Health Sciences Research Resources

SFU researchers now have access to an excellent new resource: Datamonitor360. It provides global industry, company, and country profiles and strategic analysis.

It includes:

• 7100+ industry profiles, many of which include Porter’s 5 Forces analysis
• Over 31,000 company reports, including SWOT analyses for about 10% of the companies.
• 110 Country Reports, many with PESTLE analyses
• Hundreds of case studies
• Country Statistics Database
• Market Data Analytics Database

…and much more.

Health Sciences researchers may find the Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare and Healthcare and Life Sciences sections of particular interest. (To access these, click on the Industries and Subjects entry points respectively on the 360 homepage).

Here is an example report on The Cardiovascular Market Outlook to 2016.

If you have any feedback or questions about this resource, please contact me or my colleague Mark Bodnar, Liaison Librarian for Business at SFU Burnaby.

Please note that this database will replace Business Monitor Online when it expires in August 2011.

On June 21st, Statistics Canada announced the release of the updated version of the Health Trends Internet application –exciting news for researchers, students, and health service providers.

Health Trends presents comparable time-series data (from 2003 to 2009 where available/applicable) for a range of health indicators from a number of sources including the Canadian Community Health Survey, Vital Statistics, and Canadian Cancer Registry.  It’s designed to give quick access to recent trends that can be customized by indicator or by geography [from StatCan website].

Please feel free to contact me with your questions about Health Trends and other health-related resources.

Since April, the SFU Library has had access to Sage Research Methods Online (SRMO).  (We know how much everyone loves research methods –please forgive us for holding out on you until now!)

If you haven’t stumbled across this great resource on your own, SRMO is a tool designed to help create research projects and understand the methods behind them.   Since SRMO focuses on methodology rather than disciplines, it can be used across the social sciences, health sciences, and more [from publisher's website].

SRMO’s new taxonomy of over 1,400 unique methods terms links to authoritative content, including:

• Over 600 books
• Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks
• The entire “Little Green Book” and “Little Blue Book” series
• Two major works collating a selection of journal articles
• Newly commissioned videos

The folks at Sage have also created some short, informative YouTube videos that tell you more about SMRO.  Further questions? Please feel free to contact me.

The SFU Library is pleased to announce that it has trial access to PsychiatryOnline, from now until June 24th, 2011.

PsychiatryOnline is a resource which provides online access to the DSM-IV-TR® Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It also it provides access to previous, superseded editions of the DSM for research purposes.

Other features include:

• Remote access for authorized users
• No concurrent usage restrictions
• PDA downloads
• Ability to email full text of individual sections to colleagues
• Mobile access

To access PsychiatryOnline, visit the Library homepage or click here. Please send your feedback to Yolanda Koscielski at ysk6@sfu.ca

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Good news! Based on feedback, the SFU Library has decided to subscribe to PsychiatryOnline (June 27, 2011).

You probably use PubMed often, and like many people, you might think that “PubMed” and “Medline” are interchangeable terms. Here’s a bit of clarification for the curious. Medline is the premier database for finding biomedical journal literature, and has been since the 1960s. It’s produced by the US National Library of Medicine. Experts there read through articles and assign them relevant “MeSH terms” – Medical Subject Headings – the use of which can make your search much more efficient. Medline can be searched through PubMed, but PubMed also includes some extra articles beyond Medline – usually newly-published articles or those which are out of scope for Medline. Medline is also available from other vendors. SFU Library offers Medline via the Ovid and EBSCO (aka “Medline with Full Text”) search interfaces. When using Ovid or EBSCO, the search experience is different, but the content is almost the same as what you find in PubMed.

To add confusion, many other tools bear the PubMed or Medline name:

• -PubMed Central is a repository of freely available full text journal articles. There’s also a version just for Canada.
• -MedlinePlus offers consumer health information, including encyclopedia articles, drug information, images, and even surgery videos.
• -PubMed Health is a newly launched resource focusing on comparative effectiveness research, as mandated by recent US health care reform.
• -There are a host of alternative interfaces to PubMed, such as PubGet, HubMed, eTBLAST, etc.

Need help using PubMed or Medline? Ask a Librarian! Want more details on the PubMed/Medline difference? See this guide from NLM.

SFU Library offers many video resources with PPR (public performance rights), which may be used in the classroom or linked to from WebCT. Sources include:

• -National Film Board of Canada – selected whole NFB films are available here, as well as many clips.
• -Films on Demand – largely social sciences content. Films are broken into brief segments for easy use.
• -The Library Catalogue indexes the DVDs the Library owns. You can change the drop-down menu to “Movies” to limit your search. Most DVDs may be booked for classroom use, placed on reserve for students to view at the Library, or checked out for personal use.

Faculty who would like to use a film in class which the Library does not own should contact their liaison librarian.

SFU Library now has a subscription to Oxford Bibliographies Online. The Public Health section includes 52 peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies by experts in the field, with many more bibliographies due to appear in coming months. Sample topics include:

• Air Quality: Health Effects
• Evidence-Based Public Health Practice
• Global Health Promotion
• Mental Health
• Sex Education in HIV/AIDS Prevention

…and many more. In addition to public health, OBO features subject modules on communication, criminology, philosophy, and history.

SFU Library is running a trial through May 31, 2011 for Springer Protocols. This database is the most comprehensive source of life sciences experimental protocols, with over 18,000 included. Many come from the well-known book series Methods in Molecular Biology. Please send any feedback on this trial to Leslie Rimmer: lsrimmer@sfu.ca.