MEDI INFO
The E-Mail News Letter of the
Medical Informatics Subcommittee of the Sri Lanka Medical Association -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vol 1: No 5: AUGUST 1997 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN THIS ISSUE
1.POINTS TO PONDER - IS THE INTERNET A GOOD SOURCE OF MEDICAL INFORMATION
?
2.COMPUTER PRICES ARE COMING DOWN !!!
3.THIS MONTHS USEFUL LINKS
4.READERS COLUMN
5.FAQs
6.SPECIAL SECTION TO COINCIDE WITH THE 2nd CONFERENCE OF THE ASIA PACIFIC
ASSOCIATION OF MEDICAL INFORMATICS (APAMI) ***Sri Lanka - Now A Member
Of APAMI
7.SUBSCRIBER SUPPORT
How to subscribe
How to unsubscribe
How to send a message to the editors *****************************************************************************
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1. POINTS TO PONDER - IS THE INTERNET A GOOD SOURCE OF MEDICAL INFORMATION
?
The Ceylon Daily News of 9th July 1997 carried a Reuters report from London with the caption "Internet bad source for health news, doctors say".
The story went on to say how a group of Italian doctors tested the WWW by looking for pages advising parents on how to treat a feverish child. Their findings, which were far from satisfactory, were published in The British Medical Journal.
(Piero Impicciatore, Chiara Pandolfini, Nicola Casella, Maurizio Bonati, Reliability of health information for the public on the world wide web: systematic survey of advice on managing fever in children at home in BMJ No 7098 Volume 314 Saturday 28 June http://www.bmj.com/bmj/archive/7098ip1.htm)
We would like to invite you to share your views through medi info.
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2. COMPUTER PRICES ARE COMING DOWN !!!
Computers have been exempted from the 11% turnover tax with effect from April 1997.
The credit for this we are told should go to the Computer Vendors Association and the Federation of Information Technology Industry who have lobbied for it for many years. Many vendors have already made significant price reductions. So if you have been putting off your decision to upgrade your computer or buy a new one now is the time.
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3. THIS MONTHS USEFUL LINKS
Send a fax to any where in the world through the internet FREE. http://www-usa.tpc.int/sendfax.html
Find out about postgraduate medical training in UK. http://www.britcoun.org/health/index.htm
"iname personalized email services" http://www.iname.com/
Images from the history of medicine http://wwwihm.nlm.nih.gov/
SRI LANKA "ONLINE" RESEARCH DATABASE Research Done in Sri Lanka (Database at NARESA). This is a new service to provide research information from NARESA You will be able to Search the database on research done in Sri Lanka. http://vidya.naresa.ac.lk/
If you are developing your own homepage and want some help visit the Free homepage center. http://www.california.com/~sgeler/
*** For the benefit of the large number of new subscribers to MediInfo we publish the list of short but ever increasing Sri Lankan Medical Sites
The Ceylon Medical Journal http://infolanka.com/CMJhome
Faculty of Medicine Colombo Department of Medicine http://infolanka.com/clinmed Department of Anatomy http://infolanka.com/org/anatomy
Genetic Disorders and Birth Defects Sri Lanka Collection http://infolanka.com/org/genetics
Institute of Cardiology - National Hospital of Sri Lanka, Colombo. http://infolanka.com/org/cardiology
Birth Defects Research Unit, Kandy General Hospital. http://www.naresa.ac.lk/bru/profile.htm
Alcohol & Drug Information Centre http://www.naresa.ac.lk/adic/profile.htm
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4. READERS COLUMN
***EDITOR'S COMMENTS:
Although there were many e-mails inquiring about the readers column there were no submissions.
We invite you to write to this column. Send in your entry to vajiradx@sri.lanka.net
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5. FAQs
How do I go about writing to the readers column ?
It is very easy to contribute to this column. All you have to do is: Select a topic you want to write on. Browse the WWW through several search engines using this topic as the search word. Keep bookmarks of the sites you have visited. Arrange them in a logical order. Write a small description about each site and submit it to vajiradx@sri.lanka.net Even columns written on non medical topics of general interest are welcome.
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6. SPECIAL SECTION TO COINCIDE WITH THE 2nd CONFERENCE OF THE ASIA PACIFIC
ASSOCIATION
OF MEDICAL INFORMATICS (APAMI)
The second conference of the APAMI jointly with the HISA (Health Informatics Society of Australia) was held in Sydney from 11 - 13 August 1997.
The conference started with a series of pre-congress workshops on several current areas of interest such as searching for medical information on the internet, developing health information systems, organisational impacts of informatics, evidence based nursing and patient/consumer health informatics.
The main session itself consisted of key note addresses and sessional papers. The main key note addresses were on Health Informatics in the Asia Pacific Region (K C Lun, Singapore), Health Care in the 21st Century (Stephen Yeo, Singapore), Education in Health and Medical Informatics (Reinhold Haux, Germany), Telemedicine and Multimedia Technology (Hiroshi Takada, Japan), Health Care Cybervision (Bruce Elder, USA).
We wish to congratulate the winner of the award for the best paper: G Kumar, a medical student from the Faculty of Medicine, National University of Singapore for the paper titled 'The internal medicine center at the cyberspace hospital - an integrated approach'. You can visit this site at http://ch.nus.sg/CH/ch.html and join in congratulating the author.
Sri Lanka - Now A Member Of APAMI
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At the annual general meeting held during the conference, a motion was
passed admitting Sri Lanka as a corresponding member of the APAMI proposed
by Indonesia and seconded by Malaysia. We wish to place on record our thanks
to the membership of APAMI, and particularly to K C Lun, the former President
of APAMI and Michael Kidd, chair of the conference organising committee
for supporting Sri Lanka. Only the countries with health informatics societies
are full members of the APAMI.
A word on APAMI -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The initiative to establish APAMI began in October 1993 at the General
Assembly of International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) held in
Japan. A year later, the regional group APAMI was launched in conjunction
with an inaugural scientific conference held in Singapore in November 1994.
The founding president was K C Lun, Director, Medical Informatics Program,
National University of Singapore. The founding members were Australia,
People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia,
New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
The main objective of APAMI is to promote medical informatics in member
countries. The new President of APAMI is Professor Branko Cesnik, Director,
Center of Medical Informatics, Monash University, Australia. We wish him
all the success in his presidency.
You are invited to visit the APAMI web site for information on APAMI can be found at http://www.aims.org.sg/apami
Fourth coming meetings -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The next APAMI conference will be held in Hong Kong in the year 2000. The
organizers will welcome papers and presentations from its newest member
Sri Lanka. Details will be sent later.
MedInfo'98 - 9th World Congress on Medical Informatics will be held in Seoul, South Korea from 18-22 August 1998. More information available at http://www.medinfo.or.kr
International congress of Nursing
Informatics 28 April to 3 May 2000 in Auckland, New Zealand. Visit the
website at http://www.2000plus.co.nz/Nursing.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. SUBSCRIBER SUPPORT
How To Subscribe: send an email with the following message to vajiradx@sri.lanka.net SUBSCRIBE TO MEDI INFO <your name/your e-mail address>
How To Unsubscribe: send an email with the following message to vajiradx@sri.lanka.net UNSUBSCRIBE TO MEDI INFO <your name/your e-mail address>
How To Contact The Editors: Dr. Vajira H.W. Dissanayake - vajiradx@sri.lanka.net Dr. Shyam Fernando - shyam@sri.lanka.net
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Published by the Medical Informatics Subcommittee - SLMA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------