The Ptolemy Project: Giving African Surgeons Online Health Information

"It is African doctors and researchers who know the right questions to ask in order to discover practicable solutions to the health problems of their regions," say Milliard Derbew (Addis Ababa University and University of Toronto) and colleagues. And giving African doctors and researchers better access to health information, they say, is a fundamental component in building a healthy African research culture.

Derbew and colleagues discuss an initiative called the Ptolemy Project, an electronic health information access tool designed to be effective and easy to use, and to satisfy the health information needs of surgeons in the developing world. "Research is unthinkable without access to scientific literature," they say, and electronic access to projects such as Ptolemy will help surgeons to deal with regional health problems.

Citation: Derbew M, Beveridge M, Howard A, Byrne N (2006) Building surgical research capacity in Africa: The Ptolemy Project. PLoS Med 3(7): e305.

Please add the link to the published article in online versions of your report: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030305

Press-only preview of the article: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-03-07-derbew.pdf

Contact:
Miliard Derbew
Addis Ababa University
Pediatrics General Surgeon
Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia
+1 416 480-5260
+1 416 480-5261 (fax)
milliard.derbew@utoronto.ca

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Contact: Andrew Hyde
ahyde@plos.org
44-122-346-3330
Public Library of Science
10-Jul-2006