Looking ahead with PubDrug

January 26th, 2007 Stewart

The PubDrug initiative is in a much different place now than it was a month ago. One month ago we had a slightly anemic monograph template and a few bare-boned pages devoted to content development and management.

One month later, here’s our status:

  • The University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has agreed to let P4 students on informatics rotations help develop PubDrug and two have completed their rotations. Another two will begin next week. This should continue throughout the semester.
  • The first two full drug monographs, atorvastatin and amlodipine, are almost completed and undergoing final certification. A third monograph, esomeprazole, is being readied.
  • From this work, the drug monograph template has been dramatically expanded. A rough methodology has been drafted and is being fleshed out.
  • A process for reviewing and certifying monographs has been sketched out and is being refined.
  • A reasonable, achievable goal has been set: Monographs for the top 200 drugs by the end of 2007.

Let’s be clear: There are many issues still needing to be resolved. Certification is a reasonable enough method for conducting editorial review, but a strong editorial body is needed to assume responsibility for doing the work. Many of the methods that have been devised will need to continue to be tested over the coming months. And, the general stigma about wikis as a content management system continues to plague these efforts somewhat, although the response today was overwhelmingly positive.

I wish to publicly thank Amy Jo and Bill for all their amazing work this past month. Bill has, in particular, gone above and beyond the call for this project — His output will guide our continuing efforts for a long time to come. I also want to thank PIC director Linda Catanzaro for her continued commitment to this project.

It’s been a long week. I’m heading home. I’ll get back to posting regularly next week.

Posted in informatics, pubdrug, university at buffalo | 4 Comments »

PubDrug student presentation

January 26th, 2007 Stewart

Bill Loeffler and Amy Jo Michnik are both in their fourth professional year of the Pharm.D. program here at UB. This past month, they were both assigned to pharmacoinformatics clinical rotations. I was very fortunate to get to work with both of them — They did amazingly complex and detailed work in developing the PubDrug monograph and creating the first two such monographs for the database.

This afternoon, they finished off their rotation by presenting on all the amazing work they have done for PubDrug. I didn’t record their presentation, but they were gracious enough to share their slides:

I will have more to write about PubDrug later today.

Posted in informatics, pubdrug, university at buffalo | 1 Comment »

Bibliometric tools you can use…

January 24th, 2007 Stewart

The State of the Union in Words: A Look at the 34,000 State of the Union Words Delivered of George W. Bush - New York Times

Interesting to compare Bush’s use of, say, “education” or “school” compared with “terrorists” or “Iraq.” And being able to quickly see those words in context is especially cool.

Bibliometrics rocks.

Posted in bibliometrics, informatics | No Comments »