A recent analysis by Elsevier shows that India has a 0.6% net inflow of scientists. Moreover, incoming scientists and short-term visiting (or transitory) scientists are significantly more productive than scientists who remain in India and scientists that leave the country. India is not losing productive brains, but is in fact an importer of productive brains.

Dr. Michiel Kolman, Senior Vice-President Academic Relations at Elsevier, attending the Centennial Indian Science Congress, commented, “India shows a net inflow of scientists, with the productivity of the incoming and visiting scientists being higher than that of the average staying and outgoing scientist; so in fact a case can be made for an Indian ‘Brain Gain’ rather than the commonly believed ‘Brain Drain’.”

Using Elsevier’s Scopus database, publication data was studied over a 15-year period tracking migration streams of scientists using their affiliations and hence the country they publish in. The size of the migration streams was analyzed revealing that 64.1% of the scientists stayed within India during the 15-year study period, 23.4% were visiting (or transitory) researchers (traveling in or out of India for a period less than 2 years), 6.6% moved to and 6.0% left India; summing up to a net inflow of 0.6%.

The level of productivity of these migration groups was measured by publication output and expressed relative to India’s country average publication output set to one. Analyses showed that incoming scientists (6.6% of the total number of scientists studied) are most productive (1.38 where 1.00 is the average publication output for India), visiting or transitory scientists (23.4%) are almost as productive (1.34), while outgoing scientists (6.0%) are below average in productivity (0.95).

These results can be put into international context by comparison with the UK and China. Both the UK and China display similar patterns as India: all three countries import scientists that are more productive than their country average and they all export scientists that are less productive.

Group size comparative analyses of outgoingscientists revealed: 6.0% for India, 10.0% for UK and 2.1% for China; with productivity levels at 0.95, 0.92 and 0.99 respectively, consistently below country publication average for all three countries.

Group size comparative analyses ofincoming scientists revealed: 6.6% for India, 8.5% for UK and 7.1% for China; with productivity levels at 1.38, 1.14 and 1.85 respectively; consistently higher than country publication average for all three countries, and significantly higher for India and China.

Group size comparative analyses of visiting (or transitory) scientists revealed: 23.4% for India, 44.4% for UK and 16.0% for China, with productivity levels at 1.34, 1.24 and 1.22 respectively; again more productive than country publication averages.

Group size comparative analyses of staying scientists in the15-year study period revealed: 64.1% for India, 37.2% for UK and 74.9% for China, with productivity levels 0.75, 0.60 and 0.74 respectively; all significantly below the country averages, with the UK being the least productive.

Further comparing level of mobility (incoming, visiting and outgoing), it was found that mobility is substantially higher for the UK compared to China or India with 62.8% of all scientists from the UK moving around during the 15-year study period, compared to 35.9% for India and 25.1% for China.

Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for professionals, students and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health and pharmacy, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Health Language, Inc., a leader in the fast-growing Medical Terminology Management (MTM) market. The acquisition further expands Wolters Kluwer Health’s leadership position and comprehensive solutions portfolio in the point-of-care market.

The addition of MTM solutions to Wolters Kluwer Health’s portfolio of offerings will help Wolters Kluwer Health’s hospital customers as well as EMR systems providers and payers increase adoption and use of electronic health records, meet Meaningful Use requirements, share critical clinical data and take greater advantage of technologies that can drive operational efficiencies and improve quality of care.

“This acquisition of Health Language is a fit with our strategy to continually expand our market-leading point-of-care solutions portfolio that helps customers around the globe realize the advantages of healthcare information technologies – within their business operations and at the point of care with patients,” said Arvind Subramanian, President & CEO, Wolters Kluwer Health Clinical Solutions. “Health Language is a recognized leader in the MTM field and the right expert to provide our customers with new levels of system interoperability to meet current and future healthcare information sharing needs.”

Health Language’s medical content terminology databases and software solutions enable hospitals, electronic medical record system providers (EMRs) and payers around the globe to manage, update and map disparate medical vocabularies and administrative codes used in U.S. and international settings. The company’s databases and software products include more than 180 standard terminologies and proprietary content sets to enable easier information sharing across many healthcare information technology systems.

The company also provides clinical content and professional services to enable interoperability, web-based terminology mapping, Meaningful Use compliance and ICD-10 conversion, a system of coding created by the World Health Organization that is in various phases of implementation worldwide. Health Language is headquartered in Denver, Colorado and has approximately 85 employees.

The agreement to acquire Health Language was announced on October 17, 2012. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information for healthcare professionals and students, ranked second overall among software vendors in the 2012 Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards: Software and Professional Services report. Only Epic outranked the company in the annual report from KLAS, an independent healthcare IT vendor research firm that recognizes healthcare vendors for their leadership in working with customers to ensure satisfaction.

Six Wolters Kluwer Health solutions were included in the 2012 Awards. ProVation® MD received top ranking in the Clinical Procedure Documentation category for the sixth consecutive year, while ProVation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate® Decision Support, received the highest product quality rating in the Clinical Decision Support-Order Sets and Care Plans category. At 97%, ProVation Order Sets also had the highest percentage of users indicating they would purchase the product again.

In the Clinical Decision Support-Referential Category, 96% of UpToDate users and 91% of Lexicomp Online users said they would buy the products again. In the Infection Control and Monitoring category, 92% of Sentri7® Infection Prevention* users indicated they would purchase the patient surveillance technology again. MediRegs® ComplyTrack Suite received top ranking in the RAC Management category.

The annual Best in KLAS Awards measures performance based on customer surveys and in-depth interviews and gauges insight into specific strengths, weaknesses and future expectations for companies and their products. For the 2012 report, KLAS conducted more than 20,000 total interviews with providers to determine the performance of hundreds of software and professional services firms and their offerings. Wolters Kluwer Health’s full online performance data can be viewed here (registration required).

“Success in today’s evolving healthcare environment requires providing clinicians with point of care access to trusted clinical content and intuitive decision support tools that integrate easily into workflows. In addition to improving care outcomes through accelerated adoption of evidence-based medicine, technology plays an increasingly prominent role in reducing hospital-acquired infection and readmission rates, and maintaining compliance in a complex regulatory landscape,” said Arvind Subramanian, President and CEO, Wolters Kluwer Health Clinical Solutions. “We are honored to have our customers acknowledge through KLAS the role our products play in achieving these goals. We remain committed to leveraging advanced technologies to provide sophisticated yet clinician-friendly tools for efficient clinical knowledge management, as well as cost and quality improvements.”

Attendees can plan and keep track of everything while on the go at the 2013 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Seattle. The mobile app for the Scheduler puts all the information people need right at their fingertips, including their existing schedule, list of exhibitors and notes from the full Scheduler site. They just have to log in with the same username and password as on the Scheduler to access all of their existing conference information.

The Midwinter Meeting Scheduler helps attendees to plan their time, create, update and prioritize their calendar and find out about many other Midwinter highlights—speakers, events, networking opportunities and more. Highlights of the Scheduler include: multiple ways to browse sessions; an easy-to-create personal schedule that can be shared publicly or kept private; tailored lists of recommendations; ease of adding, prioritizing and updating sessions and events; ease of adding booth visits and meetings with specific exhibitors; and more.

The December digital preview issue of Cognotes offers selected highlights—also available in Mobile, Accessible and PDF versions.

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