BMJ No 7094 Volume 314 Information in practice Saturday 31 May 1997
Netlines
Neuropsychology Central
Neuropsychology Central
( http://www.premier.net/~cogito/neuropsy.html)
is an award winning site with links to sites covering all aspects of
neuropsychology (cognitive, developmental, forensic, geriatric, etc).
Medical education
If your students are panicking about exams (or,
worse still, re-sits), you could try directing them to Birmingham
University Medical School's Computer Assisted Assessment site on
http://medweb.bham.ac.uk/http/caa/. They
can try their hand at the short clinical cases and multiple choice
questions, which get marked on line.
Alternatively, pathology students might like to work
through David Bowyer's Pathology Lectures at Cambridge University on
http://ittmac1.path.cam.ac.uk/PartOne/HomePage.html.
Hong Kong medicine on line
With only a few weeks to go before Hong Kong
reverts to Chinese rule, now might be the time to surf Hong Kong's
medical web sites. The Hong Kong Medical Association, founded in 1920,
has a site on
http://www.hkma.com.hk/hkmawell.htm,
complete with press releases, material promoting organ donation in Hong
Kong, some educational information for the public (also available in
Chinese), continuing medical education material for doctors, and a
members only doctors' teahouse.
The Hong Kong Hospital Authority home page is on
http://www.ha.org.hk/main.htm, with a
patient's charter on
http://www.ha.org.hk/charter/pceng.htm.
You can visit the unofficial web site of Hong Kong's largest hospital
on
http://www.iohk.com/UserPages/lcchong/qehhome.htm.
More medical sites are listed on
http://www.cuhk.hk/hkwww/n28.html, and if
you want a comprehensive list of Hong Kong's web sites try
http://www.cuhk.hk/hkwww.html.
Finally, netsurfing expats who intend to stay on after
the handover might want to visit Tianwei Xie's Learning Chinese
On-line page on
http://philo.ucdavis.edu/CHINESE/online.htm
or the Chinese-Language-Related Information page on
http://www.webcom.com/~bamboo/chinese/chinese.html.
Cancer on line
There are plenty of cancer sites on the web. The
Imperial Cancer Research Fund's web site on
http://www.icnet.uk/ has both general and
specific information about cancer, including details of laboratory and
clinical research sponsored by the fund into all aspects of
cancer - causes, prevention, and treatment. You can even investigate
employment opportunities or make a donation on line.
However, the definitive source for cancer
information on line is CancerNET, produced by the United States
National Cancer Institute, but available in Britain on
http://www.graylab.ac.uk/cancernet.html.
The site contains authoritative information on all aspects of cancer
diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. You can even access it in Spanish
if you prefer.
Writing a thesis?
Having trouble writing a paper or a thesis? Then
visit the Indispensable Writing Resources page on
http://www.stetson.edu/~hansen/writing.html
for links to almost every writing resource on the web. The major risk
is that you spend so long exploring the sites that you never finish the
thesis.
Coshing COSHH
If you have to fill in COSHH assessment forms,
you might find the web site of the United States Agency for Toxic
Substances and Disease Registry useful on
http://atsdr1.atsdr.cdc.gov:8080/atsdrhome.html.
The site houses ToxFaqs, a set of fact sheets on toxicity profiles of
hazardous chemicals, and HazDat, the Hazardous Substance Release/Health
Effects Database.
You can also take a peek at other people's efforts on
implementing COSHH with this URL:
http://www-uk.lycos.com/cgi-bin/pursuit?query=coshh&maxhits=200
or check out the official blurb from the Health and Safety Executive on
http://www.open.gov.uk/hse/coshh1.htm.
And if you didn't already know that COSHH stands for the Control of
Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations, 1994, you are probably
already breaking the regulations.
http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~rhbm001/mpallen.html
Netpoints: Patient randomisation on the web
Third party randomisation is the best way to reduce bias in
clinical trials. In our multicentre trial, the growth restriction
intervention trial (GRIT) in which the intervention is timed delivery,
participants require 24 hour entry, and we need to collect considerable
data on fetal and maternal condition before randomisation. However,
manned telephone or fax services are expensive, and automated telephone
dialling is complicated and permits only a small amount of data to be
entered. We have therefore recently set up and successfully used an
alternative trial entry service on the internet.
Any collaborator with access to the internet and a
Java enabled web browser can use it. The publicly available Java
software is at http://java.sun.com, and the
GRIT web site is at
http://epipc05.leeds.ac.uk/grit/grit.htm.
The trial entry program consists of an "applet" that loads from the
GRIT server onto the client computer via the internet. The peripheral
user sees a data screen and enters the clinical and demographic
details. These are validated locally and sent to the GRIT server, which
issues a trial number and treatment allocation. The process takes
minutes, is cheap, and minimises transcription errors. The internet is
used only to transmit the Java applet and for two brief messages, the
validated data and the trial allocation. Users require a centre name
and password, and, as added security, patients are identified only by
their centre code and local hospital number.
J Hornbuckle, J G Thornton, M Kelly, C R Welch, J Oldham
for the GRIT Study Group, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9LN
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