HealthInsite Newsletter
Vol 2, Issue 6, sent 4 Feb 2005
 IN THIS ISSUE Volume 2, Issue 6
Welcome Back
Welcome to the latest issue of the HealthInsite Newsletter.
The HealthInsite team is back from a lovely Christmas break and looking forward to a very productive 2005. Our warmest wishes to all of our subscribers, especially those who have joined us for the first time over the break. The Newsletter aims to provide you with health related information that you might find useful and to help you to make the most of our site. My special thanks to the lovely Julie who wrote and sent out the last Newsletter while I was moving house.
It's probably worth mentioning that HealthInsite was originally launched in 2000 as a way of helping Australians to access reliable health information on the Internet. With so much information available, the Australian Government recognised that it can be very difficult to sort out the high quality information from the rest. HealthInsite was set up with strict criteria to make sure that the information available through the site is up-to-date, written by suitably qualified experts, regularly reviewed and easy to find.
New material is added to the database everyday and we're constantly looking for ways to improve the service we provide. Please feel free to let us know if you have any problems or if you have any suggestions for future editions of the Newsletter by sending an email to healthinsite.feedback@health.gov.au
What is 'evidence-based' health information?
Some people are content to follow the advice of their health professional, trusting that they know what's best. Other people prefer to do some homework of their own so that they can take a more active role in the healthcare decisions that affect them. If there are a range of options open to you, you may like to take a look at the evidence for a particular treatment option. This means looking at the research that has been done to compare options or evaluate the effectiveness of treatments.
According to the Joanna Briggs Institute, learning about research and health information can be like learning a new language and you often feel as though you need a degree just to understand it! There are plenty of research terms and jargon that can be very confusing if you don’t know what they mean. To help consumers out, the Institute provides an excellent summary of research processes and critical appraisal skills that will help you to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of research studies rather than simply taking them at face value. This is a great starting point and you can find this very useful Introduction to Evidence at:
A number of our partners specifically deal with research and can provide you with information about the evidence supporting various treatment options. For more information just go to the Reviews of Evidence Topic page at:
New Topic Page - HealthInsite Statistics
The HealthInsite team constantly monitors a range of different things to make sure that we're delivering a good service to our users. We keep records of how the site is growing, how many people are visiting the site, the most popular search terms and a whole range of other numbers. Our Editorial Board recently asked if we could make some of these statistics public so that our users could also see how we're progressing.
We were happy to do this and selected a few statistics that we thought you would find interesting. They are updated every month. You can go to 'About HealthInsite' and then click on 'HealthInsite Statistics' or go directly to:
http://www.healthinsite.gov.au/content/internal/page.cfm?ObjID=000A07E1-8613-11A2-A15880B1536A006D
Let us know what you think.
Your Feedback - Australian Information
While demonstrating HealthInsite at a conference recently, we were asked why we only include Australian resources in our database when so much more information would be available if we included resources from international organisations.
To answer this question it' s useful to remember why HealthInsite was set up in the first place. As more and more Australians began using the Internet to find health information, they were faced with two major problems. First, the Internet is largely unregulated and a large proportion of the health related information available on the Internet is out of date or of poor quality, some of it even dangerous. Secondly, even good quality information often refers to treatments or drugs that are not available in Australia.
HealthInsite was designed as a way of addressing these problems. We were set up with Australian consumers and the Australian healthcare system in mind and aim to ensure that the information available through HealthInsite is reliable and up-to-date as well as relevant to our Australian audience. So HealthInsite acts like a filter...it filters out information that doesn't meet our strict criteria for reliability and information that is not relevant to the Australian health care system.
While we are always looking for new information partners so that we can expand our range of resources, we know that we don't cover everything. Particularly in the case of rare conditions, there may never be Australian information available. So we point our users to international sources of information that have robust processes in place to ensure the quality of information. You can find links to international health information providers at:
http://www.healthinsite.gov.au/content/internal/page.cfm?ObjID=000591E8-04D7-1D2D-81CF83032BFA006D
In Brief
Australian Organ Donor Awareness Week
18-25 February 2005
for more information go to:
http://www.hic.gov.au/yourhealth/our_services/aaodr.htm
Partner Spotlight - Joanna Briggs Institute
Every month we will include a brief overview of one of our information partners. This month we look at the newest member of the HealthInsite family, The Joanna Briggs Institute.
The Joanna Briggs Institute was established in 1996 and aims to bring together a range of research activities to improve the effectiveness of clinical practice and health care outcomes. The Institute provides access to evidence based information and a range of publications, on line services and education and training programs to a large number or health services, universities, libraries and individual health practitioners in over 25 countries. The Joanna Briggs Institute has collaborating centres throughout Australia and in China, New Zealand, Thailand, England and more!
Of particular interest is the Institute's Consumer page which has been developed to provide consumers of health care with a valuable and reliable source of information on health related issues. The Consumer page is available at:
http://www.joannabriggs.edu.au/consumer/index.php
Latest Resources
The HealthInsite team regularly adds new items to the database including
new information partners, new topic pages and news items. You can
find a list of new and updated material added to the database in the
past month at:
http://www.healthinsite.gov.au/search/newsletter_search.cfm?id=21
Hot Tip - Free Stuff for Health Professionals
Members of the HealthInsite team often attend conferences where we speak with health professionals about why HealthInsite is a useful place for them to refer their patients. The responses have been very positive.
We've produced some posters that can be displayed in waiting rooms and brochures that they can give to their patients. The brochures clearly explain how to use HealthInsite and come with a fridge magnet which has contact details so that next time a health related question comes to mind, anyone in the family can jump on the Internet for more information.
Supplies of brochures and posters are available to health professionals and health services free of charge. For more information about how to order supplies, just click on the 'Material for Health Professionals' button at the bottom right-hand side of our homepage or go to:
http://www.healthinsite.gov.au/content/internal/page.cfm?ObjID=000701DE-7574-1174-ACC780B1536A006D
What's on next month?
Next month we'll continue to look at some new HealthInsite features. We'll also look at resources for women in the lead up to International Women's Day.
That's it for now,
from all of us at HealthInsite.
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