COPD from an everyday primary care point of view.

Introduction: The purpose of this study is to use real world evidence on treatment use to evaluate drug superiority within the same treatment group.

Methods: Retrospective cohort analysis using the Spanish Database for Pharmacoepidemiological Research in Primary Care (BIFAP). Data includes longitudinal routine clinical data extracted from practice records of 7,890,485 patients.

[Quality of registration of dementia diagnosis in primary care: The situation in Spain in 2002-2011].

Objective: To ascertain the diagnosis associated with specific treatment for dementia in the Primary Care Electronic Clinical Record (PC-ECR) and to analyse the factors associated with the quality of registration.

Methods: Descriptive study of patients taking cholinesterase inhibitors or memantine registered in Database for pharmacoepidemiological research in PC (BIFAP) 2011: 24,575 patients between 2002 and 2011. Diagnoses associated with first prescription of these drugs were grouped into 5 categories: "dementia", "memory impairment", "dementia-related diseases", "intercurrent processes" and "convenience codes".

[New technologies in primary care: people, machines, records, and networks. SESPAS Report 2012].

The new technologies and the importance of their development in primary care are clear. Technology is important insofar as it helps to resolve practical problems that arise when attempts are made to improve patient care. Many applications can be found under the heading of "new information and communication technologies" in healthcare, but the present article focusses on two of the most significant examples: the electronic health record and the Internet, bearing in mind that the aims being sought and the people using these applications are more significant than the technologies themselves.

[Professional debate on shortage of physicians].

We do not know the best answer to problems due to shortage of physicians (absolute number and by specialities) but perhaps what is important is the lack of a professional debate about what means 'to be' a physician. In this paper we address four key professional questions: 1/ the over-training of physicians when health demand now includes minor problems, 2/ predominance of physician-patient direct encounters in a world of telecommunications and indirect encounters, 3/ the need to delegate power and responsibilities to other health professionals as a consequence of new technology developments and changes in role-design, and 4/ too much emphasis in diagnosis with the danger to initiate cascades with its side-effects. Practical answers to these questions require changes in pre and postgraduate education, improvement in health services organization to profit the use of telecommunications and analysis and re-design of the limits in between professions, levels of care, institutions and health and social sectors.

OSIRIS: a tool for retrieving literature about sequence variants.

Unlabelled: Sequence variants, in particular single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), are key elements for the identification of genes associated with complex diseases and with particular drug responses. The search for literature about sequence variation is hampered by the large number of allelic variants reported for many genes and by the variability in both gene and sequence variants nomenclatures. We describe OSIRIS, a search tool that integrates different sources of information with the aim to retrieve literature about sequence variation of a gene.

[Computer-assisted clinical decision support systems].

This review deals with the historical evolution and methodological basis of computerized medical decision support tools. It also reviews the verification, validation and impact evaluation methods of these systems. The acceptability of them from the health professionals depends on the pro-activity and usefulness of the systems, between other factors.