SmartBrief (new AABB resource)

AABB has raised its membership fees for 2007 and plans to introduce "new and modified communications vehicles."

One is AABB SmartBrief, a free daily news summary e-mailed to subscribers. There is a sample online and it appears to be available to both AABB members and non-members alike.

• Sign-up here

The sample issue includes transfusion medicine (TM) news but is fairly broad-based, e.g., there is an article on the continued search for a HIV vaccine by Don Francis, who was featured in Randy Shilt's 1988 book "And the Band Played On" and the movie of the same name.

Since the news summary occurs daily, it's easy to understand why SmartBrief needs to extend beyond TM - there's just not that much TM news happening daily.

Because the news items are not original, i.e., they link to online newspapers, they will be useful for a limited time only since web-based papers and news agency reports disappear regularly.

NOTE

TraQ news is regularly reviewed for working links and links to news items are routinely culled or updated. News is available in these categories:

• News updates (daily) :
• By topic
• By date
• News:
• Regional & international
• Industry
• Disease clearinghouses:
• vCJD
• WNV
• Literature clearinghouses:
• Adverse events
• Economics
• Pretransfusion
• Quality systems
• Technology
• Developing countries