Identity Theft a Possibility?

Take a look at this handout from the Federal Trade Commission, "What to Do If Your Personal Information Has Been Compromised." It gives suggestions about contacting financial institutions, public agencies and credit agencies, which you should contact to set a fraud alert or have your account flagged or closed. Their identity theft site can provide detailed guidance to "deter, detect and defend against identity theft," including sample letters. Be sure to keep a record of all your contacts and correspondence.

Another useful site is the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), which provides fact sheets and sample letters for working through the problem. An especially useful one discusses what to do if a purse or wallet is lost or stolen.

Websites referenced:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt150.shtm
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt150.pdf
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/index.html
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/idtheft/idt04.shtm

http://www.idtheftcenter.org/index.html
http://www.idtheftcenter.org/artman2/publish/v_fact_sheets/Fact_Sheet_104.shtml

Translation Apps for Your iPhone

Several translation apps mentioned on iMedicalApps sound intriguing to investigate if you have an iPhone. They may not be specific enough for orthopedic settings, and certainly will not replace our wonderful interpreting team!

The first is MediBabble, which is available free. It draws from a list of 2,000 diagnostic questions that have already been translated into 5 initial languages - Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian, and Haitian Creole. Two physicians, Dr. Alex Blau and Dr. Brad Cohn, have added this app to an impressive record of service to the global medically underserved.

The iMedicalApps review also mentions Xprompt ($6.99 for initial download including English, Spanish & German; $2.99 for each additional language -- 20 available) which has 800 diagnostic phrases and Medical Spanish ($6.99) with over 3,000 audio phrases in Spanish.

In addition to translating typed text for over 50 languages, Google Translate offers an option to speak a phrase and hear a translation in a in one of 15 languages. It is not medically-oriented. This is the list of languages they mention: "Afrikaans, Albanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Arabic, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh, Yiddish."


Websites referenced:
http://www.imedicalapps.com/2011/03/free-iphone-medical-translation-app-sets-a-new-standard-medibabble-translator-app-review/

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-translate/id414706506?mt=8

http://www.imedicalapps.com/2010/04/iphone-medical-app-xprompt-app-review/

http://www.imedicalapps.com/2009/09/app-review-medical-spanish-app-adds-audio-in-latest-update-and-were-definitely-smitten/

http://www.imedicalapps.com/

Orthopedic Journals - Handy Link to Tables of Contents (TOCs)

Wanting an easy way to locate the current tables of contents of orthopedic journals? Try the list at MDLinx! They have gathered RSS feeds for 50 titles including our favorites, JPO, Spine, CORR, JBJS, and Journal of Children's Orthopaedics! If you are on a hospital computer the link should allow you to access full text.

Websites referenced:
http://www.mdlinx.com/orthopedics/journals.cfm

Bone Feed -- an App for Your iPhone

Here's an iMedicalApps review of a free app, Bone Feed, designed for an orthopedist using an iPhone to help manage journal reading. It gets feeds of the tables of contents from 50 titles listed at MDLinx.

Websites referenced:
http://www.imedicalapps.com/2011/07/bone-feed-busy-orthopedist-quickly-browse-abstracts-improved/

http://www.imedicalapps.com

http://www.mdlinx.com/orthopedics/journals.cfm

MedNar, a Search Engine to Explore Your Topic

MedNar is a type of search engine that searches selected collections of material such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Mayo Clinic, the Patent Office, and various government health centers. To the left of your results you will find clusters of useful information such as the most frequent subtopics, authors, publications, and publishers. This can be useful in understanding a topic.

Since the underlying collections are often updated, the result count may vary if the search is repeated. MedNar presents initial results quickly, then adjusts the final count as more data arrives from the slower sources.

You can click citations to add to "My Selections" and then view, email, and save them for use in a citation manager such as EndNote.

This company has similar search engines for science and for business, both of which use similar strategies for locating material perhaps hidden in the "deep web" or "grey literature."

Websites referenced:
http://www.MedNar.com
http://www.ScienceResearch.com/
http://Biznar.com
http://www.EndNote.com/

Langenberg - Minimize Typing, Maximize Searching

If you enter your search term at Langenberg.com the words automatically fill in search boxes for a number of different search engines (once you hit "enter" or "Go"). Then you can choose which one to actually use by simply hitting "Go". If you hit "R!" it deletes the term from that single box. So you only need to type the term once.

Langenberg screens the sites they include, selecting only those that take you directly to links rather than first requiring a log in. It specializes in search forms.

Langenberg is also a useful foreign language translation tool and includes mapping sites, too.


Websites referenced:
http://www.langenberg.com/
http://translation.langenberg.com/
http://maps.langenberg.com/

Factbites, a New Kind of Search Result

Factbites is a different kind of search engine. Instead of just presenting a list of sites with your key words highlighted, it presents the results in the form of readable, relevant sentences and focuses on presenting sites that provide meaningful content.

"Factbites was created by Rapid Intelligence, a content technology company based in Sydney, Australia. Our focus is upon computational linguistics, data mining, data warehousing and artificial intelligence. These competencies are demonstrated on Factbites, a search engine more interested in content analysis than link popularity."

They do warn that this is a beta site so don't try unusual combinations of words. Use the site to locate "meaningful content about real topics."

Websites referenced:
http://www.factbites.com/