Article
Open Access Portal for Surgical Films in Ophthalmology
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Published: | June 18, 2008 |
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Outline
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Background: Film is superior to text and figures in displaying workflows. Surgical films aim at improving and advancing surgical techniques. That is why film as a medium is more valuable to surgeons and finally also to the general public than the text-based media. Unfortunately, surgical films so far are only poorly and inadequately indexed and filed. Lectures and supplemental DVD´s address small groups of attendees, consumers or subscribers. The German National Library of Medicine is one of those institutes which maintain document server in order to promote medical knowledge and good scientific practice by providing open and interdisciplinary access to primary data. We therefore suggest to permanently store surgical films on innovations in Ophthalmology and make them available worldwide and free of charge.
Methods: We set up an Internet portal named „Eyemoviepedia“ and a relational database system for indexing and storage. We plan to commission the “Rheinware“ company, which stood the test in building the open access database of „German Medical Science”.
Results: Our specification sheet includes: Facilities to store and download surgical films on all subspecialties of Ophthalmology. Contributions are being protected by copyright and are usually commented in English; a directory allowing modulation according to field progress; key word and subject indexing allowing search-engines like Google to locate each and every film; editorial; statutes; save and permanent storage facilitating cross-referencing from scientific literature to assets of the database. In addition communications tools (like „Facebook“) are made available, e.g. for central compilation and editing of documents using MS-Word; person to person transfer of film files (like „Yousendit“) and video conferencing. To build the portal an application for funding is being filed to the DFG (German Research Council), while operating costs, later on, should be covered by commercial sponsors.
Conclusions: We present planning features and a first feature candidate of the database and appreciate your discussion and suggestions as to its configuration. Our goal is to secure utmost acceptance by the surgeons.