NLM Musings from the Mezzanine
Innovations in Health Information from the National Library of Medicine
What are the tools and technologies that enable librarians, practitioners, researchers, and the public to achieve their goals?
The 2023 DataWorks! Prize Challenge is underway, building off the successes of its first year. The challenge is sponsored by the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy, in partnership with the FASEB. We truly hope that you’ll help others enhance their data management practices by sharing your wisdom and recipes.
NLM has advanced biomedicine and public health by acquiring, organizing, preserving, and disseminating knowledge that is essential to research, medicine, and health. We must ensure information being shared and used for research is useful to those who use it, and the answer lies in interoperability.
One fascinating question my group asked was, might it be possible to peer into the distant past and figure out what viruses were infecting our distant ancestors? Our conclusions were rather remarkable.
Meet Dr. Michael Chiang! After he planned for a career as an engineer, he found that his interest in machines could be applied to medicine and help treat people with disease. So he switched his focus (if you will!) to vision science before joining NIH as Director of NEI in November 2020.
One of the most promising ways to fight malaria is early detection, which requires fast and accurate diagnostic testing. The NLM Malaria Screener was developed to perform automatic parasite counts, which directly supports the fight against malaria.
NLM is more than just a resource for credible health information, scientific literature, and research resources; it also plays a critical role in helping to shape scientific and technological directions. The Division of Extramural Programs provides funding that directly supports cutting-edge science.
More than 10,000 rare diseases affect up to 400 million people worldwide, and those with rare diseases struggle for about six years on average before they receive an accurate diagnosis. But data-driven innovations are unlocking answers about rare diseases—as well as more common diseases—faster than ever before.
Right now, I am reading The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles. One quote that struck me the most is, “Libraries are lungs. Books the fresh air breathed in to keep the heart beating, to keep the brain imagining, to keep hope alive.”
From the NLM Director: Today, I am delighted to join with my colleagues across the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to invite you to join with us to advance the promise of open science. The tenets of open science undergird the many offerings and services of NLM, including PubMed, our biomedical literature database containing more … Continue reading Advancing the Promise of Open Science: We Want to Hear from You!
Guest post by Andrew Wiley, Video Producer, NLM Office of Communications and Public Liaison (OCPL). NLM recently featured a video that highlights an exciting project funded through the NLM Extramural Programs Division. A team led by Quynh Nguyen, PhD, MSPH, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, used … Continue reading Can Computer Vision Models Help Us Picture Better Health Outcomes?