In addition to regularly scheduled classes, we are often able to offer individual consultations or presentations to groups on a variety of topics. Listed below are some that we have offered in the past. Please call Carolyn Wahrman at 612-626-3730 or send an e-mail to bis@umn.edu for more information.
Dentists, nurses, physicians, and other health professionals have a wealth of published scientific evidence available that can be used to help make day-to-day clinical decisions. Contact us if you would like to learn how to effectively find and evaluate information relevant to clinical cases using such sources as MEDLINE, clinical practice guidelines and the Cochrane Library, a database of systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials.
There is a wealth of health-related information on the WWW, of varying quality. Learn techniques for locating the information you need quickly, and develop skills for determining the quality of web-based information.
Learn traditional resources and major Internet sites and strategies for finding health-related statistics. Areas include notifiable diseases, vital and health statistics, BioMedSearch and Internet resources. Especially helpful for those working on specific projects.
Learn about various molecular biology databases that are available, what they contain, and how to access them. Databases to be discussed include Genome Database, OMIM, and Genbank.
This session will focus on locating and choosing patient education materials. Useful databases and Web sites will be demonstrated.
The US government now provides free access to MEDLINE to anybody, anywhere in the world. Learn to search MEDLINE through the National Library of Medicine's PubMed.
TOXNET, from the National Library of Medicine, consists of several databases that contain article citations, research summaries, toxic release statistics, and other data about chemicals and drugs. Strategies for locating information about toxicology using TOXNET will be covered in this class.