Umberto Eco y el futuro de los libros ante el empuje de la red

Durante la ceremonia de inauguración, mejor re-inauguración, de la biblioteca de Alejandría, Umberto Eco, pronunció una interesante conferencia sobre el futuro de los libros.

¿Resistirán los libros el embate de la tecnología digital? ¿Cambiará Internet el modo en que leemos? ¿Existirán los autores cuando cada uno decida el final de una novela según su voluntad? ¿Llegará el día en que cualquiera pueda reescribir la trama de La guerra y la paz con un mouse? El 1º de noviembre, con motivo de la reapertura de la milenaria Biblioteca, la ciudad egipcia de Alejandría tuvo como anfitrión a Umberto Eco, quien ofreció una conferencia en inglés durante la cual respondió a estos y otros interrogantes. Publicado por el semanario Al-Ahram, Radar reproduce el texto completo de esa charla en la que Eco desplegó su habitual claridad para exponer por qué el libro permanecerá tanto como las cucharas, los cuchillos y la idea de Dios.

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Directora de OPS/OMS destaca papel innovador de la BVS

La presencia de la Directora de la Organización Panamericana de la Salud (OPS), Mirta Roses Periago, abrillantó sobremanera la conmemoración del décimo aniversario de la BVS que fue celebrada en ocasión de la BVS5 (5ª Reunión de Coordinación Regional de la Biblioteca Virtual en Salud) que tuvo lugar entre el 14 y 16 de septiembre de 2008, y también la ceremonia de apertura del CRICS8 (8º Congreso Regional de Información en Ciencias de la Salud) realizado en los días siguientes, entre el 16 y el 19, en la ciudad de Río de Janeiro, Brasil.

Nota publicada en Newsletter BVS 084 24/octubre/2008

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The Use of the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) Among Personnel and Students in Health Care: a review

By Anna M Lindquist; Pauline E Johansson; Göran I Petersson; Britt-Inger Saveman; Gunilla C Nilsson

ABSTRACT

Background: Health care personnel need access to updated information anywhere and at any time, and a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) has the potential to meet these requirements. A PDA is a mobile tool which has been employed widely for various purposes in health care practice, and the level of its use is expected to increase. Loaded with suitable functions and software applications, a PDA might qualify as the tool that personnel and students in health care need. In Sweden today, despite its leadership role in mobile technologies, PDAs are not commonly used, and there is a lack of suitable functions and software applications.

Objective: The aim of the present review was to obtain an overview of existing research on the use of PDAs among personnel and students in health care.

Methods: The literature search included original peer-reviewed research articles written in English and published from 1996 to 2008. All study designs were considered for inclusion. We excluded reviews and studies focusing on the use of PDAs in classroom situations. From March 2006 to the last update in May 2008, we searched PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane, IngentaConnect, and a local search engine (ELIN@Kalmar). We conducted a content analysis, using Nielsen’s Model of System Acceptability as a theoretical framework in structuring and presenting the results.

Results: From the 900 references initially screened, 172 articles were selected and critically assessed until 48 articles remained. The majority originated in North-America (USA: n=24, Canada: n=11). The categories which emerged from our content analysis coincided to a certain extent to Nielsen’s Model of System Acceptability (social and practical acceptability), including usefulness (utility and usability) subcategories such as learnability, efficiency, errors, and satisfaction. The studies showed that health care personnel and students used PDAs in patient care with varied frequency. Most of the users were physicians. There is some evidence that the use of a PDA in health care settings might improve decision-making, reduce the numbers of medical errors, and enhance learning for both students and professionals, but the evidence is not strong, with most studies being descriptive, and only 6 randomized controlled trials. Several special software programs have been created and tested for PDAs, and a wide range of situations for their use have been reported for different patient groups. Drug and medical information were commonly accessed by PDA users, and the PDA was often viewed as the preferred tool when compared to paper-based documents. Some users regarded the PDA easy to operate, while others found it difficult in the beginning.

Conclusions: This overview of the use of PDAs revealed a positive attitude towards the PDA, which was regarded as a feasible and convenient tool. The possibility of immediate access to medical information has the potential to improve patient care. The PDA seems to be a valuable tool for personnel and students in health care, but there is a need for further intervention studies, randomized controlled trials, action research, and studies with various health care groups in order to identify its appropriate functions and software applications.

Publicado en J Med Internet Res 2008;10(4):e31

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Review of guidelines for good practice in decision-analytic modelling in health technology assessment

By Z Philips, L Ginnelly, M Sculpher, K Claxton, S Golder, R Riemsma, N Woolacott and J Glanville

Objectives: To identify existing guidelines and develop a synthesised guideline plus accompanying checklist. In
addition to provide guidance on key theoretical, methodological and practical issues and consider the
implications of this research for what might be expected of future decision-analytic models.

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Comisión sobre Determinantes Sociales de la Salud - ¿Qué es, por qué, y cómo?

¿Qué es la Comisión sobre Determinantes Sociales de la Salud ?

La Comisión sobre Determinantes Sociales de la Salud (CDSS) es una red mundial de instancias normativas, investigadores y organizaciones de la sociedad civil que la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) reunió para ayudar a afrontar las causas sociales de la falta de salud y de las inequidades sanitarias evitables.

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The social determinants of health: developing an evidence base for political action

Final Report to World Health Organization

Commission on the Social Determinants of Healthfrom Measurement and Evidence Knowledge Network:

Michael P. Kelly (Co-chair)
Josiane Bonnefoy (Co-chair)
Lead authors of final report:
Michael P. Kelly, Antony Morgan, Josiane Bonnefoy,
Jennifer Butt, Vivian Bergman

Abstract

This report begins by identifying six problems which make developing the evidence base on the social determinants of health potentially difficult. These are: lack of precision in specifying causal pathways; merging the causes of health improvement with the causes of health inequities; lack of clarity about health gradients and health gaps; inadequacies in the descriptions of the axes of social differentiation in populations; the impact of context on interpreting evidence and on the concepts used to gather evidence; and the problems of getting knowledge into action. In order to overcome these difficulties a number of principles are described which help move the measurement of the social determinants forward. These relate to defining equity as a value; taking an evidence based approach; being methodologically diverse; differentiating between health differences, health gaps and health gradients; clarifying the causal pathways; taking both a structural and a dynamic approach to
understanding social systems; and explicating potential bias. The report proceeds by describing in detail what the evidence based approach entails including reference to equity proofing. The implications of methodological diversity are also explored . A framework for developing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating policy is outlined. At the centre of the framework is the policy-making process which is described beginning with a consideration of the challenges of policies relating to the social determinants. These include the multi-causal nature of the social determinants themselves, the fact that social determinants operate over the whole of the life
course which is a considerably longer time frame than most political initiatives, the need to work intersectorally, and the removal of the nation state as the major locus of policy-making in many parts of the world. The ways to make the case for policies are described and appropriate entry points and communications strategies are identified. The next four elements of the framework are outlined in turn: (a) evidence generation, (b) evidence synthesis and guidance development, (c) implementation and evaluation, and (d) learning from practice. Finally the report describes the principal ways in which policies relating to the social determinants may be monitored.

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