Management and Dissemination of Health Knowledge

This chapter describes the various types of document available via the Internet for the dissemination of health knowledge. It describes the process for the publication of scientific articles reporting the results of research. The concepts of journal impact factor, citation base and h-index are explained. The Cochrane collaboration for literature reviews and meta-analysis is described. The goals of national and international clinical guidelines are explained and examples are provided of websites providing access to such guidelines. The various types of training materials available from e-learning platforms for medical students are described. This chapter also takes into account drug monographs, which are particularly useful for prescription and disease knowledge bases. Examples of resources useful to members of the public are also provided and we describe the methods for accessing health knowledge, including details of the resource indexing process and the MeSH thesaurus frequently used for indexing. The quality of health information on the Internet is also considered and the principal quality criteria are listed. The HON foundation and certification are described.