With so much happening in the world of pharmacy at the moment, it can be difficult to keep up-to-date with all of the changes. News sites and discussion lists help you to do this, and the task is made even easier with the use of RSS feeds that deliver news automatically to your desktop.
PJ Online News
About: the online version of the news published in the current and past issues of The Pharmaceutical Journal.
Use it to: keep up-to-date in the world of pharmacy.
RPSGB News
About: latest Society news and information about events in the wider pharmacy world.
Use it to: keep up-to-date in the world of pharmacy.
Chemist & Druggist Hot Press
About: the online version of the news published in the current issue of Chemist & Druggist.
Use it to: keep up-to-date in the world of pharmacy.
BBC News Health
About: the BBC’s health news pages.
Use it to: keep up-to-date with events in the area of health. Includes the BBC News Online medical notes library of common conditions.
Department of Health - Health events calendar 2007
January-June 2007 and June-December 2007
About: provides a list of health promotion events and awareness days and weeks.
Use it to: keep up to date with events through the year and find contact information of organisers to request further information. Plan events in your workplace to coincide with these weeks or structure CPD around them.
National Prescribing Centre - Current Awareness Bulletin
About: the NPC's eCAB contains internet links to the latest health and medical news, including clinical news, health and social care guidance, publications and policy. An archive of old editions is available.
Use it to: keep up to date. The bulletin links to published evidence, policies, guidelines, drug evaluations, and other documents that are relevant to prescribing and medicines management.
How: sign up to receive the bulletin delivered by email or RSS feed.
National Library for Health News and RSS
About: news from the National Library for Health
Use it to: keep up-to-date with the latest research in key areas of health. Set up a feed to bring news to your desktop as it happens.
PharmiWeb
About: site bringing the latest news and developments in the pharmaceutical industry. It is sponsored by many of the world’s leading pharmaceutical corporations.
Use it to: keep up to date with the latest industry news and look for jobs in the jobsearch section. CV and career advice is also available.
Discussion lists
A discussion list is an e-mail forum to which individuals can subscribe to correspond with like-minded people on topics of interest to them. Lists are normally themed, and quite often mailings to the list are moderated.
Private-Rx
About: An independent internet discussion list for UK pharmacists. It provides a virtual discussion group within pharmacy practice where members raise queries and receive information.
Use it to: discuss key issues in pharmacy with colleagues around the UK.
How: to use the discussion list you need to be a RPSGB or PSNI registered pharmacist. It is provided free of charge.
Blogs
Blogs (or weblogs) are online dynamic diaries, either created by individuals or by organisations, to relay news, opinions, thoughts, or anything that can be put into words. Blogs are the latest, fun way of keeping in touch with what is going on in the world, but as the majority are formed from personal opinion their content should, of course, be used with caution.
Google Blog Search
About: search technology focused on blogs. Its goal is to make available to search every blog that publishes a site feed (either RSS or Atom).
Use it to: find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice.
How: the search is free to use. Simply type in your keyword or phrase and click ‘Search Blogs’.
Technorati
About: searches, lists, and organizes blogs and other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”
Use it to: search the content of blogs, find new blogs and organise your favourite blogs in one place.
Blogpulse
About: BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs that applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs.
Use it to: search the content of blogs, but also to analyse and report on daily blog activity, track conversations on blogs and view blogger profiles.
RSS (feed) Readers
Really simple syndication (or RSS) is a technology that can bring to your desktop the latest news. As websites are updated, the reader (a programme that allows you to view this information in one place) brings the updates to your attention. There is no longer a need to visit your favourite sites periodically to see what has changed - simply subscribe to the RSS feed and rely on the reader to bring to you the latest changes. Many organisations produce an RSS feed for their news updates including the RPSGB, the National Library for Health and the BBC health site (see above). PharmiWeb allows you to set up a feed for not only news but also for different types of job adverts. The symbol to indicate that a news feed is available often looks like this 
.
Bloglines
About: is a free online service for searching, subscribing to, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. More importantly it also includes a free reliable RSS feed reader.
Use it to: subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favourite news sites and blogs, and Bloglines will monitor updates to those sites. You can read the latest entries easily within Bloglines. You can also create your own blog or search the blogs of others.
How: register as a new user and you can instantly access your account any time, from any computer or mobile device.
Google Reader
About: constantly checks news sites and blogs for new content and includes a in-built feed search to find new content.
Use it to: set up searches of other people’s blogs and be updated on subjects that you have chosen and searches you have saved.
How: you need to create a Google account to use this and other Google services.
Guides to blogs and RSS feeds
Below are a couple of guides to provide further explanation about the technologies referred to above.
What is a Blog?
About: an encyclopaedia entry (including definition, history and discussion) on blogs from Wikipedia.
Use it to: find out more about blogs.
What is RSS?
About: an explanation of and guide to using news feeds and RSS.
Use it to: find out more about news feeds and RSS.