Push Technology in Orthopaedics

"Push" technology implies robot internet devices that send you the type of information you need when it becomes available, rather than leaving you to search. Obviously there are issues of definition of areas of interest, of the comprehensiveness of information sources and the fear of missing some interesting areas because you didn’t foresee them. But this is still a valuable potential weapon in the battle to keep current without being overloaded. We need to develop user-friendly push technology systems in orthopaedics.


One popular example of Push technology is the PubMed system to email new citations on a predetermined search as they arise (MyNCBI)(1). After you have run a PubMed search you have the option to "Save Search"; this includes the option to receive an email every time a new citation is added to the list. OrthoLinx(2) is a site which will "push" new articles on orthopaedic or subspecialty orthopaedic subjects to you by email. How the articles to ‘push’ are chosen is not revealed and this means there is suspicion of commercial bias – journals or drug companies may be doing the ‘pushing’. Many sites, including OWL and journal sites, provide RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. One of the Orthogate Workshops(3) takes you through the simple process of finding a variety of orthopaedic sites with RSS feeds and signing up with them.

1.   My NCBI (2007) [Website] Available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/login.fcgi? Requires free registration and log in.
2.   OrthoLinx – Orthopedic Medical News Journals Daily (2007) [Website] Available at http://www.mdlinx.com/ortholinx/ Free registration required
3.   Staying Up to Date – using Google Reader and RSS Feeds (Workshop) Veillette CJ [Website] Available at http://www.orthogate.org/workshops/software/using-google-reader-and-rss-feeds.html