4. Biomedical
Information Services Provided by NIC
Introduction:
Tremendous growth of literature, both printed and electronics, in
the areas of biomedicine and health sciences and innovation of modern
technologies as a tool of information storage and retrieval are leading to the
new concepts in the evolution of medical libraries. The last twenty years have
been marked by tremendous advances in computer storage, together with
improvements in telecommunication methods. There has been a considerable
increase in the quantum of electronic information available in the form of
full-text documents, bibliographic references, and factual data. These have led
to revolutionary changes in ways of storing ad handling information systems
containing hundreds of databases, electronic journals, electronic knowledge
banks etc. and ultimately there has been profound change among the medical
professionals in the demand for information, in order to keep them abreast with
the latest developments.
Recognizing the needs for making biomedical information to the
medical community of India National Informatics Centre and Indian Council of
Medical Research jointly set up the ICMR-NIC Centre for Biomedical Information
in 1986. The primary goal of the Centre was to meet the information needs of the
medical professionals in India from the MEDLARS (Medical Literature Analysis and
Retrieval) databases of NLM, USA. The Centre provides information from the
MEDLARS databases as well as various biomedical resources, accessible over
Internet, to the users in the country. In 1990, the Centre came to be recognized
as the 17th International MEDLARS Centre (IMC).
MEDLARS has
over 40 databases. The subjects range from clinical medicine, oncology,
population, dentistry, toxicology to nursing. These database are accessible
through the Internet, free of cost. Important amongst these are MEDLINE,
AIDSLINE, AIDSDRUGS, AIDSTRIALS, TOXLINE, CANCERLIT, POPLINE, BIOETHICS,
Clinical Alerts. MEDLINE, a bibliographic database, is the computerized version
of Index Medicus covering 3900 core biomedical periodicals from over 70
countries. The database, with over 9 million citations, includes journals from
1966 onwards and also has journals found in International Nursing Index and
Index to Dental Literature.
IndMed
Database: There has been very poor representation of Indian
journals in various international databases. There are only 23 Indian journals
included in the Medline database out of 3900 international journals. This has
created an “information gap” in the medical field depriving the users of the
benefit the research work being conducted in India. To fill this gap indigenous
database viz. IndMed comprising of Indian biomedical journals developed at the
centre consisting of 75 journals selected by a committee of prominent editors of
the journals in the country. This database has been developed in the lines of
Medline database and can be accessed from the website: http://indmed.nic.in.
Earlier databases covering Indian literature in the fields of Neurology,
Cancer, Tuberculosis and Population developed by Nimhans, Bangalore; KMIO,
Bangalore; TRC, Chennai and IMC respectively were also included in IndMed.
CD-ROM
Databases
IMC also has
library of Biomedical CD-ROM databases from which information is retrieved and
provided to the users on demand. Some of the CD-ROM databases available are:
AMED Allied and
Complementary Medicine -subjects covered include acupuncture, terminal care,
symptom control, osteopathy, Chinese medicine, homeopathy, rehabilitation,
occupational therapy, chiropractic, holistic treatments and podiatry.
CANCER-CD - presents comprehensive coverage
of published literature in cancer and cancer related subjects.
COCHRANE DATABASE - Database of Systemic
Reviews, published by the Cochrane Collaboration and Best Evidence, a database
containing publications from American College of Physicians (ACP) Journal Club.
Both these databases are full-text and offer systematic reviews of current
medical research.
Drug Information
Full-text/IPA - combines the American Society of Health-System
Pharmacists’ Drug Information Full-text with their International
Pharmaceutical Abstracts. The information covered includes all information on
drugs, ethics, healthcare, pharmacology, side effects and toxicology.
MICROMEDEX - Computerized Clinical
Information System (CCIS) - collection of critically evaluated, fully
referenced, current, full-text medical information consisting of a number of
information systems, each dedicated to a different area of specialties.
PASCAL BIOMED -as a unique
multi-disciplinary and multi-lingual database, it serves as a complement to the
MEDLINE database, with special emphasis on European literature.
PATIENT EDUCATION LIBRARY - this library is
a comprehensive collection of full text patient information covering over 2,000
topics. It includes information on infant, child and adolescence health,
women’s health, and adult health and senior health.
POPLINE - a unique source of information on
population, family planning programs, population law, maternal and child health,
population and environment and other related health issues.
PsycLIT- presents comprehensive information
on psychology and related subjects. It includes behavioral information from
other fields like sociology, linguistics, medicine, law, physiology, business,
psychiatry and anthropology.
Support
Services:
Every information centre needs to cater not only the bibliographic
information requirement of its users, but also requires providing support
services to keep the users satisfied. Some of the support services provided by
IMC are:
Union
Catalogue of Biomedical Serials:
A database of the Serials holdings of major medical libraries in
the country, entitled Union Catalogue of Biomedical Periodicals has been
compiled by IMC and this serves as an important information tool for locating
journals of interest in any library in India. The database of 180 libraries is
regularly updated and can be accessed by users free of cost. The IMC User
Centres can search for the information by Journal Title, Journal Code, and
Library
code.
Document
Delivery Service:
Full-text of
journal articles can be obtained on request from IMC. These requests are met
from Adonis database, which is
produced and published by Adonis B.V., the Netherlands, providing access to the
articles from 800 core journals in the biomedical, chemical and pharmaceutical
disciplines. The journals covered are from 1991 onwards. The bibliographic
details of the Adonis database viz. ADON
is available online for the users, free of charge. Articles from Journals
covered in Index Medicus (Medline database) available at NLM, USA, are also
procured using Doc View facility and provided to the requestor.
Training:
For precise and
efficient information retrieval from the MEDLARS and other databases, IMC
provides free training to the Doctors/Medical Librarians and the staff of User
Centres on “Online Searching of
Biomedical Databases”. This is a five-day training programme in improving
the information retrieval skills of these professionals. These programmes are
held at NIC Hqrs., New Delhi, NIC State/District Offices as well as User Centres.
The course content of the programme is:
·
Introduction to NIC’s Biomedical Information Services
·
MEDLARS Databases
·
BRS/SEARCH Commands
·
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
·
Search Strategy
·
Biomedical Internet Resources
·
CD-ROM databases
·
IndMed, ADON and Union Catalogue
Workshop
cum Training on “Biomedical Research and the Internet”
IMC also
conducts 3 to 5 day training cum workshop on Biomedical Research and the
Internet. This is again for the benefit of medical as well as information /
library professionals. The course content of this programme is:
·
Brief Introduction on NIC’s Biomedical Information
Services
·
Need for INTERNET and Impact on Biomedical Research
·
How Doctors meet their information needs using the
INTERNET
·
Biomedical Resources Accessible through the INTERNET
·
Information Retrieval Techniques for Searching the
resources
·
Quality Control and Marketing of Information Services
and INTERNET
·
Telemedicine
·
Individual Presentations by Participants
User
Awareness Programmes:
The Indian
MEDLARS Centre conducts 1 – 2 days programmes aimed at creating an awareness
of the biomedical information services available for the medical community.
These User Awareness Programmes are conducted at NIC State / District Offices or
at medical colleges / hospitals. The programmes include one-hour lecture on the
services being provided and this is followed by an online demonstration of these
services.
Value
Added Services:
To match the
user needs, Indian MEDLARS Centre, has introduced the following value added
services:
Content
page: The content pages of interest from biomedical
journals, include in the ADONIS database, are made available on a monthly basis.
Disease
Package: In the case of epidemics exhaustive information is
compiled from different sources and disseminated over NICNET for free
distribution to Doctors & Voluntary Agencies in the affected areas through
NIC State/District centers.
Drug
Package: Information like doses, pharmacokinetics,
contraindications, adverse effects and clinical applications of a drug are
compiled and supplied on request.
Patient
Care package: Top priority is accorded to information need for patient care. Information from all sources
is compiled and handed over to the requestor.
Biomedical
Information on Internet: Hundreds of sites are available in the
field of biomedicine on Internet. A portal site (http://indmed.nic.in)
listing some of the useful sites have been developed to help the medical
professionals and link has also been provided to these sites.
Telemedicine:
Broadly
defined, telemedicine is the transfer of electronic medical data (i.e.
high-resolution images, sounds, live video, and patient records) from one
location to another. This transfer of medical data may utilize a variety of
telecommunications technologies, including, but not limited to ordinary
telephone lines, ISDN, fractional to full T-1's, ATM, the Internet, Intranets,
and satellites. Telemedicine is being utilized by health providers, in the USA,
in a growing number of medical specialities, including, but not limited to:
dermatology, oncology, radiology, surgery, cardiology, psychiatry and home
health care. Its application in radiology is more common as compared to in other
fields. Teleradiology system acquires radiographic images at one location and
transmits them to one or more remote sites where they are displayed on an
interactive display system and / or converted to hard copy. Transmission might
include CT-Scans, MRIs, or x-ray images.
In India, there
are many remote areas, which lack the basic health care facilities; patients
have to travel for miles before they can be treated at any hospital/health care
Centre and many do not survive this journey. Hence, it becomes very essential
that the Telemedicine concept be introduced and implemented in the country. It
is definitely possible and feasible to start this in India with the existing
telecommunication infrastructure.
NIC’s
Telemedicine project aims at providing health-related information resources,
decision support tools and data at the time and place of need by health care
providers across the country. To start with NIC would allow consultation
facilities over NICNET (NIC’s satellite based communication network) where
doctors in remote areas can consult the specialists in neighboring cities. This
is already underway at a remote region in Andhra Pradesh where doctors in
Nellore can consult specialists at Sri Venkateswara Inst. of Medical Sciences in
Tirupati. This would be expanded to transmission of X-ray, MRI, and CT-SCAN
reports over NICNET.
NIC also plans to introduce consultation over videoconferencing
where, the specialists would be able to "see" the patients and provide
consultation / diagnosis or treatment options. This would basically comprise of
telediagnosis and teleconferencing elements enabling clinicians at clinical
sites across the region to better communicate, collaborate, and gain access to
NIC’s Medical Informatics Services. The extension of this infrastructure would
ultimately result in region-wide integrated access to critical medical resources
including practice guidelines, expert systems, secure communications channels,
bibliographic databases, electronic publications, and other knowledge-based
decision support resources.
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