Many doctors will already be familiar with Google Scholar. Google have recently launched a new linked service, Google Scholar Citations, which provides a web-based tool for academics to monitor citations to their articles. Academics can check who is citing their publications, view citations over time and examine citation metrics. Academics can also make their profile public so that other people can view their citation metrics. The service was launched with a small number of users and I was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the early users. You can view my Google Scholar Citations page to see the data available. Amongst the metrics that can be viewed are the total number of citations and the h-index, along with a chart showing the number of citations per year. Detailed citation counts are also available for individual papers. Many universities already have updateable publication pages for their academics (as an example, see my Imperial College London Publications page). Google Scholar citations expands on the information available on these types of web pages and will be a very useful tool for academics.
As part of a session on primary care data in the Health Informatics module on the Imperial Master of Public Health Programme, I asked students to work in two groups to present arguments for and against the NHS Care.Data programme. Care.Data is an NHS programme that will extract data from the medical records held by general practitioners (GPs) in England. The Care.Data programme takes advantage of the very high level of use of electronic medical records by GPs in England. After extraction, data will be uploaded to the NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). The data will then be used for functions such as health care planning, monitoring disease patterns and research. The programme has been controversial with proponents arguing that the programme will bring many benefits for the NHS and the population of England; and opponents arguing it is a major breach of privacy. You can view the two presentations to help inform you further about these arguments: Arguments for th
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