Historically research has been the preserve of experts and those in the know. Patients have had to accept – or make do without – whatever their clinician has had the time, passion, enthusiasm and knowledge to share. The growth of the internet has been a phenomenal driver of knowledge sharing and democratization. It has led to the growth of the so called ‘expert patient’ and the development of disease self-management groups, many of which are particularly active in chronic disease areas such as liver disease.
Indeed, the Trust was one of the first charities to partner the Department of Health in attempting to develop ‘expert patient programmes’. Better disease self-management through increased knowledge and mutual support are processes which the Trust is extremely keen to foster and develop.
In this spirit we offer the below link to the UK PubMed Central website. UK Pub Med is the sister site of the world renowned US PubMed Central (PMC) website. UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) provides a stable, permanent, and free-to-access online digital archive of full-text, peer-reviewed research publications.
www.ukpmc.ac.uk
The UKPMC system is configured to mirror the data held in PMC. The databases are synchronised twice a day, thus ensuring that content is always up-to-date. As of 1st April 2007 there were over 690,000 full-text articles freely available through UKPMC. You can search widely - for example "alcohol" brings up over 86,000 entries - or you can be more specific.
There are a couple of points to note. The site is an academic one and you may find the language or ideas are out of your ordinary range. There is a danger that you may misinterpret information which only applies in a range of cases that do not encompass your own. However, very positively, this site lets you surf the existing international knowledge base about an area to your heart’s content and allows you to absorb the thinking in that area and possibly provoke new ideas and thoughts in your mind.