Mary-Doug Wright, Principal

Mary-Doug Wright brings to her clients extensive expertise and experience conducting environmental scans and comprehensive literature searches in all areas of health care and the social sciences for systematic reviews and critical appraisals. Clients are in the public, non-profit and private sectors and include academic research centres, national and international consulting firms, decision-makers, service providers, independent researchers, and health information consumers.

Mary-Doug’s areas of expertise include health services, policy, economics and planning; health technology assessment; patient care planning; and therapeutics. She has been an active participant in conceptualizing and developing the librarian business unit for a telehealth startup and in the development of the workflow model of the company’s user interface, for both unit managers and patients/clients.

As Senior Librarian/Information Specialist with the BC Office of Health Technology Assessment (BCOHTA) from 1992 until 2002, Mary-Doug acted as an advisor to academic health sciences researchers and taught literature search methodology. As part of her role in disseminating research methods, she also provided consultation to other organizations, performing literature searches and advising them regarding the development of search strategies for evidence-based research to support policy-making. Mary-Doug’s research activities with BCOHTA included comparison of conventional literature search strategies using commercially available databases with fugitive search strategies to identify the grey or non-indexed literature available via the deep web.

Mary-Doug obtained her Bachelor of Science in Genetics in 1976 from the University of Alberta and her Master of Library Science from the University of British Columbia in 1991. She received an NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship in Science Librarianship and Documentation to conduct her studies. Since earning her MLS, she has been working as an independent information professional and is Principal of Apex Information.

Mary-Doug is a member of the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research, the Canadian Health Libraries Association, the Health Libraries Association of British Columbia, the Special Libraries Association and the Association of Independent Information Professionals.

When not conducting research for clients, Mary-Doug spends time outdoors with her dogs, in her art studio not often enough lately, and keeping up with web2.0 and social networking developments. She blogs occasionally at meldinme and for Boxer Rescue Canada and Dog's Best Friend (Freckle and Ceilidh's Blog). Mary-Doug can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.