1. Healthcare databases and resources
LIS 4785 Introduction to Health Informatics
Fall 2015, Week 9-1
Instructor: Dr. Sanghee Oh

2. Show & Tell
Lauren Potter
Jan van Konijnenburg

3. Health Information Resources
“The complexity of modern American medicine is exceeding the capacity of the unaided human mind”
“It is likely that clinicians are so busy that they have no idea what new educational resources are available to them. They would like to move from the “information jungle” to the “information highway” but who will show them the way?

4. Challenges Faced by Clinicians
Education
Diffusion of information
Translational
Evolutionary
Retention
Accessibility

5. Point-of-Care Tools
A synthesized resource that can easily provide evidence-based answers to questions during the patient visit
UpToDate (hosted by Ebsco)
eMedicine (Integrated to Medscape) (
DynaMed (hosted by Ebsco)
ACP Smart Medicine (used to be ACP-PIER): Accessible through FSU Library (
FirstConsult (

6. ACP Smart Medicine Class Activity

7. Ideal Medical Resources
Evidence based with references and level of evidence
Updated frequently
Simple to access with a single sign-on
Available at the point of care
Capable of being embedded into an electronic health record
Likely to produce an answer with only a few click
Useful for primary care physicians and specialists
Written and organized with the end user in mind

8. UpToDate
UpToDate® is the premier evidence-based clinical decision support resource, trusted worldwide by healthcare practitioners to help them make the right decisions at the point of care.
Contains the equivalent of over 77,000 pages of original, peer-reviewed text.
It combines broad coverage of adult primary care, subspecialty internal medicine, ob/gyn, general surgery and pediatrics.
It is written, reviewed and continuously updated by over 5,100 physicians to ensure that the content remains current.
This expert faculty synthesizes all relevant information, including the latest evidence, and provides specific, practical recommendations for diagnosis and treatment.

9. UpToDate Demos

10. ACP Smart Medicine Developed by American College of Physicians (ACP)
A Web-based decision support tool designed to provide clinicians with rapid point-of-care evidence-based guidance.
Contains 500 modules that provide guidance and information on a broad range of diseases and conditions.
Concise, bulleted evidence-based recommendations organized into readily accessible point-of-care categories: prevention, screening, diagnosis.
Differential diagnosis tables assist in securing the correct diagnosis
Triggered updates whenever there is new, relevant information or guidelines.

11. MEDLINE
An online version of journal citations and abstracts for biomedical literature
The U.S. National Library of Medicine® (NLM) premier bibliographic database
Contains over 21 million references to journal articles in life sciences with a concentration on biomedicine. 
The records are indexed with NLM Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®)
PubMed provides free access to MEDLINE and links to full text articles when possible.

12. MeSH
Class activity

13. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
The National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus. It consists of sets of terms naming descriptors in a hierarchical structure that permits searching at various levels of specificity.
MeSH descriptors are arranged in both an alphabetic and a hierarchical structure. 
The MeSH thesaurus is used by NLM for indexing articles from 5,400 of the world's leading biomedical journals for the MEDLINE®/PubMED® database.
It is also used for the NLM-produced database that includes cataloging of books, documents, and audiovisuals acquired by the Library. Each bibliographic reference is associated with a set of MeSH terms that describe the content of the item.
Similarly, search queries use MeSH vocabulary to find items on a desired topic.

14. MeSH Practice

15. MeSH Example

16. Sponsored Medical Websites
E-meducation (
Free medical portal (medical search engine) sponsored by Alfa Institute of Biomedical Studies
Links to open access resources
Filtered to ensure high standards
Covers 10+ specialists

17. Sponsored Medical Websites
Medscape (
A free all-purpose medical website sponsored by WebMD
Covers 30+ medical specialists as well as sections for nurses, medical students, dental professionals & pharmacists
Provides updates, continuing medical education (CME), conference schedules, Medline, drug searches and multiple specialty articles.
Daily medical news and weekly newsletters and updates (MedPulses)
Drug and Device Digest providing the latest in alerts and approvals
Clinical practice guidelines

18. Sponsored Medical Websites
Mayo Clinic
Free multi-faceted web portal, sponsored by Mayo Clinic
Covers information about medical developments (called Clinical Updates)
Mayo Clinic publications
Video presentations on health issues (Grand Rounds)

19. Government Medical Websites
National Library of Medicine
PubMed
Provides free access to MEDLINE, NLM’s databse of citations and abstracts in the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, health care systems, and preclinical sciences
Links to many sites providing full text articles and related resources
NLM Gateway
Provide one-stop shopping for many NML information resources
Offer citations, full text, video, audio, and images
Toxnet
Cluster of database covering toxicology, hazardous chemicals, environmental health and related areas.
Unified Medical Language System
A set of files and software that brings together many health and biomedical vocabularies and standards to enable interoperability between computer systems.

20. MedlinePlus Premier online patient education site
Service of NLM and NIH
Covers over 750 health topics
Drugs, supplements and herbal information
Medical dictionary, encyclopedia, and news
165 interactive video tutorials and surgical procedure videos
Links to major patient education and advocacy sites such as Mayo Clinic, NIH, American Heart Association, etc.

21. MedlinePlus Connect
This service allows health organizations and health IT providers to link patient portals and electronic health record (EHR) systems to MedlinePlus, an authoritative up-to-date health information resource for patients, families, and health care providers.
MedlinePlus Connect accepts requests for information on diagnoses (problem codes), medications, and lab tests, and returns related MedlinePlus information.
Problem code standards
ICD-9-CM
ICD-10-CM
SNOMED CT
Medication code standards
RXCUI (RxNorm Concept Unique Identifier)
NDC (National Drug Code)
Lab test requests
LOINC
Context-Aware Knowledge Retrieval Standard
HL7