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Weekly News Digest
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December 18, 2008 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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Vivisimo Powers Health Sciences Online Portal
Erica Frank, a medical doctor and researcher at the University of British Columbia, believes people anywhere in the world working to remedy sickness and to save lives should have access to the best medical information—not just people who happen to be located near research institutions in wealthy countries. Frank’s idea led her to develop Health Sciences Online (HSO; www.hso.info). The newly launched portal is powered by the Vivisimo (www.vivisimo.com) Velocity Search Platform.Free and accessible to anyone, the up-to-date, authoritative information is aimed primarily at healthcare practitioners and public health providers, enabling their training, continuing education, and delivery of effective treatments to patients. The search technology from Vivisimo allows users to easily see comprehensive search results and quickly find the answers they need with an intuitively navigated graphic interface. Through integration with Google Translator, users can search and read materials in 22 languages. HSO is a portal that includes more than 50,000 world-class health sciences resources. Information is selected by clinicians and other experts from existing, reliable sources and is maintained and updated by HSO’s partner organizations, including medical specialty societies, accredited continuing-education organizations, governments, and top-ranked universities. Founding collaborators for this site include CDC, World Bank, the American College of Preventive Medicine, and the University of British Columbia, and financial support has come from the World Health Organization (WHO), the NATO Science for Peace Program, the Canadian government, the Annenberg Physician Training Program, and many volunteers. HSO’s next phase will be developing programs using the gathered materials to help train and educate public and clinical health providers around the world. Former CDC director Dr. Jeff Koplan calls HSO "a visionary undertaking" and the World Bank heralds it as "globally democratizing health science knowledge." HSO is expected by the WHO "to make a considerable contribution to the advancement of e-learning worldwide." Source: Health Sciences Online and Vivisimo, Inc.
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Brandi Scardilli
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