Universal Access to Health Information (UAHI) linking the major projects in health information for developing countries to discuss the priorities and way forward for global health information
http://www.inasp.org.uk

UAHI VIDEOCONFERENCE
London - Nairobi - Sao Paulo - Washington DC - Cape Town
July 18, 2001.

Dear all,

My name is Aldemar. I am a physician and a postgraduate student in vascular surgery. I am here to talk about the point of view of the user of information in health care, in São Paulo, Brazil.

In Brazil, three experiences of enabling environments took place and are likely to benefit physicians and researchers working in developing countries.

First, in 1997 the creation of SciELO (Scientific Library Online, URL: http://www.scielo.org) an electronic virtual library covering a selected collection of Brazilian scientific journals. The access to the full contents of this journals free of charge, was absolutely new, and I was delighted, accessing SciELO's website many times a day, only for the pleasure of seeing that I had free and unlimited access to everything!

Second, with the disponibilization in 1999 of LILACS database (URL: http://www.bireme.br), all titles, and abstracts of that regional database, became free of charge, following the example of the access to Medline via Pubmed.

Third, the disponibilization of the Cochrane Library, free of charge on the internet, via Bireme to Brazilian users only (URL: http://www.bireme.br/cochrane). A result of the local alliance between Bireme and the Brazilian Cochrane Centre. Another result this alliance is the electronic search of randomised controlled trials on LILACS database and the assessment of its quality.

Now I have free access to several databases, some medical journals, and also have a big problem: how to select what is useful among all that information?

As it was shown that only 5% of all that is published in medical journals have some use for clinical practice, I believe that the best tool to help me in clinical decision making is the Clinical Evidence (URL: http://www.clinicalevidenceonline.org), a book published by the BMJ group. It summarises all relevant systematic reviews and primary studies in each disease, using reproducible methods. Again there is a problem: the Clinical Evidence is not free.

The access to timely and accurate information through medical databases and full text Medical journals, for free, is very important to improve the quality of learning and research in the developing countries.

However, as good information is believed to be the best medicine, the priority should be to make the Clinical Evidence widely accessible, and for free, to help the physicians, and other decision makers to improve the quality of health care. A few lines of computer programming could allow free access to computers from selected countries and with no cost to the publishers.

In conclusion, the creation of enabling environments will benefit both the researchers and the physician in developing countries. It will also improve the visibility of the research from those countries, that will be accessible from all over the world. The BIREME is a good example of institution that is working in the development of such environments.

That is all, Thank you!

Aldemar Araujo Castro
E-mail: aldemar.dcir@epm.br
URL: http://www.evidencias.com/aldemar

Atualizado: 18-Jul-2001 16:34