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I recently gave a lecture on meta-analyses as part of a Drug Literature Evaluation course.  One example I typically use to illustrate the importance of critically evaluating literature combined with the potential impact of the media is, “Is Cybermedicine Killing You” – The Story of a Cochrane Disaster.  It is an editorial published back in 2005 in response to a fatally flawed Cochrane paper that was ostensibly published as a review of, “interactive health communication applications” (IHCAs).  The review’s plain language summary described it as “computer-based programmes for people with chronic disease”.

In my mind, there are four key observations about that situation:

I was first alerted to the release of the new book Pharmacy Informatics via a blog post by @poikonen.  I took advantage of Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ to check out the chapter titles and introduction.  That was enough for me, so I ordered it. I am really, really glad I did.

This textbook was created by three faculty members at the University of California, San Diego School of Pharmacy (along with area contributors) to accompany their forward-thinking pharmacy informatics course.  The authors bring a lot of credibility to the text as Phil Anderson is a very well known pharmacist in drug information and informatics circles, Susan McGuiness is a pharmacy librarian who is quite active in AACP, and Phil Bourne is the pharmaceutical scientist who is one of the more clever and creative fellows I have come across. 

I teach in our University’s Master of Science in Biomedical Informatics (MSBI) program.  We also have a Medical Informatics Certificate program, a Public Health Informatics Certificate program, and offer a MSBI in Portugal.  However, this isn’t a commercial or sponsored post.  This information is simply to provide some context as to why I am interested in seeing a centralized source of information for all post-bac informatics programs.  More importantly, our Section Advisory Group for Pharmacy Informatics Education in the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) is also looking at this topic and relevant issues for pharmacy.

Last month a Letter was published in the peer-reviewed journal Medical Teacher titled, “Is Wikipedia unsuitable as a clinical information resource for medical students? “ [1].  That paper came on the heels of a Letter published in The Annals of Pharmacotherapy on a related topic, “Evaluation of pharmacist use and perception of Wikipedia as a drug information resource“ [2].  The Annals paper had some serious shortcomings (e.g., survey response rate) which likely contributed to its abbreviated publication form.  Its most eye-opening point was that only one-third of the respondents who used Wikipedia were aware that anyone could edit the entries.  This is perhaps the real value of the Letter and why it was published – it helps illustrate the need for education about appropriate online resources in that group.

I confess.  I am not a trained reviewer.  I have reviewed a few texts for biomedical journals, but that hardly qualifies.  However, I am going to share my thoughts on Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun (@berkun).  I hope writing this review forces me to think holistically about the value of the resource.  And, since there is a constant stream of books being published, perhaps the review will even help someone else with their decision making process.