Every morning I sit down with my ice cold coke (mmmmmm...) and browse through my feeds and a few news websites looking for anything health related or medical library related. Every morning I check out the Cleveland Plain Dealer and since I am expat St. Louisian I also browse St. Louis Today (the St. Louis Post Dispatch online).

Today I happened across the article, Up-to-the-minute medicine, by Harry Jackson, on Evidence Based Medicine in the primary care physicians office. Using lap top computers and what appears to be a special EBM computer program from Purkinje, doctors are given better information and tools to decide on the best medical treatments for patients.

While I am not familiar with Purkinje, it is just another example of how busy doctors are turning more and more to technology to try and help filter through the medical information overload. The key for libraries is to get their little toe into the door of the information filter. The trick is to figure out how your hospital and doctors are getting their information. It could be through RSS feeds, email alerts, SDIs, librarian at grand rounds, or through the electronic health record(EHR). What would be very very cool is if your hospital's EHR had a spot to query the library for more information. (Since my hospital does not have EHR, I don't know if this already in some EHRs or if it is even possible, although I don't see why not.) Already Elsevier's iConsult connects FirstConsult (an EBM product) to the hospitals EHR, delivering real-time clinical decision support at the point-of-care.

In order to stay relevant librarians not only need to know how to search for Evidence Based Medicine information but also know how their doctors are finding it and using it. Only that way can we work with them to help them provide the best medical care to their patients.