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In April 2011, The National Library of Medicine (NLM), part of the National Institutes of Health, invited people to show off their apps. NLM challenged people to create innovative software applications that use the Library’s vast collection of biomedical data, including downloadable data sets, application programming interfaces (APIs), or software tools – all of which are free and available for public use. 

One of the winners of the app challenge was Quertle. For those of you who may not have heard of Quertle, it is an innovative website for searching and investigating the biomedical literature. Quertle uses advanced linguistic methods to find the most relevant documents instead of traditional keyword searching, which often returns an overwhelming list of uninformative articles. It is geared to active life science professionals – both researchers and health care providers – and saves them considerable time and effort in finding the literature they need. Quertle, available on the web using any browser, simultaneously searches multiple sources of life science literature, including MEDLINE

The Quertle search engine was created by Jeff Saffer, PhD and Vicki Burnett, PhD mainly because they were not satisfied with search results for life sciences publications and information delivered by conventional search engines. 

Vicki and Jeff will receive their award on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 20011 in Washington, DC. The award ceremony will feature U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Health and Human Services Chief Technology Officer Todd Park as speakers. 

For those of you who may not know, BioJobBlog and BioCrowd have partnered with Quertle in various business activities and it is the search engine of choice for both websites.

Congrats to Vicki and Jeff on a job well done!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!

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New job search engines come and go. That said, I was recently contacted by the folks who run Jooble, a job search engine that operates in over 42 countries. While I haven’t used it myself, this is what the company has to say about it.

“Jooble is a vertical job search engine that works in 42+ countries. We continue to expand our job database and each day Jooble has more than 100,000 new job listings

You may use the advanced search in Jooble and enter key words, such as location (city, state), salary ranges, date posted and many other options. Moreover, users can subscribe to our free mailing list which entitles you to daily e-mails delivery of the latest job listings based on keyword searches. This service will improve and accelerate your changes of finding that dream job. Please feel free to subscribe to our mailing list if you wish to get the best and latest job announcements.

Jooble operates in 42+ countries, so if you would like to find a job in other locations you may try to search jobs in: 

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Italy, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia , South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey , Venezuela, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States

Just Jooble and find your dream job in just few clicks!”

Check it out!

Until next time..

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!

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In 2009, I posted an article that described the salient and beneficial features of many of the biomedical search engines that had been developed for life scientists conducting laboratory research. While attending the Experimental Biology Meeting earlier this year I discovered a newly developed biomedical search engine called Quertle. After, watching Quertle in action, I was convinced that it was one of the best innovations to hit the life sciences field since the introduction of plasmid purification kits (yeah I know I am dating myself).                                    

Unlike most of its competitors, Quertle uses semantic-driven text analytics to find conceptual relationships between documents—not just query terms scattered though out a document. For example, suppose you want to find information on diseases of aging. Your query "diseases of aging" on other sites might find an article where "disease" is in the first sentence and "aging" is in the last sentence, perhaps even in the references. Consequently, a large number of the results will be irrelevant. In contrast, Quertle’s smart relationship-based search finds and presents those documents where the author has asserted a relationship between "disease" and "aging", such as "disease associated with aging". This gives you the results that are truly relevant, with the important facts nicely highlighted (Try it). Then, Quertle takes it even further; its proprietary Power Terms^™ and algorithms that automatically identify key concepts in the documents allow users to quickly conduct highly targeted, relevant literature searches and intuitive ways to explore them (Try this Power Term search and check out the list of diseases found). 

Quertle’s powerful easy-to-use searching covers all of PubMed, an expanding collection of full-text articles (including BioMed Central and Open Access articles in PubMed Central), biomedical news, and even whitepapers and reports from different companies. The most recent Quertle software upgrade added TOXLINE and NIH RePORTER databases to it search repertoire.

Recognizing that access to full-text journal articles is of paramount importance to all literature searches, the latest version of Quertle now supports link resolver systems. By using Quertle’s new, displayed “My Library” link users can easily and seamlessly access their institutions’ library holdings. Recognition of individual users’ academic institution is accomplished by identifying user IP addresses (provided by the library) or through special Quertle links offered to the different libraries. Interested librarians can contact Quertle to get their institution added to the Quertle list.

Quertle’s developers are veterans of the life sciences field and understand the rigorous challenges facing laboratory researchers. Their goal was to make literature searching easier, more powerful and less time consuming. Check it out and let me know what YOU think!!!

Until next time.....

Good Luck and Good Searching!!!!!!!!!!

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Some of you may have noticed that a new tab entitled “BioCareers” has been added to the BioJobBlog navigation bar.  If you click on the tab you will be taken to the BioCareers a new  job board and search engine agent created by Career Management Source and BioCrowd. 

BioCareers offers real time job listings, application tracking, and e-mail job alerts. Employers can post jobs, advertise jobs, search resume databases and have jobs listed on other jobs like Job Job-Job Health and Twitter jobs. 

The search engine that powers BioCareers automatically pulls life sciences jobs in real time and updates job searches when positions are filled or new ones become available. Candidates can search for jobs by location or job title. One of the nicer features of BioCareers is candidate e-mail alerts that are automatically generated when new jobs are posted or added in real time by the search engine.

To check out BioCareers click on the BioCareers tab or here.  We are in beta right now; so let me know what you think!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

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BioJobBlog and Career Management Source, a producer of online applications for streamlining job searching and hiring, have teamed to create BioCareers, a life sciences job board and career center. For job candidates, BioCareers offers real time job listings, application tracking, and e-mail job alerts. Employers can post jobs, advertise jobs, search resume databases and have jobs listed on other jobs like Job Job-Job Health and Twitter jobs. 

The search engine that powers BioCareers automatically pulls life sciences jobs in real time and updates job searches when positions are filled or new ones become available. Candidates can search for jobs by location or job title. One of the nicer features of BioCareers is candidate e-mail alerts when new jobs are posted or added in real time by the search engine.

I have been looking for a dedicated life sciences jobs search engine and career management solution for the past 10 years. I stumbled upon the Career Management Source platform quite by accident but I am glad that I did. And, the best part of the deal was that I didn’t have to do any of the work—the design, setup and implementation was completed by Career Management Source representatives.

You can test the BioCareers search engine capabilities by conducting a job search using the widget found in the BioJobBlog sidebar (look left). If you are interested in viewing and checking out the BioCareers website please click here.

For those of you, who may be interested in adding a career center to your blog or website, please visit www.JobJobHealth.com or e-mail Career Management Source or call 888-865-8914.

Until next time..

Good Luck and Good Job Searching!!!!!!!!

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Over the past few years, a number of search engines designed for the life sciences have appeared. I thought it might be informative for BioJobBlog readers to list some of the more popular ones and how they are used. I want to warn you in advance that this is not a comprehensive list. That said, if I’ve inadvertently omitted your favorite search engine, please feel free contact me or simply list it in the comments section for this post.

Scirus

Searches over 450 million scientific items, and allows researchers to search for not only journal content but also scientists’ homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information. This site is owned and managed by Elsevier.

Novoseek

Search engine for biomedical literature in medline, grants and full text publications that will help you to: 1) retrieve meaningful documents related to your search, 2) narrow your search to find results in the relevant scientific journals and 3) identify the most relevant biomedical concepts for your query.

Mednar

Mednar is a free, publicly available medical research run by Deep Web Technologies.

Valdo 

A search engine that caters to all branches of life sciences. VADLO allows users to search within five categories: Protocols, Online Tools, Seminars, Databases and Software.

Life Sciences Search Engine

A customized search engine developed for the benefit of researchers in life science.

ScienceHack

BioPages

Australian web portal and life sciences search engine.

Science Bucket

Specialized search engine that filters biology sites.

GoPubMed

Knowledge-based search engine for biomedical texts. It allows users to identify experts in the biomedical field.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Searching!!!!!!!!

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Mark Senak, who writes the outstanding Eye on FDA blog, posted an interesting article today that tracks the number of warning letters issued by DDMAC (the center that oversees life sciences marketing and advertising) over the past 12 years. Not surprisingly, the number of warning letters issued by DDMAC fell precipitously during the Bush Administration, after reaching a high during the waning years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. In fact, the number of warning letters issued by DDMAC during the first two quarters of 2009 exceeds the yearly total of warning letters issued in the past 4 of five years. However, as Mark clearly points out, the 2009 year to date number of warning letters may be artificially inflated because of 14 identical ones issued on the same day (April 2) to 14 different companies regarding internet search engine advertising. Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the agency is beginning to emerge from a long slumber and that US regulatory oversight may be entering a new, more scrutinizing era. 

While increasing regulatory scrutiny may be appropriate after 8 years of no regulation at all, it is important that FDA doesn’t overreact and unnecessarily stifle new drug and product development. To that end, I believe that the agency needs to be reorganized, revamped and revitalized to replace its traditionally “reactive” way of doing business with a more “proactive” one.  For example, there is a burgeoning need for regulatory guidance on the use of social media by companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical devices and diagnostics industries. Unfortunately, FDA has been unwilling or unable to enunciate a cogent regulatory strategy or any meaningful guidance on this topic. Consequently, many life sciences companies have refrained from using social media because they simply don’t know how to implement it in the current regulatory environment. I believe that FDA, not the companies it regulates, should take the lead on this issue.

Finally, it is becoming increasingly apparent that many companies will continue to refrain from using social media and other Web 2.0 tools until FDA crafts some useful guidance on these topics. Sadly, Web 3.0 is just around the corner and the agency is still struggling with regulatory guidance for corporate websites. Maybe Congress needs to craft some new FDA modernization legislation—it has been 12 years since the last modernization bill was passed!

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!

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Today's New York Times reported that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued warning letters and ordered 14 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to stop running what it calls misleading ads on internet search pages displayed by search engines like Google. The agency faulted the companies for failing to identify product names (brand) and not listing potential side effects (only benefits) for the drugs. In other words, the ads lacked “fair balance” something that FDA stresses and that all drug makers are very familiar with. 

Drug makers and other interest groups pay search engines like Google to place ads on search result pages after someone types in a related search word. The sidebar ads typically contain a eye-catching headline about a relevant medical condition or product and links to websites promoting certain products. The companies receiving warning letters included: Bayer, Biogen Idec, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cephalon, Eli Lilly, Forrest Laboratories, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson and Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, and Sanofi-Aventis. Not surprisingly, most of the world’s largest and most profitable were guilty of running misleading Internet search engine ads.

Historically, drug companies and FDA have engaged in a cat and mouse approach when it comes to advertising and marketing drug and medical devices and diagnostics. This is because FDA’s existing regulations that guide marketing and advertising practices are relatively lax and it provides drug makers with the opportunity to see how far they can push the agency before “they get caught.” While this practice may have been acceptable for print and television advertising, it may no longer be appropriate for Internet advertising— which potentially has a much broader and larger reach than traditional media because there are not national borders on the Web. Unfortunately, FDA has been slow (reluctant?) to react to digital media and is even more perplexed about social media and the drug industry. Rather than continue to play cat and mouse, I think it would be in the best interest of consumers if FDA and drug makers would sit down and craft new guidance on regulating Internet advertising and marketing practices. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the old rules are no longer sufficient as digital and social media continue to evolve.

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!! 

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