OBESITY+ web site

Not sure if any of you read Dr. Arya Sharma's web site (fabulous resource, by the way! http://www.drsharma.ca/ ).  Today he has posted about a service that the Canadian Obesity Network ( http://www.obesitynetwork.ca/ ) offers, called OBESITY+.  This service sends an email alert and link to high quality obesity related articles, studies, medical journals, etc. if you sign up and is exceptional! 

To quote:

The engine behind this extraordinary service (that cuts through and eliminates about 98% of all published literature on obesity) is McMaster University’s Health Knowledge Refinery.

The features of OBESITY+ include:

• A systematic review of over 130 journals (including quarterly updates of the Cochrane Library) with selection of articles by expert research staff concerning the cause, course, diagnosis, prediction, prevention, treatment, and economics of obesity, according to explicit criteria, with high reproducibility and periodic quality assurance checks.
• Ratings of each eligible article for clinical relevance and newsworthiness by at least 3 practitioners with an interest in obesity.
• E-mail alerts about new evidence, adjusted to the user’s preset levels of relevance, newsworthiness, and frequency. Each alert includes clinical ratings and comments, and electronic links to the article’s abstract on PubMed (if available) and to the fulltext article on PubMed or the publisher’s site (if available for free).
• A cumulative searchable bibliographic database of the alerts that is continuously updated.
• A user interface allowing each user to register for a subset of the accumulating database by practitioner type.
• A link to EvidenceUpdates, a service from the BMJ Group and McMaster University’s Health Information Research Unit that provides access to current best evidence from research, tailored to the user’s health care interests, to support evidence-based clinical decisions.

Link to OBESITY+  
http://plus.mcmaster.ca/obesity/Default.aspx?Page=1

Very impressive!

thank you very much for this, Karen.

Wheee!  This is an excellent resource, Karen.  Thank you so much for the link.  (Just what I need, a whole new region to research.)

Marilyn

Cool, hey?  I'm totally impressed.

For sure!  I'm alread y knee deep in papers on obesity-related morbidity in older adults (a particular concern of mine since I don't want OHIP to deny me based on age (62).)  This is just so helpful.

Thanks! 

Marilyn

You're most welcome - I'm glad it's helpful!

Marilyn, a woman in my Barrie support group had the surgery this year, she's 63 yrs old. As long as you're in adequate shape for surgery, should be good!

Thanks, Monica!  It's good to hear that other centres are processing folks my age.  I'm in good shape, for the shape I'm in. 

Marilyn

Amazing site Karen.  Thanks!  I've added it to my favourites.

Claire

Great link.  Love reading the info.  Thx  Diane