to take part this year are:

• John Fauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
• Lynya Floyd, Essence Magazine
• Jeff Hansel, Rochester, Minn. Post-Bulletin
• Douglas Podolsky, Consumer Reports
• Shari Rudavsky, The Indianapolis Star
• Heidi Splete, Global Medical News Network

The Fellows will receive hands-on training on how to use and get the most from NLM’s databases, such as Pub Med, MedlinePlus, ClinicalTrials.gov, ToxNet and the Household Products Database. They will also meet with senior NLM and NIH researchers and officials for exclusive informational sessions on such topics as diabetes, infectious disease, health disparities, and personalized medicine.

“The Fellowship is designed to help health journalists obtain new stories, improve their reporting and be more resourceful,” said Robert A. Logan, PhD, NLM senior staff, who helped coordinate the program with AHCJ. “The bonus for the Fellows is better stories,” added Len Bruzzese, Executive Director of AHCJ.

“NLM welcomes the inaugural class and is pleased that the Fellows represent a wide spectrum of news organizations,” said Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD, Director of NLM.

For more information about the AHCJ-NLM fellows program, please contact Dr. Robert A. Logan at loganr@nlm.nih.gov and 301.496.1936.
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The MLA Board of Directors has approved the joint MLA/AAHSL statement, Health Sciences Librarians and Health Care Reform, which highlights the role of information and information services provided by health sciences librarians to support informed decision making to lower costs and reduce waste, improve health care quality and reduce medical errors, and enhance consumer choice. The statement will be distributed to congressional committees with jurisdiction for health care reform legislation. Watch for future announcements about grassroots advocacy initiatives as Congress moves forward with legislation. (bbj)

The Technology Liaisons presented at this July’s Breezing Along with the RML. Rebecca Brown, MCR’s Kansas and Technology Liaison, demonstrated several tips to make working with Word and PowerPoint 2007, plus Gmail more efficient (and exciting). Sharon Dennis, MCR’s Technology Coordinator, discussed three new search engines: Wolfram/Alpha, Bing, and Google Squared. She also gave a heads-up about a new Google tool coming out later this year, Google Wave. You can view the archived recording of this session at: https://webmeeting.nih.gov/p33896738/

Click here for the step-by-step instructions for Rebecca’s presentation (Word document will open).

Click here to view Rebecca’s PowerPoint presentation. (PowerPoint will open)

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The American Library Association’s (ALA) Public Information Office (PIO) has developed tools to help librarians publicize the surge in visits in their communities. This toolkit contains information that can be used or adapted by all types of libraries including hospital, academic, special or public libraries. You too can build positive public perception and support using the information provided regarding press releases, talking points. A FAQ sheet is also available at ALA PIO’s “Advocating in a Tough Economy Toolkit” site (http://http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/advocacy/advocacyuniversity/toolkit/index.cfm). (bbj)