Technology – Page 3 – Krafty Librarian

Plagiarism of Medical Text in Medical Apps

In a recent post, Timothy Aungst from iMedicalApps.com sheds more light on the trend of copying established medical textbooks and repurposing it in a medical app that they sell on iTunes. Aungst cites a recent report in BMJ, where three doctors, “Afroze Khan, Zishan Sheikh, and Shahnawaz Khan face charges of dishonesty in knowingly copying structure, contents, and material from the Doctor’s Guide to Critical Appraisal, by Narinder Gosall and Gurpal Gosall, when developing the app, representing it as their own work and seeking to make a gain from the plagiarised material.” Not only did the doctors plagiarize the text, but according to Aungst and BMJ the doctors also sought to increase their ratings within iTunes by writing reviews of their own apps without disclosing an conflict of interest.

This type of plagiarism is not new. In fact as Aungst states iMedicalApps.com Editor, Tom Lewis, discovered several apps in iTunes that plagiarized other works. (I wrote a brief post about Tom’s finding while I was on vacation last year.) I can see from Tom’s comment that while he never heard directly from Elsevier regarding the issue, YoDev apps LLC had all of their apps pulled from the App Store.

Copying and re-posting a book online or through bit torrents for free is so 2005. Welcome to the new world where plagiarizing can make you money. All you have to do is steal the content and sell it in an app. They are also sneakier than they were in 2005. They aren’t selling the app under the original book title, they are changing the name and trying to market it as something totally different. Hmm it seems requiring users to use personal logins to view the PDF is really working to curb copyright violations.

***Update***

According to an updated BMJ article, the doctors accused of plagiarizing The Doctor’s Guide to Critical Appraisal to use in their app Critical APPraisal, have been cleared of plagiarism by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.

“A regulatory panel rejected charges by the General Medical Council (GMC) that Afroze Khan, Shahnawaz Khan, and Zishan Sheikh acted dishonestly in knowingly copying structure, contents, and material from a book, The Doctor’s Guide to Critical Appraisal, when developing their Critical APPraisal app, representing it as their own work, and seeking to make a gain from the material.”

Shahnawaz Khan and Afroze Khan were also accused of dishonestly posting positive reviews of the app on the Apple iTunes Store without disclosing that they were co-developers and had a financial interest in the app. The GMC found that Shahnawaz Khan no evidence that he knew that the app, which was initiallly free, would later sold for a fee. His case was concluded without any findings. However, the GMC panel found that “Afroze Khan’s conduct in posting the review was misleading and dishonest.” Yet they considered this type of dishonesty to be “below the level that would constitute impairment of this fitness to practise.” The GMC panel said it was an isolated incident and did not believe it would be repeated in which they “considered his good character and testimonials attesting to his general probity and honesty and decided not to issue a formal warning.”

The Journal App Wars

I have doctors asking about all four journal browsing apps; Docwise, Docphin, Read, and Browzine (click links for reviews on each app. The reviews were either done by me or guest librarians who had access to the app). A few of the requesting doctors have used one of the above products, but it seems the vast majority of the doctors haven’t used any of the apps and are asking based on word of mouth.

The four apps are very similar. To me it is a bit like comparing PubMed vs Ovid Medline, both do the job well but differently. You also have people who prefer one over the other. One is free while the other is not.

The biggest difference is that three of the apps show the abstracts and tables of contents to almost every medical journal known to man (I over exaggerate of course). The full text is provided if the library/institution as a subscription to that journal. However, there is no clear branding or explannation of what journals the library/instituion owns because Docwise, Docphin, and Read don’t know. If a doctor views the table of contents for the Journal of Big Toe Science in Docwise, Docphin, or Read (which is not owned by the library), the doctor is denied the full text. Last time I checked, there was no clear message as to why they can’t get the full text. Docwise, Docphin, or Read didn’t say soemthing like, “Your library doesn’t subscribe to this journal therefore you can’t access the full text.” Docwise, Docphin, and Read do not know the library/institutions holding or access methods.

Browzine does know what the library/institution owns. Because the library submits the list (with access methods) to Third Iron (the company that owns Browzine). Browzine only shows those journals to doctors. There is no guessing as to whether it is available full text to the doctor. If it is in Browzine, it should be available full text.

Let’s pretend that my hospital library provided proxy access to resources. (Most hospital libraries don’t have proxy servers to provide access to journals or other resources.) I could have my pick of these apps to provide to my users. My question for librarians is: Do I list all four apps and let them decide what they want? I have a very strong feeling (based on 15 years of answering doctor’s library questions) that doctors are going to be complaining about Docwise, Docphin, or Read not providing the full text. After all, if the library recommended a product that connects users to the full text, shouldn’t everything be full text?

What do other libraries do? Do you list all of the apps and let the users decide? Do you worry that there might be confusion among the apps because they are so similar but slightly different? Do you worry that doctors might feel frustrated when they can’t get the full text? Would doctors even bother ordering the unavailable article (going outside of the app to do this) through the library?

I appreciate your thoughts and comments. Because sometimes I feel with these journal apps I am being asked to pick between Coke and Pepsi, Ovid and PubMed. I know the difference between them, but my users don’t. Does it matter?

Get MLA CE for Participating in #medlibs Chat

The #medlibs chat group will be hosting a five week series presented by the University of Massachusetts Medical School Lamar Soutter Library.

Here are the weekly chats:

August 15th: Host: Donna Kafel Topic: e-Science portal
August 22nd: Host: Kevin Read Topic:e-Science thesaurus
August 29th: Host: Andrew Creamer Topic: New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum
Sept. 5: Host: Sally Gore Topic: Role of the informationist on research teams
Sept. 12: Hosts: Lisa Palmer & Kate Thornhill Topic: Institutional repositoriesand open access

Discussing e-science issues on #medlibs is a great way to learn more about the topic, but the icing on the cake is that these chats have been approved for free (or near free at $5) MLA CE!

While this is a cool opportunity, there are rules for getting the CE.

No partial CE hours will be awarded.
Participation is measured by at least 3 tweets during each #medlibs chat session as shown by the chat transcript discussion AND/OR a reflective summary paragraph about the chat transcript discussion posted as a comment to each week’s blog post at http://medlibschat.blogspot.com/

In her post Nikki says that MLA pre-approved this e-science series for CE. If there are costs they would go directly MLA according to their Discussion Group Program. Nikki has graciously volunteered her time to be the convener for the program, verify participation, administer evaluations, and issue the CE.

The CE may or may not be free. If it is not free, it will be extremely cheap. It will only cost $5! Whether the CE is free or $5 will be clarified soon by MLA and announced when known.

If there is a fee for the CE, please note the following:

Participation will not be tracked or awarded to those who indicate they will only take it for free if a cost is required.
PayPal will be used to collect funds if there is a cost for CE. The convener (Nikki Dettmar) will email all participants who have indicated they will pay a cost for CE with further instructions.
If there is a cost for CE and you have not paid by the end of the series, no CE will be awarded. There will not be followup/reminder emails.

To learn more about the e-science series go to the #medlibs blog. To register for the CE go to this link.

What a great opportunity. Kudos to Nikki for all of her hard work coordinating this. Thank you to the weekly hosts. I have a lot to learn about e-science and I am going to sign up.

Friday Fun: Why I Chose a Windows Phone

Below is a guest post from my husband about his Windows Phone. A while back ago I asked him to write a post comparing the different phones he has had. He the only person I know who has had an iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Windows phone and is not working for CNET or another technology review company. He has used and lived with each of these phones at some period of time. He started with the iPhone 3G then moved to the Android. He had a Blackberry for work and now has a Galaxy S4 for his work phone. He currently has a Windows Phone as his personal phone.

He started out writing a big ol’ post comparing all of the platforms but realized lots of people have already done that, so why reinvent the wheel. It was after some good natured teasing I gave him about his Windows phone that he decided to write his post about his phone.

So enjoy your Friday Fun guest post and maybe it might get you thinking about a Windows phone. I have to admit, as much as I tease him, he is right about the Office capabilities being a big plus.

—–
My name is Mike and I am a Windows Phone user.

Yes, I know. There are actually some of us out there and believe it or not, we really do like it. Alot.

It was a long winding path to get here, over the iOS river and through the Android woods. I won’t bore you with the details but I have had plenty of exposure to both of the major platforms through personal and work devices.

Using Apple products has always felt to me like I’m living in a subdivision with an overzealous homeowners’ assocation. It’s very clean and everything works but God help me if I want to put up non-sactioned Christmas lights or change the flag on my mailbox.

I won’t even mention iTunes. I’m still seeing a therapist over that.

When I went to Android it was for the promise of the exact opposite of the iPhone experience. Open, free, do whatever you want. It was the Summer of Love all over again.

But the more time I spent within that user interface, the jarring transitions from one app to another and the inconsistent overall delivery of the experience, it began to feel more and more that I had taken the brown acid and was in for a bad trip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKoLlKmQSHU

The app quality and overall safety itself wasn’t exactly what I had in mind either. Downloading something from the Google app store felt like the smartphone version of the Russian roulette scene from The Deerhunter.

It was at my moment of greatest smartphone despair that I found myself at an AT&T store and face to face with a Nokia Lumia. What do I have to lose? I told my then five year old son to stand still and try and be quiet while I tried something. While he went and did the total opposite of that I took the phone for a test drive.

I work for a software company so I have used countless numbers of different programs on different platforms over the course of my career. The Windows Phone UI was one of the simplist, most intuitive I had ever used.

Even using one hand and half my brain to try and corral a kid who was going Dennis the Menace inside the store, I effortlessly moved through the interface. I read (fake) e-mail and text messages, did a quick Google search and was even able to take a photo of my son hiding behind the Samsung Galaxy Note display (thanks to the dedicated camera button on the side).

The more I used it and the more I read about it, it was like having the best of both worlds. The live tiles and the Metro (Modern UI) interface gave every app a uniform sameness but yet there was a freedom to change and different ways to view and do things. It was like the hippies had grown up, moved into the subdivision, and gotten rid of the rules but still kept their lawns mowed at a reasonable height.

The first time I emailed myself a couple of Word documents and an Excel spreadsheet for a meeting and they opened without so much as a single glitch I almost cried.

Even the physical qualities were to my taste. I like a little heft to my phone, something that doesn’t feel like it will fly out of my hand as soon as I pull it out of my pocket. For example, my two year old daughter’s pink barrettes feel sturdier than the Galaxy S4 I use for work.

I could go on and on (and maybe I will if the Krafty Librarian gets lazy and needs me to fill up more space). If you find yourself in the smartphone doldrums like I was, I highly recommend you at least pick one up and give it a try.

Or you might just be happier like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19vR1GldRI

The Doctor’s Instagram

The app Figure 1 has been getting a lot of press recently. I learned about it a few weeks ago but I am just now getting around to mentioning it here.

Figure 1 is being called the Instagram for doctors. It is a crowdsourced images database app. The crowd happens to be doctors, and the images happen to be medical images. The app is a collection of medical images submitted by doctors to share, collaborate and learn from. Doctors are verified using their institutional email address. The app takes patient privacy very seriously. It has a face detection program that automatically blocks out the face in a submitted photo and it includes other editing tools to remove other identifying features. A HIPPA authorization digital consent form is also included. Patients click the agree button then sign screen/form.

You don’t have submit any images to benefit from the app according to their site. “First of all, you can still access the images that others are posting so that you can learn from them, use them as a reference for your own practice, or comment on them so that others can learn from you.”

David Ahn at iMedicalApps posted a great review describing the positives and negatives of this novel app. He notes some of the limitations of the app are the indexing of the images and lack of identifying information. Ahn discovered upon doing a search for heliotrope rash that the first seven results were “clearly not a heliotrope rash.” As librarians know, indexing images is tricky. Ahn noted Figure 1 also pulls images from outside medical websites (non-user submitted images) and a link to the website instead of the submitter’s name is listed. However the outside images have “no captions, markings, or even any clear diagnosis listed.” Besides the obvious problems with lack of identifying information, Figure 1 displays user submitted images before web scraped images. As Ahn illustrated with the heliotrope rash, this can cause problems because the correct image (scraped from the web) was buried below the 7 incorrect ones (user submitted ones).

Additionally, I find doctors not only want to see and share images, but they often want to include them in presentations and slides for teaching purposes. Right now you can only share the images through the app. Emailing a colleague an image gives them a simple email (below) requiring them to use Figure 1 to see the image. Making it so Figure 1 images can be used in presentations would make this Instagram like app even more useful to doctors and medical professionals.

This is a very new app. It appears they launched in May 2013, so it isn’t surprising that there is some room for improvement. I don’t know of any products or apps that are perfect 3 months from their launch. Yet as of today, it is the 5th most downloaded app in the Medical category of iTunes and according the MedicalApps post, the app is outpacing Landy’s projections. So, given its popularity I expect to see some improvements relatively soon.

What I found to be interesting was Dr. Landy describing to Ahn his reason for creating this app.

Dr. Landy wondered how he could quickly access a medical image database to assist in identifying new clinical pathologies. This question eventually led him to create Figure 1. Like many physicians, he was not satisfied with the paywalls of private medical image libraries or with Google Images’ lack of medical selectivity.

Furthermore, when it came to sharing medical images with his peers, he found e-mail inefficient, as images would often get drowned out amidst ballooning inboxes. As a result, he helped create Figure 1, a free, crowdsourced medical image sharing resource that is quickly and easily accessible for health care practitioners.

Finding good medical images has always been a booger, and Dr. Landy is right about the frustrations of pay walls. I would extend it a bit further to say that not only is the paywall part is a barrier to finding medical images, but the siloed nature of these medical image sites is a massive barrier as well. Even if somebody has paid for these medical image sites, there is no repository or online catalog of all the image packages bought from different companies. That makes searching for images difficult even if you paid for them.

I am curious to see how Figure 1 evolves and what impact it will have on doctors finding images. I am also curious to see how/if subscription companies with medical image silos might adapt as a result of apps like Figure 1.

Brief Summary of Google Glass in Medicine

Google is letting several people “play” with Google Glass. I know of two people at my institution who are trying it out. Since I don’t have Google Glass(es) and I don’t have a real need for them right now other than playing with them and obsessively worrying about breaking them (there is a reason I buy cheap sunglasses). I thought I would summarize some of things the medical/technical people testing Glass have said.

John Sharp at eHealth
John works at the Cleveland Clinic. He had three days with Google Glass and his thoughts are:

Voice command takes some getting used to
Menu gets some getting used to
Nice to be hands free browsing, taking videos/photos -camera quality excellent
Possiblity for healthcare – Physicians receive alert on patients lab results via Glass
Network access for surfing is currently problematic. Need an available wireless network or an open network that does not require authentication. Alternative is to connect using your phone’s bluetooth (wifi) or enable your phone as a wireless hotspot (dataplan!)
Messages are alerts are short and limited text to fit on tiny screen/glass
Permissions/privacy concerns because you don’t know somebody is filming using Glass

John Halamka at Life As a CIO
Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center briefly describes Google Glass and how it works and lists 5 potential uses.

Google Glass basics: (He calls it basically an Android cell phone without the cellular transmitter.)
Can run Android apps (Krafty thought: Candy Crush andyone?)
Videos displayed at half HD resolution
Sound uses bone conduction only wearer can hear it (Krafty note: I am very familiar with this method, there is an underwater MP3 player that uses the same technology.)
Has motion sensitive accelerometer for gestural commands
Right temple is touch pad but also has microphone for voice commands
Battery lasts about a day

Potential uses:

Meaningful Use Stage 2 for hospitals- Screen shows picture of patient and medication on Glass to nurse who is about to administer the drug to ensure that she has correct patient and medication. (Krafty thought: The movie Terminator is coming to mind and I can imagine the the nurse “scanning the room” and it flashes on patient and does face recognition with ID bracelet confirmation then scans the barcode of the medication and gives a green screen if it is right or red screen if it is wrong. But according to this post facial recognition apps are currently banned.)
Clinical documentation – provide real time video of the patient/doctor encounter.
Emergency Department Dashboards – ER doc puts on Google Glass and looks at patient and it does a “tricorder” like scan of patient providing vital signs, triage details, nurse documentation, lab results, etc. John states “At BIDMC, we hope to pilot such an application this year.” (Krafty thought: Dude that is the Terminator screen up display that I am thinking of.)
Decision Support – Google glass would retrieve the appropriate decision support for the patient in question and visually sees a decision tree that incorporates optimal doses of medications, the EKG of the patient, and vital signs.
Alerts and Reminders – Communication, emails, phone calls, calendar, etc.

Timothy Aungst and Iltifat Husain at iMedicalApps
I can’t tell from the post whether they tried one out or whether they were just coming up with usage scenarios. They provides a lot of scenarios (too many to list here) so I just thought I would mention a few that I think stand out. There is also a lively discussion in the comments section.

EMS Responder at an accident has Google Glass on and transmits live stream to ER department status of patients and the traumas for each patient enabling the ER to better prepare for the patients upon arrival.
A cardiologist in a cath lab overlays the fluoroscopy as they perform a femoral catheterization for a patient with a recent myocardial infarct.
A physical therapist can see past sessions with a patient from previous recordings, overlaying their current range of motion, identifying changes as well as progression.
Any healthcare professional could walk up to a patient’s bed and instantly see all their vitals such as pulse, BP, O2 Sats, etc.

Dr. Rafael Grossmann @ZGJR Blog
Has several very interesting posts on his current use of Google Glass treatpatients. He is not only using it in medical scenarios but also with real patients.

CPRGLASS, THE AUGMENTED REALITY APP THAT CAN HELP YOU SAVE A LIFE Creating apps such as a CPR app or other medical education videos and procedures.
“OK GLASS:..TEACH ME MEDICINE!” -Used a medical simulator mannequin for emergency and medical treatment scenarios, to show the potential of Google Glass in Medical Education.
“OK GLASS: HAND ME THE SCALPEL, PLEASE…” GOOGLEGLASS DURING SURGERY! -Using Glass during surgery with a real patient and streamed of non-identifying patient information thru a Google Glass Hang-Out.

There are a lot of people in library land writing posts about Google Glass and its potential impact on libraries. I don’t know of a librarian who has tried them (if there is one let me know) and asside from iMedicalApps I chose to focus on those who have actually tried them. A future post will look at the potential of Google Glass in libraries.

After Google Reader: Feedly & Digg Readers

People who have been using Google Reader have been scrambling to find an adequate solution to replace their beloved feed reader. Back in March, I wrote post on reader options for those looking to migrate before the end of Google Reader. I never really got into the Google Reader. I was a Bloglines girl who threw all of her feeds to Google Reader in a panic just before Bloglines disappeared. In months following the Bloglines blow up, I settled on Netvibes. At the time, I liked Netvibes integration with my social media and feeds. As I mentioned in my post in March, I haven’t been reading my Netvibes as much as I used to. While I liked Netvibes, something was missing. I suspected it was because it didn’t have an app, but now I think it was a combination of things.

When Google decided to pull the plug on its reader I decided to investigate different feed readers again to determine if I found one better than Netvibes or if I really even needed a reader now. These days I get a lot of my information from Twitter and to a lesser extent Facebook. People are tweeting their blog posts, or interesting questions, topics, issues, etc. and I wondered whether my social media feeds caused me to move beyond a feed reader. This is kind of the same thing Marcela De Vivo at Search Engine Journal wondered with her post, “Google Reader Is Almost Gone, But Do You Really NEED An RSS Reader Replacement?”

Could it be that Google is transitioning away from the RSS Reader format entirely? They’re switching over to Google Plus, and they want you to come with them.

Consuming social media as part of an RSS feed is not exactly new—that’s exactly what Digg is doing when it launches its own reader, the same day Reader shuts down. But to do away with readers entirely, relying solely on a social platform? When we’re looking at large-scale data consumption, is it a viable transition?

The answer is yes—if Google can pull it off. With the latest Google Plus redesign, this social platform is now much more social, making it easier to stream and share information. It could be possible to amass “feeds” of information… if you’re following the right people. And in order to make sure the right people are on Plus, Google got rid of it’s eminently popular Reader.

It could also be said that Google is simply following on the heels of a major trend in how we access information. RSS readers were designed for people to sit down and browse their collected feeds. But with the increasing number of those who use smartphones and tablets as their primary internet checkpoint, it’s more common to see people who are accessing information all day long, checking the latest news on a constant basis—which makes an integrated social media/reader platform much more probable option.

It is an interesting concept. Right now I only use Google Plus for work at my institution. (The Department of Education is exploring its use for connecting and sharing within the department and increasing synergy.) I play on it a bit for personal and library stuff, but I just haven’t gotten into it yet. Maybe Google knows me better than I do, and Google Plus will be attached to my hip in a year’s time. I remember saying years ago that Twitter was fun but I couldn’t think of using it professionally. Doh!

In the meantime I have not yet given up my feeds. I decided to explore Feedly. I don’t like the fact that Feedly doesn’t work with IE. I know everybody talks about IE’s decline in the browser wars but the problem is that many major hospitals and larger companies use only IE. Academia and the open natured technology industry have the flexibility to shun IE in favor of other browsers, but there is a large group of the working population that can’t. I am not the only one who reads feeds at work, Feedly’s suggestions page has many comments on the IE issue. Apparently the new Feedly Cloud feature might help IE users, but there are those on the suggestions page that seem to have problems with Cloud.

Now I am lucky in that I am able to use Firefox and Chrome on my work computer. However, because there are a lot of hospital resources and other web resources that were created specifically for IE, it tends to be my browser of habit at work. I noticed I am breaking that habit slowly. I have Chrome up almost all the time for two reasons. 1. Our the Department of Education is exploring the use of Google Plus. 2. My life is on Google Calendar and I need to consult it often.

One of the nice things about Feedly is that it integrates very well with Chrome. As soon as I launch Chrome the Feedly tab launches with my feeds. This is actually is quite helpful to me and works perfectly with my morning current awareness reading habit. When I login to my computer each morning the first thing I do is bring up Chrome for my calendar, so the Feedly tab with my feeds is right there too. This has gotten me back into the habit of reading my feeds.

Feedly has an app and it is on my iPhone, but like Marcela mentioned, it is a bit clunky. I don’t use Feedly on my phone as much as I thought. I still use it more than I used Netvibes, mainly because it is an app on my phone. I have found that on my phone Feedly has to compete for my attention among my other apps. I tend to use apps that have the alert icons on more than the ones that don’t. Because Feedly doesn’t have alerts showing up on the icon, it often gets ignored for other apps like Facebook, Hootsuite, mail, Words with Friends, news apps, etc. that all have alerts. I see a little red number next to those apps and my brain says, “Ooh what’s new that I need to know about?” I know I am easily distracted.

I have pretty much left Netvibes, it just didn’t fit into my work flow anymore. I have moved to Feedly and while I am using it more than I used Netvibes, the jury is still out as to whether I keep it or move to only get information through Twitter. Intellectually I am not ready for that kind of switch, but we’ll see if my daily life’s actions tell me otherwise.

For those that don’t like any of the options I mentioned in March, Digg is creating a reader that might interest you. They are certainly cutting it close, as they mentioned on their blog, their public release of version 1 will come just before Google shuts Reader down. Currently they sent out their first batch of invites to the survey participants who helped with their development process. “Over the next few hours”, they’ll open Digg Reader to the rest of the users signed up for early access. If you want to try Digg you can sign up here: digg.com/reader. As they scale up over the next day or so, they’ll be adding users in increasingly larger batches. According to Digg, “this beta version is aimed first and foremost at Google Reader users looking for a new home in advance of its imminent shutdown.” They have instructions on how to migrate from Google to Digg.

As they mentioned the beta version is very basic but they have plans to really improve it in updates.

Things Digg will be rolling out in the next few months include:

Search
Android app (before end of July)
Additional options like “View Only Unread” and “Mark As Unread”
Useful ways to rank and sort your posts and stories, such as (1) by popularity within your social networks, (2) by interestingness to you, and (3) by article length
Better tools for organizing feeds and folders, as well as support for tagging
More options for sharing and sending (e.g., to LinkedIn, Google+, WordPress, Tumblr, Squarespace, Evernote, Dropbox, Buffer), and integration of IFTTT functions
Browser extension and/or bookmarklet
Ability to import and export your data
Uber for cronuts

After reading more about Digg, it looks like I am going to have to check it out. However, I am going to wait a bit. I don’t need to jump Feedly’s ship just yet and the things I am interested in are not in the product yet. Still it is interesting.

Meaningful Use Stage 2: Can Librarians Help?

A colleague tweeted this article, “Are Physicians Truly Engaging with their Patients? by Nancy Finn” about physicians, EMRs and meaningful use. According to the article, “as of March, 2013, 160,890 eligible professionals had received Medicare incentive payments and 83,765 professionals had received Medicaid incentive payments” for achieving stage 1 one meaningful use. While they were able to achieve stage 1, are they ready for stage 2? How are they changing their practice patterns to achieve stage 2?

The article states stage 2 requirements are:

Provide patients with their health information (via a web portal) on 50% of occasions and have at least 5% of these patients actually download, view or transmit that data to a third party.
Provide a summary of the care record for 50% of transitions of care during referral or transfer of patient care settings.
Provide patient-specific education resources identified by Certified EHR technology to more than 10% of patients with an office visit.
Engage in secure messaging to communicate with patients on relevant health information.
Make available all imaging results through certified EHR technology.
Provide clinical summaries to more than 50% of patients within one business day.

Finn wonders if “a majority of physicians remain steadfast in dominating the physician/patient relationship, convinced that engaging patients in their care is a burden? Or are many of them beginning to realize that engaging the patient in their health care decisions will make health care more efficient and cost effective, and improve patient outcomes?”

The librarian in me wonders if there are ways we can help physicians meet stage 2 requirements. I know with EPIC a physician can send a request for a librarian to provide patient education information to the patient through their portal. I know specifically of one librarian who got a message in Epic to do that. She logged in, provide links and contact information to appropriate free patient ed resources to the patient. The patient got the information through My Chart and was so happy that she emailed the librarian thanking her for the information. Another nice thing about this patient ed transaction, EPIC noted that patient education information was sent to the patient and included that in her chart for the doctor to see.

I’m not trying to say that doctors shouldn’t help provide patient education information, but I also know that in a hospital environment things can be hectic, confusing, scary, etc. for the patient. They may have gotten information from the doctor but not understood it or wanted more detailed information. Using the librarian to provide patient education material through EPIC (and EPIC notes that it was provided) has got to help both doctors and patients.

Are there other ways that librarians can help doctors and their institutions meet stage 2 requirements? Please comment with your ideas.

Alternatives to Google Reader

I know I am a bit late with the news that Google is killing Google Reader. I know lots of people who are upset about this. For me the sky started falling back when Bloglines died. Back then I migrated all of my feeds to Netvibes. I could have gone the Google Reader route, but I just didn’t quite like Reader as much as Netvibes. So while my feeds were both in Reader and Netvibes, I used Netvibes more.

For all of you Readers, you are probably wondering what you are going to do with your feeds. First, let me tell you this is a really good time to evaluate and weed your feeds. You also might want to evaluate if you still need a reader. I have noticed that I have been using my reader less and less. I don’t know if it is because of my personal and professional life changes and time constraints have made reading my feeds more difficult or if it is because I am getting my more of my news from Twitter. I have noticed with my adoption of TweetDeck (and Hootsuite iPhone) for monitoring tweets, my reader use has dropped. I have debated about dropping my feeds altogether. But old habits die hard.

So if you still need a reader then you might want to check out a few of these sites to see if they suit you.

Netvibes – It has a free and premium version. Free is all you need and has plenty of features Has very good social media integration. Makes tweeting or facebooking blog posts and other feed items very easy. I still recommend using TweetDeck or Hootsuite for monitoring Twitter overall. It doesn’t have an app, but is mobile optimized but that has limited features. Perhaps that is why I don’t use it as much. As my husband will tell you, if it isn’t on my phone, it isn’t on my mind.

The Old Reader – Is free. Is designed to look and feel like old Google Reader, so if you liked that style, it might be the perfect option for you. You can also follow other Old Reader users and share with them, similar to Google Reader. They don’t have a mobile app but are supposedly working on one. It is looks fine on a mobile device.

Feedly – Is free and has been around for quite a while. Bad news for IE controlled institutions, Feedly doesn’t work with IE. It only works with Firefox and Chrome. It also requires you to install a plug in and if you have a locked down computer, it won’t work for you. It too is a social media tool that easily lets you share things with your social network friends. There are several layouts that are available for you to choose from. They have the straight top to bottom feed style , full articles, or the Flipboard style. Easy to transfer feeds from Reader, in fact I signed in using my Google ID and everything migrated seamlessly. Feedly does have an app for iOS and Android. With demise of Reader there are quite a few upset people posting to the Feedly board about the lack of IE use. There are many more people with companies that force IE use than just hospitals.

NewsBlur – Premium version costs $24/yr. They have a free version but it caps the number of blogs, stories and public sharing options. The blog and stories cap is the deal killer for me. It caps you at 64 blogs and 10 stories at a time. Additionally they have temporarily stopped free users from signing up. Ptthhbbb. I normally wouldn’t even mention them (I didn’t link them) but since other sites are recommending them, I felt obligated to at least mention them with their fees and stopping free user registration. Stupid considering this the time to grab users leaving Reader. Once they find a reader they won’t magically switch unless forced to. Very short sighted of them and makes me thing even less of them.

While I wasn’t using Reader, I also dialed back my Netvibes reading considerably. So instead of worrying about my Reader feeds from Google, I am going to take this time to investigate whether I even need a reader anymore by investigating Feedly. I am not a big fan of the Flipboard style of things but that is no big deal because I can use the plain ol’ reader style. While I like Netvibes, clearly I evolved beyond it for some reason. My guess is because it doesn’t have an app. That is why I am giving Feedly a try. I am going to see if having my feeds synced to an app on my phone increases my use of them. I am lucky to be able to have Firefox on my computer, but I rarely use it since much of our hospital stuff is IE. So the whole Feedly experiment will be interesting to me.