NEJM Audio Trial - Listen to Full-Text Articles for Free

We discussed the benefits of the text-to-speech programs before. You can make an MP3 file from any article and listen to it when you commute to and from work. This way you can both entertain and enrich your mind by listening to the best that NEJM, JAMA, BMJ, NYT and WaPost have to offer.

The NEJM, as always, is the leader in innovation among major medical journals - it has the following free features:

-RSS feed - not available from JAMA, Annals, Archives or Lancet
-Medical podcasts - in the form of interviews with study authors - check the right sidebar
-And most recently, starting last week, full-text articles available to listen online

The last feature is the most promising and I will discuss it in further detail.

It is a prototype of the so-called NEJM Audio and has two sections:

-Clinical Research Update - a summary of the current issue of NEJM
-Clinical Practice - a complete text article

These articles are available for online listening. If you have a Bluetooth-phone and a PDA, you can listen to them anywhere.

The audio files are a part of a free online trial (similar to the BBC podcast trial), and if you like it, you can fill out the survey available on the NEJM website. The list of all MP3 files published on NEJM is available on MSN Search.


Other organizations mixing sound and medicine:

All lectures from the last ACP annual session are available online through iPlayback.com (for a fee).

SoundMedicine from the University of Indiana is also a step in this direction although the files are in the streaming RealOne format, so technically this is not a podcast. Listening online is free.

Hopefully, some true medical podcasts will be available soon.


More:
NEJM Podcast Feed
iTunes Podcasting, Russell Beattie likes it very much
In one stroke, podcasting hits mainstream - CNet
Podcasting goes from indie to mainstream overnight - USA Today
Image source: sxc.hu