VetMed Resource: Developing an online resource for practicing veterinarians.

Transcription

1 VetMed Resource: Developing an online resource for practicing veterinarians. Robert Taylor, Content Manager, Human Animal and Social Sciences. CABI, Wallingford, OXON, OX10 0PB, UK (Acknowledgements and thanks to CABI colleagues who worked on this project: Patricia Neenan, David Smith, Shaun Hobbs, Chris Parker.) Abstract: The CAB Abstracts Database has been used widely in veterinary research institutes and veterinary schools since its creation in In 2007 CABI created a new Internet site called VetMed Resource to bring the CAB Abstracts Database and other information to practicing veterinarians, to try and improve information transfer from research to clinical veterinary practice. This paper will review the reasons for creating the site, and the steps taken in its development. It will include data from the market research, which consisted of an online questionnaire, and consultation exercise involving practitioners, veterinary associations, veterinary schools, and veterinary librarians. It will also evaluate the lessons learned about the different needs of practitioners and researchers and the various steps taken to meet these differing needs. Future developments will also be covered. Introduction CABI and veterinary medicine: history and background. CABI has published information on veterinary medicine since 1930 with the first edition of the Veterinary Bulletin was first published, followed in 1932 by the start of Index Veterinarius. These journals, produced at the Commonwealth Bureau of Animal Health, based in the Central Veterinary Laboratory, Weybridge, were established to document the world s literature in veterinary medicine. In 1972 the production of the Veterinary Bulletin and Index Veterinarius was computerized and they became the first part of the CAB Abstracts Database. The database became available first as magnetic tapes, and then on online hosts including DIALOG, ESA, DIMDI, CANOLE, and STN. The charge for searching the database on these hosts was based on the time the user was connected and the amount of references downloaded, so access was generally restricted to trained searchers on the library staff. The development

2 of CD-ROM technology in the 1980s made it possible for the end users, such as researchers, faculty and students, to access electronic databases and conduct their own searches. The CAB Abstracts Database was published on CD-ROM in 1989, and in 1990 the veterinary section of the database was published on VETCD. In the late 1990s CABI developed two new veterinary products for the Internet, one being the Animal Health and Production Compendium (AHPC), and the other AnimalScience.com. They were both launched in The AHPC was designed as a large electronic encyclopaedia, with a large range of tools and resources covering both the health and production of food animals, where as AnimalScience.com contained the veterinary and animal production section of the CAB Abstracts database, with review articles, news items and other features. CABI Veterinary Resources and the Veterinary Practitioner There is little evidence that the printed journals Veterinary Bulletin and Index Veterinarius were ever used much by veterinarians in practice, even though the Veterinary Bulletin was seen on the desk of James Herriot in an episode of the BBC television series. In discussions with veterinarians at the North American Veterinary Conference in 2004 and at the American Society for Animal Sciences in the same year, we were advised that most veterinarians in the developed world now had access to computers and that many practitioners would like to be able to access the veterinary literature via CAB Abstracts. We were told that the internet site AnimalScience.com would have content of interest to veterinarians in practice. However, we were advised to develop an internet site with a veterinary focus, rather that use one called AnimalScience.com, and to increase the amount of full text, as veterinarians in practice would not have access to library collections. Another factor in persuading us to look at the providing information to veterinary practitioners was information we had from our contacts in the veterinary libraries. Librarians often had search queries from practitioners and wanted to be able to direct them to a source where they could do their own searching. This need is due to issues regarding resources in the veterinary school libraries to service the external users, and concerns about licensing agreements which could exclude use of the library resources to external users. The Proposal We proposed to create an online resource for veterinary practitioners to include the veterinary section from the CAB Abstracts Database, the Animal Health and Production Compendium, review articles, news items, events calendar, and prepared searches. Before launching a new product we needed to research the market to assess the need for it.

3 Method In 2006 CABI decided to investigate the need for an online resource for practicing veterinarians. As the USA is the largest veterinary practitioner market and CABI is used in all of the veterinary schools in the USA and Canada, much of the market research was focussed there. The research into this consisted of 4 main strands 1. Visits to veterinarians in practice, veterinary societies and associations; 2. Develop a prototype site. 3. Develop an online questionnaire to survey potential users, 4. Present the concept at the annual CABI focus group at MLA in The visits were scheduled around our attendance at conferences in Phoenix, Arizona, (Medical Libraries Association) in May 2006, and were designed to cover a mixture of practices, state veterinary medical association, specialist societies, and continuing education suppliers. The purpose of the visits was to find answers to the following questions a) Would veterinary practitioners want personal access to CABI s veterinary information resources? b) Are the resources appropriate for veterinary practitioners? c) Which veterinarians are most likely to use these resources? d) Would veterinary Practitioners be willing to pay for access to these information resources? Organizations and practices visited: 1. American Animal Hospital Association, Lakewood, Colorado 2. Colorado Veterinary Medical Association, Denver, Colorado 3. New Mexico Veterinary Medical Association, Albuquerque 4. Pain Referral Practice, Santa Fe 5. New Mexico Livestock Commission, New Mexico 6. Southern Arizona Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Centre 7. Arizona Veterinary Medical Association 8. Western Veterinary Conference 9. Animal Dermatology Clinic, San Diego, California 10. The College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, California 11. Veterinary Centre of America, Santa Monica, California 2. The prototype Internet site was developed to include the subsection of the CAB Abstracts database on veterinary medicine, peer-reviewed review articles, news items, events (conferences), and prepared searches. It was also to include the complete Animal Health & Production Compendium with its drugs database and glossary. The URL for the Prototype was ed to veterinary lists in the UK and USA and Canada with a link to the online questionnaire.

4 1.. Results 3. An online questionnaire survey was developed using Survey Monkey. It comprised 17 questions. 4. The concept of the information site for veterinary practitioners was presented and discussed at the annual CABI focus group held at the Medical Libraries Association Annual Conference with the Veterinary Medical Library Section. 150 responses to the questionnaire were received by the set deadline: responses to the questions were as follows. Part 1 A few questions about you 1. Which of the following best describes your work? Total respondents = If you work in practice do you mainly work in? Total respondents = 113 Veterinary practice Education Research Government agencies Vet. Associations/societies Industry/Commerce Other Food animal practice Companion animal practice Equine practice Specialist practice Mixed practice Other % 25.5% 25.5% 6.7% 4% 8.1% 16.8% 14.2% 39.8% 8% 8.8% 15.9% 13.3% 3. Which of the following best describes you? Total respondents = 146 Qualified for less than 5 years Qualified for more than 5 years Studying for a specialist diploma Specialist Other % 45.9% 6.2% 23.3% 18.5% 4. Are you a member of your National or State Veterinary Medical Association? Total respondents = 146 Yes No Not applicable Total response National VMA 106 (75%) 20 (14%) 16 (11%) 142 State VMA 80 (65%) 25 (20%) 18 (15%) 123

5 5. Are you re a member of one or more specialist veterinary associations? Total respondents = 145 No 81 (55.9%) Yes 64 (44.1%) 6. We have listed 8 sources of veterinary information, how often do you use them? Total responses = 140 Regularly Occasionally Rarely Never Total response Vet. Journals 94 (67%) 34 (24%) 11 (8%) (1%) Books 88 (65%) 35 (26%) 9 (7%) (2%) Databases (CAB, 77 (56%) 29 (21%) PubMed, etc) (16% (7%) Veterinary/Academic 39 (29%) 46 (34%) Library (26%) (10%) Continuing Education 57 (43%) 44 (33%) Conferences (12%) (12%) Internet sites (20%) 8 (6%) (74%) (0%) Google (or other 107 (78) 24 (18%) 4 (3%) search engines) Informal networks (colleagues (1%) 88 (65%) 39 (29%) 8 (6%) 1 (1%) In the last year, what reasons did you have to use such information resources? Total respondents = 141 To look for information to help answer a clinical problem 99 70% To help studies for specialist qualifications 30 21% For professional development / continuing education % For writing articles, case reports, etc % Other 31 22%

6 8. At veterinary school, how often did you use the following? Total respondents = 129 Regularly Occasionally Rarely Never Not sure CAB 30 (23% 24 (19%) 20 (16%) 24 7 Abstracts (19%) (5%) VET-CD 11 (9%) 12 (10% 10 (8%) 35 4 (29%) (3%) Veterinary 15 (12%) 23 (19%) 15 (12%) 27 5 Bulletin (22%) (4%) Index 16 (13% 14 (11%) 21 (17%) 26 6 Veterinarius (21%) (5%) Don t recognise them 23 (18%) 48 (40%) 38 (31%) 41 (33%) Part 2: Questions about the VetMed Resource Prototype 9. Which of the resources on VMR did you use? Total respondents = 122 Bibliographic database 89 73% Review articles 83 68% News items 74 61% Drugs database 62 51% Glossary 28 23% Prepared searches 29 24% Calendar 28 23% Animal Health & Production Compendium 42 34% 10. How useful were the types of content? (1=very useful, 5=not useful) Total respondents = Bibliographic database 49 (47%) 23 (22%) 21 (20%) 3 (3%) 9 (9%) Reviews 37 (39%) 32 (34%) 11 (12%) 6 (6%) 9 (9%) News items 28 (31%) 35 (38%) 16 (18%) 3 (3%) 9 (10%) Drugs database 25 (30%) 26 (32%) 16 (20%) 8 (10%) 7 (9%) Glossary 10 (17%) 20 (34%) 16 (28%) 6 (10%) 6 (10%) Prepared searches 10 (18%) 18 (32%) 11 (19%) 12 (21%) 6 (11%) Calendar 9 (17%) 13 (24%) 18 (33%) 9 (17%) 5 (9%) Anim. Hlth & Prod. Compendium 16 (26%) 16 (26%) 16 (26%) 5 (8%) 9 (15%)

7 11. What was your experience of using the various types of content in this demonstration prototype? Total respondents = 45 (see comments) 12. For any content that you did not make use of could you say why? Total respondents = 60 (see comments) 13. Which of the following types of content would be useful to include in VMR? (1=useful, 5=not useful) Commissioned clinical articles 22 (20%) 32 (29%) Systematic 53 (46%) 32 reviews (28%) Images 59 (50%) 24 (20%) Client 35 (31%) 27 information (24%) RSS feeds 8 (8%) 16 (15%) help on 37 (32%) 22 searching (19%) Blogs 7 (6%) 12 (11%) Don t know 22 (20%) 10 (9%) 13 (11%) 24 (21%) 13 (12%) 17 (15%) 14 (13%) 5 (4%) 2 (2%) 6 (5%) 7 (6%) 4 (4%) 13 (11%) 16 (15%) 4 (4%) 3 (3%) 3 (3%) 5 (4%) 1 (1%) 4 (4%) 21 (19%) Not familiar with it 17 (15%) 10 (9%) 8 (7%) 7 (6%) 9 (8%) 5 (4%) 8 (7%) 6 (5%) 18 (17%) 44 (42%) 14 (12%) 7 (6%) 26 (24%) 12 (11%) 14. If there are other features that you would like to see included please let us know. Total respondents = 19 A wide range of suggestions including images, links to specific sites, conference/symposium notes, information on research grants, and easier access to full text articles. 15. Overall, how useful did you find VMR? Total respondents = 123 Very useful 43 (35%) Quite useful 34 (27.6%) Useful 38(30.9%) Not very useful 6 (4.9%) Not at all useful 2 (1.6%)

8 16. Which veterinarians would most benefit from this resource? Total respondents = 119 Qualified for less than 5 years 75 (63%) Qualified for more than 5 years 78 (65.5%) Studying for specialist diploma 66 (55.5%) Specialist 66 (55.5%) Other 23 (19.3%) 17. What would be an appropriate cost for this product (annual subscription) for a veterinary practitioner? Total respondents = 111 $200 - $300; ; Eur160 - Eur (90%) $301 - $400; ; Eur236 - Eur315 8 (7.2%) $401 - $500; ; Eur316 - Eur390 3 (2.7%) $501 - $600; ; Eur391 - Eur470 0 (0%) Comments Comments were received from 45 of the respondents. Some were very detailed. Positive examples: 1. Overall, I think that the site is attractive and easy to use. 2. can also get a quick overview of a disease without the excessive opinion found on VIN. 3. I like the greater range of content available for bibliographic search than PubMed 4. With increasing emphasis on evidence-based veterinary medicine this type of information is critical. 5. I think that this would be a great resource to have through my residency and as a specialist.

9 Negative examples: 1. I keep getting a pop-up message every time that I try to access a link on the site. 2. a search on PZI insulin cats yielded 20 hits in PubMed and none in your database 3. Information that I was able to access was superficial. 4. I tried to search for entertoxemia and came up with no results. 5. I m not a big abstract fan, so the quicker I could get to the full text the better. Conclusions The survey reached a good number of veterinarians and provided a valuable insight into their use of information. Over two-thirds were working in practice or in industry/commerce and the others mainly in education or research where CABI s information products are most heavily used. Most of the respondents regularly used information resources, with 96% using the internet regularly or occasionally (this is not really surprising with an internet survey what is more surprising is the 4% who rarely or never used Internet search engines). The main reasons for using information resources were to look for help in solving clinical cases (70%), continuing education (74%), and for writing articles (54%). The fact that so many of the respondents regularly write articles could suggest that the sample did not represent the normal range of veterinarians in the profession. When asked about the VetMed Resource prototype, most respondents found that the content was useful or fairly useful (for each of the content types, about 10% said that they were not at all useful). The bibliographic database was considered to be the most useful part of the site, followed by the review articles. When asked what other features would also be useful, images and evidence based systematic reviews were thought to be most useful. The question about who would find the resource most useful did not get a clear answer in the survey, which contrasted with findings in the interviews % said that newly qualified and more experienced veterinarians would both benefit, whereas in the interviews, most people said that the newly qualified, specialists, those studying for specialist diplomas, and the interested (members of journal clubs, veterinarians who write articles and case reports) would benefit most from the resource. For the final question, on the appropriate price for an annual subscription to the site, most people, unsurprisingly, suggested the lowest price to be most appropriate.

10 The comments indicated a range of experiences using the site. Many of the negative comments were due to problems with pop-up blockers preventing linking within the sites. Also users who were used to searching on Google did not realise that Boolean searching was required, and because of this the results were disappointing. The value of full text was emphasised several times. Interviews The main findings from the interviews were: The resource would be most interesting to newly qualified, specialists, and veterinarians studying for specialist qualifications; Specialist societies or State veterinary associations would probably like to provide it as a member benefit; Demographic changes in the veterinary profession meant that veterinarians are more likely to be interested in information than in the past; The increased interest in evidence-based veterinary medicine will increase the demand for access to CAB Abstracts; The globalization of diseases and of the veterinary profession increases th need for global information for the veterinarian. As a result of the research, CABI decided that there was sufficient interest among veterinary practitioners to justify proceeding with the development of an online resource based on CABI s veterinary information, and VetMed Resource was launched in 2007.