JIT for Medical Literature

The JIT or Just-In-Time concept is a major tenet of supply chain economics that’s been around for a while. Here’s how it goes: don’t order it, pay for it, or warehouse it before you really need it. Have on hand only what you need to make and ship what is currently on order. Computer technology has made it possible for businesses to put this theory into practice and save bundles of money in the bargain.

I’m thinking about how the JIT concept can be applied to the medical literature, as a response to or perhaps defense against the infamous information glut. BTW, I’m not advocating that you apply this theory to your leisure reading, everyone should feel free to range far and wide in that field. But in regards to your professional reading, the idea would be to read only what you need to on the topics that are of immediate concern to your current clinical, research, or academic interests.

PubMed and many other databases allow you to do just that in a jiffy. You do a nice, precise search in a specific area of interest and then save it. The technology will alert you by e-mail when anything new is published that meets those search parameters. When the topic is no longer of interest, you cancel the search alert without a second thought. You can also set up journal alerts and receive the table of contents of your favorite journals every time new issues are published.

The same thing can also be accomplished using RSS technology, which notifies you when your favorite web sites are updated. The orange RSS icon on a web site indicates that RSS is available, and you can set up an RSS feed using a free service such as Bloglines . Please call me (415-206-6639) if you’d like more information on that. I’ll give you just enough information to get started. Not more. I promise.