VHL News Network

Call to Action in eHealth: BIREME takes part in the Rockefeller Foundation initiative

The conclusions and recommendations of the conferences on the use of information and communication technologies to improve health systems in developing countries, promoted by the Rockefeller Foundation, in its center in Bellagio, Italy, from July to August 2008, were consolidated in the document Bellagio eHealth Call to Action. Over 200 experts from all over the world participated in a series of conferences called "Making the eHealth Connection: Global Partnerships, Local Solutions", which address eight main themes related to eHealth. BIREME/PAHO/WHO was responsible for organizing the conference on "Access to Information and Knowledge Sharing"
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PLoS One publishes article about low citation of Latin American authors in prestigious journals

A study in PLoS One about the distribution of impact factors in the Web of Science of articles published in seven internationally prestigious journals shows that Latin American authors receive fewer citations than those from developed countries. The authors Rogerio Meneghini, Abel L. Packer and Lílian Nassi-Calò, from BIREME/PAHO/WHO, indicate that there are no evidences showing if the lower impact factor of Latin American articles is due to their quality or relevance, or if it is a psychosocial trend to select citations
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DeCS has a version for Spain

The vocabulary Health Sciences Descriptors (DeCS) of the Virtual Health Library (VHL) has the translation of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for Spanish and Portuguese, and now has a new special version for Spain, adjusting the syntaxis of descriptors, synonyms and definitions according to Spanish used by the scientific and professional community in Spain. This development is a product of the technical cooperation between the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) and the BIREME/PAHO/WHO to integrate Spain at the VHL
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SciELO methodology is adopted by the Portal of USP Journals

The Portal of Journals of the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), launched in November 2008, uses the SciELO methodology to publish the full contents of its credentialed journals online and in open access. By adopting the SciELO publishing methodology, like the Universidad Austral de Chile and the Universidad del Zulia, in Venezuela, the Brazilian university aims to enhance visibility and quality of journals according to the evaluation criteria and editorial management of SciELO, which keeps abreast of the state of the art in scientific communication
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VHL has a new integrated search system

The Virtual Health Library (VHL) innovates in access to scientific and technical information on health with the new system to retrieve information - iAHX, which enables integrated search in the collection of sources of information and presents results classified by relevance and organized in clusters, according to different criteria, such as type of literature, descriptors, year of publication. The system is also more efficient to weekly update sources of information and to generate search indexes
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VHL Stations are set up in 26 Brazilian states and in the Federal District

The implementation process of VHL Stations achieved the initial goal of installing units in all Brazilian states. The most recent opening, in Rio de Janeiro, in November 2008, concluded the cycle to disseminate scientific information on health at state level in Brazil. As from 2007, there has been an increased demand from these units for access to quality information, and the VHL stations expanded to cities, with the support of the Municipal Secretariats of Health (SMS) and State Secretariats of Health (SES) in the states that already had a unit in the capital city. Another important advance was the launching of the VHL Stations Psychology, designed for professionals, managers and users in general who are interested in this field
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