国際シンポジウム「信頼できる医学情報の共有 -医療専門家から消費者まで-」

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for the Western Pacific is now creating a bibliographic database of locally published biomedical journals in collaboration with experts from its member states. The database, called the Western Pacific Region Index Medicus (WPRIM), is a component of the WHO's Global Index Medicus platform. The Global Index Medicus, which will integrate databases developed by WHO's Regional Offices, is expected to complement internationally known tools, such as MEDLINE, by providing regional and indigenous health information. Raising the level of quality of journal publishing is also an important issue for the WPRIM project, because health experiences and practices of countries in the Western Pacific Region, which are relevant and useful for other countries, must be reported in reliable forms. To publicize the activities concerning WPRIM, the Japanese National Committee for WPRIM (WPRIMJ, http://wprimj.umin.jp) held a seminar entitled “Sharing Reliable Health Information: From Health Professional to Consumer” on 19 May 2007 in Tokyo. After an overview of the WPRIM project was presented, measures to enhance the quality of journals were discussed from the following points: 1) revising each journal's instructions for authors in accordance with the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals” and in journals containing articles on clinical trials 2) requiring official registration of clinical trials and 3) improving report forms for randomized controlled trials by using the CONSORT statement.